In medicine, surgery (from the Greek χειÏουÏγική, or chirurgical, and latin chirurgiae meaning “hand work”) is a medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate and/or treat a pathological condition such as disease or injury, to help improve bodily function or appearance, or sometimes for some other reason. An act of performing surgery may be called a surgical procedure, operation, or simply surgery. In this context, the verb operating means performing surgery. The adjective surgical means pertaining to surgery; e.g. surgical instruments or surgical nurse. The patient or subject that the surgery is being performed on can be a person or an animal. A surgeon is a person who performs operations on patients. Persons described as surgeons are commonly medical practitioners, but the term is also applied to podiatrists, dentists and veterinarians. Surgery can last from minutes to hours, but is typically not an ongoing or periodic type of treatment. -Source
Losing an arm or a leg - or worse, both - in an accident or because of a sickness can be a truly devastating experience. Once the initial shock wears off though, the greatest challenge for the survivors is how they could cope with their new life. Doing simple tasks that were often neglected before could prove to be difficult at first. But over time and with practice, most amputees learn to cope with their loss.
However, scientists from the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and Northwestern University give new hope to amputees as a new study could one day enable them to feel with an artificial limb as though it were their own. In an experiment done with the help of two patients who lost their arms, scientists rerouted key nerves to their chests. According to the patients, they could feel their missing arms and hands when pressure, heat and cold, and electrical stimulus were applied in the nerve areas.
Photo credits: Carlos Sarasola Orio
by: Djai Tanji
Heart transplant is a long process because you have to wait for a potential heart that is suitable for you and your condition. But there is a new device now that will no longer make a heart patient wait – the Berlin heart. One of its great advantages is it comes with different sizes, from the smallest fitted for babies and large sizes for adults. The Berlin heart takes over the patient’s heart for a while that allows it to rest and this will let the patient’s body to gain strength thus, making them a better candidate for heart transplantation. And 77 percent of patients who uses Berlin heart survive to their transplant surgery.
by: Djai Tanji
Out of 1,000 children, there are three to five who are diagnosed with scoliosis and it is more prominent in girls. Scoliosis is a curvature of the spine that can have severe consequences if the curvature gets worse like effects in heart and lung function. Surgery is the process to mend scoliosis which in the operation cuts a large piece of bone from the iliac crest in the pelvis that will be used to create a spinal fusion so the curve would not get worse. But the problem with taking a bone from the iliac crest is it can cause pain and sometimes even permanent pain. But today, there is a brand new therapy that will require using stem cells harvested from your own bone marrow. This stem cells will act as a sort of catalyst to support the growth of new bone along the spine and moreover, it is less painful and more effective.
by: Djai Tanji
For those of you who spend almost 12 hours in front of your computer, there is a specialized specs to prevent eye irritation. Some of the people who spend lots of time in front of a computer screen can suffer from eye problems that may feel like sands in the eyes and makes your vision blurry and teary. It is called a computer vision syndrome. So an ophthalmologist, Richard Yee, saw how people suffer from dry eyes, light sensitivity and difficulty to focus at the computer that made him create special specs. It’s like having your eyes in the sauna making it comfortable for the eyes and screens out wind, drafts, dusts and anything in the environment that can irritate your eyes.
by: Djai tanji
There are at least three million Americans that have epilepsy and 30 percent of this has seizures that cannot be controlled by medicine. But as of now, new imaging techniques have stridently increased the number of people who are possible candidate for epilepsy surgery. And the children have more benefits on this since their brain is still flexible. Surgery is the only way to completely cure epilepsy but this is crucial because many things can happen inside your brain during surgery that can cause further damages. And to accurately map the brain during surgeries, surgeons place dozens of tiny electrodes directly on the surface of the brain and these sensors allow a digital brain wave machine to generate a high-tech image of what is happening inside the brain.
by: Djai Tanji
It is a disheartening fact that stroke is the third leading cause of death and the leading cause of disability in the US. But there is a new tool called Penumbra which is a device suction for blood clots from the brains of stroke patients. It gives possibility of life and cuts the risk of death and disability. A catheter is used as it goes from a small incision in the groin through blood vessels up to the brain where this is a blockage and Penumbra suctions out the clot thus, saving a stroke victim’s life. There is a new study in fact that shows it restored blood flow in 82 percent out of 125 patients.
by: Djai Tanji
It has always been believe that atherosclerosis which is the buildup of plaque in the arteries, was irreversible. But this year, heart experts has done something that was thought to be almost impossible, they were able to shrink the fatty clogs blocking the heart’s arteries of patients by around 7 percent only with the use of maximum dosage of Crestor which is a cholesterol-lowering medication. Heart medications before are only taken to slow or stop the narrowing of arteries. But this new finding raises the possibility that you can actually reverse the plaque accumulation that starts even as early as childhood.
by: Djai Tanji
Many of us, women try hard to have a fit body that can pass for celebrity like sexiness that is why we follow several diet practices for whatever’s its cost. A lot of us especially follow Atkins style diets that cut off carb and avoid foods rich with it. But before you say goodbye to bagel breaks, consider what the researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology has got to say. They have found that carbohydrates are essential in stimulating serotonin which is the neurochemical that helps boost mood and control appetite. And the brain produces serotonin only after you eat sweet or starchy carbohydrates that are accompanied by little or no protein. Since women have less serotonin than men, No-Carb diets will most likely leave them blue, cranky and especially hungry.
by: Djai Tanji
Obesity has become one of the most health concerns especially on developing countries and if it is not addressed to immediately, people will be in risk of fatal diseases caused by obesity. Medical science is continuously searching for medical breakthrough in obesity. One study and research in Albert Einstein College of Medicine that has yet to be proven found out that maintaining the level of fatty acids in the brain may be the cure to obesity. In this light, the study intends to change the effects of molecular substance of malonyl CoA which is a molecule that has an influence in the hypothalamus activity that increases the appetite of a person. The researchers aim to find a way to modify the content of malonyl CoA in the brain so that people will no longer crave so much for food.
