Exploration of the Medical Field: September 2016

Sunday, September 25, 2016

Advancements for Patient Care

By: Kanedra Thaxton

(Image Credit: https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/bioengineering/top-5-medical-technology-innovations)

According to ASME.org, companies are focusing on producing more efficient products for patient care. One of the five recent innovations is the Sapien Transcatherter Aorotic Valve. It is a life saving alternative method for open- heart surgery (MacRae number 5). The Sapien valve is meant for patients who need a new valve in their hearts, but their bodies are unable to endure the severity of the surgery operation. The valve is supposed be a more simple procedure than open- heart surgery and require less amount of time spent at the hospital for recovery. Currently, it is available in the United States but only to the patients who absolutely need it.
This technological advancement is a great tool. The picture above is a representation of the valve. I have noticed that the tool is extremely small. Usually when I think of heart surgery, I imagine immaculate tools and systems. However, the Sapien valve is similar to the size of a needle. Hopefully, this tool will be able to help the patients who cannot endure surgery. It seems like it is a better, more efficient replacement but it is a tool that inspiring medical students should pay attention to. Since this tool is smaller it may require more training to use it or they can help spread awareness about the Sapien Valve. There are many different advancements being used in today's medical field and it is important to stay updated. One day you might have to use the valve and it could help you in your future if you have background information about the tool.

Reference

MacRae/By Sharing and Leveraging Resources, MDIC May Help Industry to Be Better Equipped to Bring Safe and Effective Medical Devices to Market More Quickly and at a Lower Cost," Says Jeffrey Shuren, M.D., J.D., Director of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health., Micheal. "Top 5 Medical Technology Innovations." Top 5 Medical Technology Innovations. ASME, Mar. 2013. Web. 25 Sept. 2016.

<https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/bioengineering/top-5-medical-technology-innovations>

Dr. Katz on Prostate Cancer

By: Shivang Tripathi

According to this article, Dr. David Katz states that there may be no need for immediate treatment when prostate cancer is first diagnosed. In a study done for men with prostate cancer, disease progression only occurred in 20 percent of the men. This meant that 80% of the participating men did not show any further progression in prostate cancer levels in over 10 years. Even in skilled hands, prostate cancer treatments include various side effects. Some of these side effects include sexual disfunction, and incontinence of bladder. Instead of immediate medical action, Dr. Katz recommends that you should first try to make any lifestyle changes that could be considered unhealthy and worsen your symptoms. This information can potentially revolutionize treatments used for cancer within the medical industry.

References
http://www.nhregister.com/opinion/20160925/dr-david-katz-preventive-medicine-not-just-waitin-on-prostates-to-change

Prompt #8, Practicing Your Knowledge

By: Amanda Ziminski

As a young child, I have always known that I wanted to be doctor when I got big. I was in love with saving the day, making people feel better, and handing out plenty of lollipops along the way. As I continued my education, I kept that same dream with me. As I grew, my dream also grew with me.

(Image Credit: http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Pictures+From+Emergency+Room+after+a+Trauma
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   I began job-shadowing as a junior in high school with a doctor in my local clinic. She pushed me to do a lot of extra things than she did with any of her former students or any other kids job shadowing other doctors. I had to do a lot of outside research and come to the clinic prepared. This opened a lot of doors for me around the hospital. By my senior year I gained trust to preform tasks normally other students would never have the opportunity to preform.

   I was allowed to call back patients from the waiting room, weigh them, measure their height, record their vital signs, and update their past medical history and determine their chief complaint. I did this all by myself and then I would go back to the doctors office and give her a verbal report of what is going on with her patient. I would then go in with her and preform a physical examination on the patient. A physical exam often included listening to lung and heart sounds, examining the inner ears, nose and mouth, listening to abdominal sounds, and checking the pulses on the tops of feet. After this process I would have to tell her if I found and abnormalities. She would then do it after to see if I was correct.

   Before job-shadowing I read and tried to learn what was normal and what to look for in patients in the respective age group, but it is a lot different with actual patients. They are alive and breathing, moving and talking. It is a lot of pressure. I didn't want to get anything wrong. I wanted to impress her. It will also be a lot of pressure when I become an actual physician. It is a simple task I will do everyday, but if I were to miss on small detail my patient's health is at risk.

   In the spring of my senior I enrolled in EMT classes for additional experiences within the medical field. This is where I learned a lot. I would go from school to softball to the emergency room for clinicals. I worked in the ER from 8:00 p.m. until 12:00 a.m. By the time I arrived in the emergency room I was exhausted, just as the nurses and doctors were from their 12 or 24 hour shifts. Although I was tired I had to learn to push through it and be the best I could possibly be for the patients I encountered. I had to be happy and optimistic. I had to remember to stay calm when things got chaotic. I had to stay sharp and ready for anything.

   In the E.R. I did many hands on things that was only explained to me in lectures or it was something I read within the 5,000 pages of my textbook. I assisted a doctor with sutures on the scalp and hand. I splinted a screaming five-year-old girl's arm. I assisted in a code blue (unresponsive patient), had confused Alzheimer's patients, drug overdosed patients, and suicidal patients. I have felt the adrenaline rush through my veins as the E.R. doors opened and seen patients come through on a stretcher. I've stayed awake at night thinking about patients I seen and talked to just a few hour ago or even a month ago. I felt what I feels like to be thanked for your efforts. I have been told I will be an excellent doctor by a patient.

   My hands on experience revealed to me that when I enter my field, I'll be working with actual human beings, not just case scenarios and pictures in the corner of my books. They are beating, breathing, and bleeding. They are squirming , crying, an scared. They are people just like me and you, and my job is to keep them alive, make them feel safe again, and help them to surmount whatever brought them in. That is a tremendous responsibility, a responsibility I can't wait to accept with honor.

Image Credit:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFgCDi0YnuVdvgu764k_A2wIqOrxKWL6XQpsjFhL3_E5ks2XdKViNvj41urHMijQEWr3RjHUGApHN31pOsVrd-yOWQ2PaN3WwHDXHoIc_d_3GQGPjqe3JulFsHMVha9UxZUD3X5gx3wiTw/s1600/PTR-EMERGENCY07-010614.jpg

Monday, September 19, 2016

Microsoft Hololens

According to medicalfuturist.com, Google is creating a digital lens that can change the course of diabetes management by measuring blood glucose levels from tears. This lens will be on an IPAD app and will also allow doctors to see through anatomical structures without them having to actually open the organs.

Reference

The Medical Futurist℠; Webicina Kft., 2016

Sunday, September 18, 2016

Advances in the Emergency Room

By: Lesly Morales

(Image credit:http://fcer.com/images/locations-hi-res/_placeholder_location.jpg)

The emergency room is always chaotic and the line of people waiting is never ending, but with InQuicker (an invention that will reduce waiting in the hospital) the days of waiting are over. St. Mary Medical Center in Hobart recently launched InQuick and they have reduced the number of people waiting in line for hours.

InQuicker is an app you can download on your phone. Once downloaded whenever you have to go to the hospital you check in through the app and do the waiting at home rather than in a busy, boring waiting room. InQuicker is currently used in hospitals and clinics nationwide.

InQuicker is intended only for individuals with medical conditions that are not serious or life-threatening. The system is designed to filter certain symptom keywords that may indicate a life-threatening or debilitating medical condition. People with those medical conditions are prompted to dial 911 or go immediately to the nearest emergency room.

visit here for more information.

Stand Back Up Twice As Tall

By: Amanda Ziminski

“Resilience is essentially a set of skills as opposed to a disposition or personality type, that makes it possible for people to not only get through hard times but thrive during and after them,” - Dr. Dennis Charney.

Psychiatrists Dennis Charney and Steven Southwick have been studying resilience for two decades, trying to understand why some people bounce back from difficult times and why others don’t. However, in order to understand resilience, we must first understand stress and how it affects us. Humans are far more stressed than any of us realize. Most of us will experience a major traumatic situation in our lifetime, but the smaller stressors of everyday life will also take a significant toll on us. As humans, we are genetically programed to “sweat the small stuff.” We think about what we would say in conversations that will never even occur, we worry about what others think about us, and we have irrational fears of the most ridiculous things. All of this worrying activates a highway of neural pathways in the brain. Through new technologies of functional magnetic resonance imagining (fMRI), scientists are able to look past their observations of patients and look into the parts of the brain that dictate emotion. By observing patterns of blood flow they can measure brain activity and see what stress looks like in different people. The connection in the brain that is significant in response to stress and resilience is the path from prefrontal cortex, which is where cognitive thinking is done, and the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for emotion and fear.

(Image Credit http://www.humanillnesses.com/images/hdc_0000_0001_0_img0041.jpg )

Through research by Dr. Charney and Dr. Southwick, new evidence suggests that with practice anyone can learn to be resilient. “If you train your brain, how you act under pressure is up to you,” Dr. Charney stated in his interview with TIME. “Like an animal whose pulse returns to normal after successfully outrunning a predator, resilient brains seem to shut off the stress response and return to normal.” If we train our brain to become resilient a stronger connection between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala will form. Dr. Charney explained that stronger connection means the prefrontal cortex can quicker tell the amygdala to quiet down. Consistent practices can actually change how the brain looks and operates.

According to Charney, “there is not one prescription that works. Find what best works for you.”

Some suggestions for becoming resilient includes:

1. Identifying a set of beliefs that nothing can shake.

2. Try finding a meaning in whatever stressful or traumatic event has happened to you.

3. Try to maintain a positive outlook

4. Take cues from someone who is especially resilient.

5. Don’t run from things that scare you: face them.

6. Be quick to reach for support when things go haywire.

7. Learn new things as often as you can.

8. Find an exercise regimen you’ll stick to.

9. Don’t beat yourself up or dwell on the past.

10. Recognize what makes you uniquely strong- and own it.

I feel that being resilient is an important asset to have. One thing that I have noticed through job shadowing and EMT clinicals is that there is an overwhelming amount of people clinically diagnosed with anxiety. According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIHM), 18.1% of the U.S. population has anxiety. I have also noticed through researching various diseases including heart disease, obesity, asthma, and diabetes are all linked to stress as a risk factor for developing or worsening the disease. I think we all could benefit from not only some destressing, but learning how to stand back up twice as tall after we’ve been knocked down.

References:

http://www.webmd.com/balance/stress-management/features/10-fixable-stress-related-health-problems

Saturday, September 17, 2016

Prompt 1- Newer Is Not Always Better

By: Kanedra Thaxton

I have been curious about the medical field and the medical advancements that takes place because soon I will be entering that field. I found a book called "Hope or Hype" by Deyo Richard and Donald Patrick. The book was extremely useful as a resource and with helping me to understand what really goes on. I already knew that doctors had to stay updated with new skills and innovations in the medical world but I did not know many details about it. Ultimately, this book is a great resource because it gives you insight on the process of medical advancements with medicine. If you are a student that plans on entering the medical field this is important information that you should be informed about because it will allow you stay updated with new medicine routines. Also, it will help you to become a better physician because you will be able to tell their patients about the medicine that you are prescribing t them. Below are some answers to my preconceptions that I had and that others may have about medical advancements that the book was able to answer.

Do doctors start the use of medical advances only based on if the science behind it was good?

According to the book, "Hope or Hype" by Deyo Richard and Donald Patrick, marketing, politics, and media hype have great influences on the medical advances that doctors use. The book even states that often those factors have more influence the medical advancements used rather than scientific evidence.

Are all of the new innovations better than the old innovations?

You would think that the newest innovations would be a break through but in reality it's not. In the book, it talks about how most of the innovations are oversold and overused but they have alarming side effects. Also, they offer minimum to any advantage at all.