Heart Attacks Unrecognized in Elders

Seniors may have heart attacks that are never recognized by doctors wearing uniforms scrubs. These are so-called silent heart attacks or silent myocardial infarctions, which can put our elders at dying risks more than what a diagnosed heart attack can.

To finally conclude this study, the authors used expensive Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans in over 900 Icelanders between 67 to 93 years old to detect heart trouble. It was found out in the study that 157 had heart attacks in those who had not been diagnosed before compared to those who had been diagnosed wherein 91 had heart attacks. Twenty-one percent of those with diabetes and 14 percent of those without diabetes had unrecognized heart attacks. Therefore, the researchers noted that there are many cases of silent heart attacks in people with diabetes as detected by cardiac MRI.

  

On the other hand, Dr. Andrew Arai, lead researcher and U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s chief of pulmonary and cardiovascular branch, believes that even though the study was conducted in Iceland, the results would be the same in the United States. According to Dr. Gregg Fonarow, American Heart Association spokesman and cardiology professor at the University of California, prior studies show that myocardial infarctions are not clinically detected.  

“This study found a higher prevalence of previously unrecognized heart attacks than described in prior studies,” said Fonarow. He added that silent heart attacks have also adverse long-term prognosis same with clinically recognized heart attacks.    

MRI scanners are definitely impressive when it comes to spotting heart disease. However, Dr. Arai said that high-priced test is not recommendable for everybody unless that person has symptoms.

At this moment, there are no clear evidences on who will benefit from such scans and when will the screening test are called for. However, cardiac imaging is the primary step to determine an unrecognized heart attack and keep elders from possible danger.                  

Diseases You May Have But Doctors Miss

You see your doctor regularly to be sure you are in best shape. You see your doctor when you feel something bizarre about your body, such as unusually painful cramps. You submit to physical tests and other procedures to make sure you’re doing well, or know as soon as possible the cause of any physical discomfort. And then, you ensure that you take your medications, but all to no avail because you still not relieved of the unknown ailment. Even if you get second and third opinions, you seem to get no satisfying explanation from doctors and the treatments you’ve undergone didn’t work as expected. Could it be that those doctors missed your real ailment?

The truth is there are medical conditions that are not easy to diagnose because symptoms are similar to yet other diseases. These symptoms create haze to the real ailment, giving doctors in those uniforms scrubs hard time telling what it is, and patients suffering from supposedly easily treatable maladies. Let’s take a look at some of the diseases that even skilled and experienced doctors often overlook.

1. Sleep Apnea – Usually considered by people as normal, this medical condition, which involves disordered breathing during sleep or heavy snoring, is linked with stroke and heart attack. Sleep apnea symptoms include fatigue, daytime sleepiness, poor concentration, slow reflexes. The condition is most common among adults, but has recently been increasing among children. Sleep apnea is a treatable disease through lifestyle changes, mouthpieces, breathing devices, and surgery.

Read more about sleep apnea treatments:

sleep apnea facts in nhlbi.nih

sleep apnea info in webmd

sleep apnea information in mayoclinic

2. Migraines – Doctors easily diagnose migraine on patients having symptoms like severe pain on one side of the head, sensitivity to light, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting. With several types of migraines, symptoms also vary. Hemiplegic migraine, for instance, mimics symptoms of stroke. Significantly, upon seeing symptoms of more complicated and risky disease, doctors would often focus on the latter than look into other possible causes. Sometimes, the debilitating pain suffered by the patient is simply blamed on sinusitis or tension-type headache. Migraine is treatable through therapy and medications or medications only.

Read more about migraine treatments and medications:

migraine facts in medicinenet

migraine facts in mayoclinic

3. Glaucoma – This eye disease can occur to anyone, but symptoms are normally disregarded until they already bump unto something more frequently because they’ve lost peripheral vision. Such an ailment is hard to detect, though, causing many sufferers to lose their eyesight. Glaucoma is hard to detect through eye screenings and has no cure; comprehensive dilated eye exam is necessary in detecting the condition and treatments will only halt or slow its development. Medicines, eye drops, laser trabeculoplasty, and conventional surgery.

Read more about glaucoma facts, symptoms and treatments:

glaucoma info in ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

glaucoma facts in nei.nih.gov

4. Bipolar Disease – Tantrums in children and growing pain among teenagers come in the way of early detection of bipolar disease or manic depression. Instead of correctly giving the diagnosis, the doctor may see it as ADHD or ODD. Only until the patient becomes adult can the disorder be easily detected, with the help of physical examination, interview, and laboratory tests using fMRI or functional magnetic resonance imaging and PET or positron emission tomography. To help determine bipolar from other psychological problems among children, doctors will have to know if the behavioral disorder of the patient is episodic rather than chronic behaviors shown by ADHD and ODD sufferers. But the normal child behaviors bring challenge to determining bipolar disease, plus the fact that it could be difficult for them to describe their feelings. Bipolar disorder remains incurable, and is recurrent. Treatments, which include medication and psychotherapy, simply help them have better their symptoms.

Read more about bipolar facts:

bipolar facts in emedicinehealth

bipolar info in nimh.nih.gov

5. Childhood Asthma – Wheezing and shortness of breath are the common symptoms of childhood asthma, but children under the age of two wheeze due to other disorders such as RSV bronchitis or anatomically small airways. The latter normally goes away as a child grows and the airways develop. Other symptoms of asthma in children include frequent coughing spells, congestion, and pain or tightness in the chest. Some may also show restlessness, poor sleep, coughing after laughing, and inability to keep up with other children in physical activities. One treatment used for asthma is inhaled corticosteriods.

Read more about childhood asthma:

childhood asthma information in nhs.uk

childhood asthma info in nationalasthma.org.au

6. Lupus Erythematosus – When the patient exhibit tell-tale butterfly rash, doctors will easily know the person is suffering from lupus erythematosus, a long-term autoimmune disease that may affect brain, joints, kidneys, skin, and other organs. However, when the patient has roundish discoid lesions on the scalp or ear that is when the professionals in lab coats will have hard time. Physical exam and nervous system exam will have to be done to detect lupus, along with antibody tests, CBC, chest x-ray, kidney biopsy, and urinalysis. Lupus erythematosus is also an incurable disease with treatments that can only control symptoms. High dose of corticosteroids or cytotoxic drugs are used for treatment.

Read more about lupus erythematosus:

lupus erythematosus facts in ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

lupus erythematosu info in nlm.nih.gov

Pesticide on Food Warnings, Junk Science?

When the food pyramid was abolished and replaced with MyPlate, the public was left with a recommendation that half of everyone’s diet should be filled with fruits and vegetables. The move was pushed by the worldwide obesity epidemic and the drive to encourage Americans to live a healthy life. However, e-coli outbreaks as well as pesticide residues found in fruits and veggies are pestering the advocacy.

According to the US Department of Agriculture or USDA, traces of pesticides were found on most popular fruits and vegetables. The residue still lingers even if the produce is washed 10 seconds, and even after peeled. It only means that pesticides are present inside the known healthy foods. On the other hand, USDA revealed that overall pesticide residues found on foods tested are at levels below the tolerances set by EPA, with 99.7% of the federal government samples were within safety levels. Among the tested produce, 98% of conventional apples tested positive, putting them on top of USDA’s Dirty Dozen. Following apples is the celery, found positive on 57 different pesticides. Third on the list are strawberries, which tested positive on 13 different pesticides.

If the top 3 of the Dirty Dozen have sent you shivers already, you would most likely be more concerned to find more of your favorite fruits and vegetables to actually act as vectors of possible health problems and cause of unnecessary visits to professionals in uniforms scrubs and lab coats. Completing the Dirty Dozen are peaches, spinach, imported nectarines, imported grapes, sweet bell peppers, potatoes, domestic blueberries, lettuce, and kale or collard greens. But even if these produce are dubbed to have the highest pesticide residues, the public are still encouraged to eat fruits and vegetables, saying that doing so far outweighs risks of pesticide exposure.

Amidst the fear of pesticide contamination on conventionally-grown produce, people can find ways on how to reduce exposure. One way is to buy organic. Consumers can also go to farmer’s markets to avoid produce that have been modified or grown to resist normal rotting time, such as those that need long transport time. And of course, the public can grow their fruits, vegetables, and spices. For those who don’t have much option, they can go for those products listed to have the least amount of contamination found. Included in that group are the onions, sweet corn, pineapples, avocado, asparagus, sweet peas, mangoes, eggplant, domestic cantaloupe, kiwi, cabbage, watermelon, sweet potatoes, grapefruit, and mushrooms. Seasonal fruits and vegetables are also less likely soaked in dangerous chemicals.

“Not so fast,” said financialpost.com, saying Environmental Working Group, the group that made the announcement, is notorious in spreading junk science. Financial Post also claims the EWG, along with the media, spread junk science for personal benefits. It says EWG is scaremongering to get lucrative donations. In the opinion section of Financial Post, it almost seemed desperate at overturning claims by activists and scientists. For a financial institution, such an action is understandable. But personally, they all look funny.

The public is no longer ignorant about all the negative effects of overly commercializing produce, and their underlying harms. But they choose to ignore it. Who is ignorant about the health problems posed by cigarette smoking? Even 5-year-olds know that. But has smoking been eliminated? Quite the contrary. And even if people would want to avoid chemicals in their foods, they don’t have much choice. If they are going to grow their own corn, for instance, how sure are they that they’re corn is not genetically modified? They don’t even have crop options. And can they get any good harvest without using pesticide nowadays? Hardly.

When Medicine Brings Disease Not Cure

Speculations regarding the negative effects of swine flu vaccine spread just like the pandemic. Based on reactions, it seems people are rather outraged than feared by such speculations.

Just what is the health risk posed by swine flu vaccine? According to the Medicines and Health Care Products Regulatory Agency or MHRA, there is a slightly elevated risk of GBS, thus further tests on flu jabs are recommended to assess possible association. GBS or Guillain-Barre Syndrome is a syndrome that attacks the nervous system and can result to paralysis or death if respiratory system is attacked.

MHRA clears, though, that risk with the vaccine hasn’t changed. Report simply expands ongoing GBS analysis. But as to the link of GBS with swine flu vaccine, that has still needs to be confirmed with evidence.

Nevertheless, possibly affected individuals reach millions, given the fact that swine flu vaccine was mixed with this year’s seasonal flu shots. There were 6 million swine flu jabs Pandemrix given, and individuals suspected of GBS numbers to 15.

There are health care professionals we see in Dickies uniforms who did not take swine flu vaccine during the pandemic. Even getting the seasonal flu shot was refused by some who wear White Swan Fundamentals scrubs and working in the medical industry. Perhaps, they’d just take the usual meds and wear their scrub jackets. Refusals did not occur only among health care workers, a number of public individuals stood against receiving the swine flu vaccines.

Doctors Missing the Basics Often End Up with Bad Judgment

The story of John Gordon, published in The Washington Post on September 27, was a classic problem lurking in the medical practice. He had undergone 2 knee surgeries, dozens of therapy sessions, acupuncture, and other treatments for wrong diagnosis by several orthopedists and oncologists, including a rare cancer.

Specialists missed, nurse solved the puzzling ailment, figuring out its Lyme disease. The knee problem, which persisted more than a year and cost Gordon unnecessary spending, was over in just two weeks.

Errors in diagnosis usually surface because physicians fail to do basic tests. Lyme disease, a bacterial infection caused by deer tick bite, only needed blood test. But because medical practitioners, including some specialists, easily jump to a more complicated conclusion, patients are not given the right treatment they needed.

This problem persists from when medicine was established until this very modern day. Could it be that such errors are a practice? Something preventable, but preventive measures were simply not applied. Standardized checklists for basic procedures must be widely used. This should minimize the chance doctors would make bad judgments. And if teamwork is better practiced among health care workers, everyone gets to speak their minds freely, laying different points that should lead to correct diagnosis and treatment procedures.

Just as how physicians, nurses, and pharmacists differ with preference in nursing scrubs, their opinion could also differ variedly, allowing the right one to be easily pin pointed. Whether one wears Cherokee uniforms, Dickies scrubs, Urbane scrubs or whatever type, his or her opinions should matter. This also tells that nurses and others must be allowed to challenge their superiors when they are right and be given protection for their action as necessary.

Nurse in Romania Faces Murder Case for Negligence

Present society teaches parents to trust only the healthcare professionals when it comes to their children’s health. But unwanted situations also teach parents to never completely give their trust to health experts for their safety.

People, including those in nursing shoes, can neglect their duties at the most unlikely circumstances. Just recently in Romania, Florentina Daniela Cirstea did a terrible mistake that ended in the tragic death of five newborns and left six others injured.

Cirstea, a nurse, will face a murder case because of allegedly neglecting her duties. According to a surveillance video, she left the ICU unit of the Giulesti Maternity Hospital in Bucharest for 12 minutes, the time when a fire broke out and put the children ablaze. The video also shows Cirstea left the ICU several times that day.

The fire started in an electrical cable attached to the air-conditioning unit of the intensive care room, quickly swept the room, burning incubators and other medical equipments according to prosecutor’s preliminary conclusion.

Surveillance footage also showed medical staff and parents were frantically trying to enter, breaking the door with to chair, to save the children from the burning ICU. Respondents could have easily entered if the person having the access card to the door was present, who apparently was nowhere around. - CNN

Dentist Charged for Using Paper Clips on Root Canals

$130,000 false Medicaid claims, illegally prescribed drugs, and put paper clips in patient’s root canals instead of the standard stainless steel posts are the charges that former Fall River Dentist Michael Clair will be formally facing on April 8 in the superior court.

• Clair is no longer authorized to submit claims in the Medicaid program since 2002. But according to the Medicaid Fraud Division, Clair hired several dentists at Harbour Dental Care, who are eligible to file Medicaid claims, to claim for him the dental services he performed. He is also accused of fraudulently billing about $130,000 for dental work between August 2003 and June 2005, since the Harbour Dental closed.

He is going to be charged of 5 counts of false Medicaid claims and three counts of larceny of more than $250.

• What about the illegally prescribing drugs? Combunox, Hydrocondone, and Percocet painkillers were allegedly prescribed by him for his staff members, who then gave some or all of the drugs back to him.

He will be facing 2 counts of illegally prescribing a Class B substance, as well as illegally prescribing Class C substance.

• Paper clips were used instead of standard stainless steel posts just so to be able to save money. Paper clips are temporarily used when performing root canal surgery, but can result to infection and pain.

He will also be charged of 2 counts of assault and battery.

Michael Clair’s history:

1999, Maryland – The state’s dental board revoked his dentistry license for performing unnecessary dental procedures between 1992 and 1998. He also encouraged other dentists to practice the same.
2001, Florida – Clair’s license to practice in the State of Florida was revoked in response to Maryland dental board’s action.
2003 – DEA or Drug Enforcement Administration cancelled his federal license in connection to his Florida license revocation.
Pending action by the Massachusetts Board of Dentistry
Dec. 2006, West Virginia – The Board of Dental Examiners cancelled Clair’s license due to the revocations in two states and pending action in Massachusetts.

How can patients safeguard themselves against such fraudulent and abusive acts?

At this point, patients need to use common sense. But Massachusetts Dental Society Assistant Executive Director Karen Rafeld gave a recommendation: Dental patients to seek second opinion before undergoing any surgery. And if looking for a new dentist, it is important to learn some background of any prospective practitioner. Ask family members and or friends of experiences and comments regarding services. This should tell whether a dentist is worth trusting. A little research will save you a lot.

Do not be limit yourselves in just one option. You will surely bump on someone who doesn’t merely look like a dentist because of wearing lab coats of medical scrubs. There are many other dentists who truly work in the true sense of their profession.