Worse Than a Receding Hairline: Receding Gums from Periodontitis

February 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Periodontitis is an inflammatory disease of the tissues surrounding the teeth, which is why it’s better known as gum disease. Microorganisms can grow on the tooth and eat away at it, causing weak and sore gums. The severity of gum disease can range from mild to life-threatening depending on the person’s immune system and at what stage the gum disease is at the time. Fortunately, gum disease is a treatable condition, and patients have numerous options. The list below details several options — both surgical and nonsurgical.

  • Regular dental cleanings: Dentists can recognize the signs of early gum disease automatically. If they do catch it, a series of professional cleanings can reverse the damage caused by the bacteria.
  • Root planing procedure: Although it sounds surgical and messy, root planing is performed under a local anesthetic much like what is used for cavity fillings. The dentist simply scrapes the gum line thoroughly and smooths the rough spots on the patient’s teeth.
  • Flap surgery: For more advanced gum disease, the dentist may need to pull back the gums to remove built-up tartar that cannot be reached through regular procedures. The dentist may also decide to reduce the amount of space between teeth through what’s called a pocket reduction procedure so that bacteria cannot hide between the teeth as easily.
  • Bone grafts: If the patient’s teeth are decayed beyond repair, dentists can take pieces of the patient’s bone or use synthetic bone material to repair the teeth and foster bone growth.
  • Soft tissue grafts: Severely recessed gums may require a soft tissue graft. Dentists may take tissue from elsewhere in the mouth and place it where the gums have diminished due to gum disease.
  • Bone surgery: Gum disease erodes the bone, leaving craters and dips that need to be filled. Much like a bone graft, bone surgery involves reworking the affected teeth so as to leave less room for bacterial growth.

It’s important to note that gum disease is preventable. With proper brushing and flossing and steady dental cleanings at least twice a year, most patients can avert sever dental complications.

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I Robot: Your Next Surgical Procedure May Involve A Robot

January 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Many people react in fear at the idea of undergoing a robotic-assisted surgery. We want a real surgeon to work on our body, right? One with highly trained hands and nerves of steel.

You may be surprised to know that those hands might perform even better when assisted by a surgical robot.

The best known such robot is the Da Vinci Surgical System. This system includes a flat screen, high definition monitor; a platform with a camera and four robotic instrument arms; and a physician interface unit.

The surgeon sits at the unit and looks into a screen that shows highly magnified, 3-D images of the surgical area. The surgeon’s hands manipulate controls that engage the robot’s instruments. The instruments are capable of making tiny, precise movements within confined areas of the body that human hands cannot. The micro camera shows the surgeon magnified views of the surgical field that he or she couldn’t see if they were standing over the patient in a traditional surgery.

The result is smaller incisions, less blood loss and more exact surgical manipulations that precisely target the area that needs attention, while leaving normal tissues unaffected. With a smaller incision the patient heals faster, experiences less pain, has a shorter hospital stay and returns to normal activities sooner. There is a reduced risk of infection, and minimal scarring.

OB/Gyns, urologists and general surgeons have quickly adopted robotic surgery into their practices. OB/Gyns are finding great success using the robot for hysterectomies, treating endometriosis and gynecologic cancers, uterine fibroids and uterine prolapse. Urologists use the robot for prostate removals, and kidney and bladder disorders. General surgeons use the robot for bariatric surgeries and colon resections.

Not every surgeon wants to learn to use a robot. After years of training with their hands, many surgeons are quick and efficient in their specialty; there is a steep learning curve to use the robot, and the going can be slow at first.

 

 

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The Gold Standard

September 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment
In healthcare, gold and silver have a lot more value than simply as valuable minerals. As a health medicine, both gold and silver have been shown to have their own specific uses that can greatly aid patients and doctors alike. However, like all medicines or medical services, you must know what they do and, more importantly what they don’t do, in order to use the most effective way.

In the case of gold is first noting that pure gold itself is in fact, biologically inert and really does not do much inside of the human body. In fact, gold is so inert that if it entered the human body, it would be expelled unchanged. However, medical services and treatments use salts and isotopes of gold to achieve an effect. For example colloidal gold can be made to absorb and indicate areas of antigens on cells by being coated with materials which absorb certain proteins. In addition, gold alloys such as palladium can be used by healthcare by limiting the depth with which scanning electron microscopes penetrate, allowing medical specialists to look exactly where they want.

Silver, on the other hand, has a number of uses in medical services, as well as a few notes of concern about it. For medical service, silver’s primary role is that as a disinfectant. For example, the FDA has approved numerous wound dressings that are impregnated with some form of silver to help combat infection. While it may slow the healing process, the increasing prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria has caused healthcare to use silver dressings more often. Another common use of silver is known as colloidal silver, where silver particles are suspended in liquid is marketed in alternative medicine. While it claims to be a cure-all for numerous ailments, healthcare research has not found any scientific proof of its effectiveness, and numerous negative side effects. While they may not be the big bars of wealth they are known for, gold and silver in medical service today are just as valuable.

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Telesurgery and its Medical Service

September 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment
A thoracic surgeon performs a mitral valve rep...
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As technology improves, so does medical service, and one of the most notable and visible advances in medicine is telesurgery, where a surgeon is capable of performing surgery on a patient from hundreds of miles away. Through the use of advanced robotics, healthcare professionals can be accessible to many more patients without the need for travel. In addition, it means that specialists can be brought to any location through the use of telesurgery.

While the concept reeks of science fiction, telesurgery is a valuable medical service, and as the technology improves, so does its capability. The first idea of long-distance surgery came with a simple question asked by surgeons using robotic assistance. If a surgery occurs with robotic aid from across the room, why can’t it occur from across the country? This simple question led to the establishment of Operation Lindbergh, collaboration between healthcare and telecommunications specialists to see if it could be done. The result was the first remote surgery done over 4000 miles to remove a patient’s gall bladder. The biggest barrier in this medical service was establishing a fast enough connection, for any delay would have proven dangerous.

With this first success, healthcare has been embracing remote surgery more and more over the past few years. While it is still a medical service that needs to fully bloom, telesurgery has opened the door to a wider spreading of surgery and procedures. In addition to being a boon to the patient who cannot reach a surgeon, it also benefits healthcare workers, by allowing robotic precision to work in surgeries, which lets doctors check their work with more visibility and direction than simply going in directly. As healthcare advances, the combination of human skill and robotic precision will continue to grow and provide better medical services, not only to those right near those services, but to everyone across the world.

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Finding Safe Bariatric Surgery Centers

August 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment
A thoracic surgeon performs a mitral valve rep...
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Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the United States and the overweight population isn’t satisfied staying fat. Every day millions of Americans cut back proportions, diet, and sweat to the oldies in an effort to lose weight. Sometimes traditional methods like cutting calories partnered with exercise don’t work and an overweight person may consider bariatric surgery to reach weight loss goals.
When looking for a surgeon and facility to perform bariatric surgery, a person would be led to believe that “Centers for Excellence” would be the very best location, bypassing the less-excellent local hospitals. That’s not always the case, as one recent study discovered. A recent study of 25 hospitals in Michigan indicated that Centers for Excellence aren’t any better or safer than any other hospital. Recent safety issues concerning weight loss surgery have come under fire, but the overall chance for a serious, life-threatening complication is beneath three percent. Nancy Birkmeyer, of the University of Michigan, believes that overall, most of Michigan’s bariatric surgery centers are very safe.
The Centers for Excellence were originally intended to steer patients toward safer hospitals with better track records, but the recent study indicates these centers did not necessarily achieve the best outcomes in regards to bariatric, weight loss surgery.  While initial numbers may indicate that these centers had more complications than other hospitals, these differences were slight after considering surgery type and patient history.
Hospitals must perform over 125 bariatric surgeries annually to be up for the Center for Excellence label, but this number is nowhere near the average number of surgeries performed in most hospitals. In over 15,000 bariatric surgeries of all types, including gastric bypass and gastric banding, about seven percent of patients had issues afterward. Severe complications occurred in around 400 patients and 15 patients died from complications during this study.
If you’re considering bariatric surgery to help you achieve weight loss, consider all the risks before choosing a facility. Know that, often times, the years gained from weight loss are or far greater importance than the risks you may face.

Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the United States and the overweight population isn’t satisfied staying fat. Every day millions of Americans cut back proportions, diet, and sweat to the oldies in an effort to lose weight. Sometimes traditional methods like cutting calories partnered with exercise don’t work and an overweight person may consider bariatric surgery to reach weight loss goals.
When looking for a surgeon and facility to perform bariatric surgery, a person would be led to believe that “Centers for Excellence” would be the very best location, bypassing the less-excellent local hospitals. That’s not always the case, as one recent study discovered. A recent study of 25 hospitals in Michigan indicated that Centers for Excellence aren’t any better or safer than any other hospital. Recent safety issues concerning weight loss surgery have come under fire, but the overall chance for a serious, life-threatening complication is beneath three percent. Nancy Birkmeyer, of the University of Michigan, believes that overall, most of Michigan’s bariatric surgery centers are very safe.
The Centers for Excellence were originally intended to steer patients toward safer hospitals with better track records, but the recent study indicates these centers did not necessarily achieve the best outcomes in regards to bariatric, weight loss surgery.  While initial numbers may indicate that these centers had more complications than other hospitals, these differences were slight after considering surgery type and patient history.
Hospitals must perform over 125 bariatric surgeries annually to be up for the Center for Excellence label, but this number is nowhere near the average number of surgeries performed in most hospitals. In over 15,000 bariatric surgeries of all types, including gastric bypass and gastric banding, about seven percent of patients had issues afterward. Severe complications occurred in around 400 patients and 15 patients died from complications during this study.
If you’re considering bariatric surgery to help you achieve weight loss, consider all the risks before choosing a facility. Know that, often times, the years gained from weight loss are or far greater importance than the risks you may face.

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