News Medical's "MediKnowledge" series is a selection of articles written by experts who have been invited as recognized leaders in their fields to offer opinions within the confines of their area of medical expertise.
The number of adult patients with congenital heart disease is growing worldwide. Advances in medical treatment, percutaneous interventions, and surgery offer the vast majority of these patients a good life expectancy. However, life long follow-up is needed, especially for patients with residual lesions or sequels of previous interventions.
Our increased understanding of myeloma biology has resulted in significantly improved patient outcomes although, until recently, the major gains have been achieved in patient’s aged < 70 years.
The human intestine contains at least 10^14 bacteria, with hundreds to thousands of different species, which exist in harmony with their host. The role of this intestinal flora, or microbiota, in maintaining the health of an individual is increasingly being appreciated.
Migraine is a common and disabling neurological condition. Migraine is currently estimated to affect more than 860 million people worldwide. Migraine has recently been rated by the Global Burden of Disease Study from the World Health Organization as the third most common and eighth most burdensome disease on the planet, and it alone is responsible for 3 % of disability attributable to a specific disease worldwide.
Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease or CJD, (Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt, 1885 - 1964, German psychiatrist and Alfons Maria Jakob, 1884 - 1931, German psychiatrist) (also called subacute spongiform encephalopathy), is a rare, well characterized clinicopathological entity defined by a rapidly progressing dementia associated with pathognomonic vacuolation in the cortex giving a microscopic appearance of spongiform change. Both humans and animals may be affected.
Amblyopia is a visual developmental disorder in which the vision through one eye fails to develop properly in early childhood. The deficit is not in the eye itself but in the visual areas of the brain.
World Sickle Cell Day is June 19 and was created by the United Nations in 2006 to raise global awareness for sickle cell disease as a public health problem. Sickle cell disease is an extremely debilitating medical condition.
This article is about the problem of detecting tumors in dense breasts, and how many states are tackling the problem by requiring doctors to tell women that mammograms don’t work well for those who have dense breasts. I will also discuss effective solutions to this problem.
OCD is a condition consisting of obsessions or compulsions, or, more commonly, both. This is nothing to do with addictions to gambling, alcohol, exercise or eating, for example, which are quite different. OCD symptoms are never pleasurable and are usually aimed at preventing harm.
For over forty years, lumbar spine (back) surgery was destructive to structures of the spine while at the same time attempting to rectify disorders of the spine.
Sleep is vital for overall health. Poor sleep can cause daytime sleepiness, fatigue, and mood deterioration and has implications for poor health outcomes. Getting six or fewer hours each night may also provoke increased appetite leading to risk of weight gain and, in the longer term, the risk of developing diabetes and cardiovascular conditions.
Patients with hepatitis C have two concerns. The first concern relates to how likely it is that he or she will develop end-stage liver disease, namely either symptoms of cirrhosis that will incapacitate them, lead to the need for a liver transplantation, or even death, or primary liver cancer (hepatocellular carcinoma).