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| HEALTH TRIBUNE |
Fasten your seat-belt, chest injury can be fatal
Infertility is curable, but how?
Can popping pills protect you from radiation?
Weight loss-exercise combination curbs onset of arthritis
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Fasten your seat-belt, chest injury can be fatal Generally, in road and other accidents, we focus on head or spine injuries thereby ignoring the chest. An injury on the chest can prove fatal. It often leads to the damage of the lungs. It gives rise to haemothorax, pneumothorax, flail chest, ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome), broncho-pleural fistula and other fatal complications. Therefore, when someone, receives an injury on the chest, one should immediately take him to a well-equipped hospital and consult an expert thoracic surgeon. On an average, 95,000 people die and 8,00,000 get injured in road accidents in our subcontinent every year. Half of these die due to major injuries on the chest. It is estimated that in road accidents, 30 per cent of the patients receive injuries on the chest. Though the road accident is the major factor in chest injury cases, other factors like falling from height and injuries from bullet hit, knife or a bomb blast also play a role. In the majority of road accidents, the major killer among car drivers is the severe chest injury received due to the avoidance of fastening of seat-belts. If a car driver fastens his seat-belt while driving, it is sure that he is unlikely to receive a severe chest injury even if he meets a major road accident, because the sudden impact of the steering wheel over the front of the driver’s chest will be less forceful. In other words, not fastening of the seat-belt while driving is a passport to sure death if an accident takes place. It is not always that when a person receives a chest injury, he immediately feels pain or succumbs to death. But it has been observed that after 8-10 days of an accident, complications do erupt thereby leading to the death of the person. It is advisable not to ignore any chest injury, and the person must immediately be rushed to a thoracic surgeon instead of a general surgeon. In a chest injury, there is a 50 per cent chance of the fracture of the ribs or damage to the muscles around it. In 40 per cent of the cases, the patient fractures his ribs and damages the lungs. It enables blood and air to enter the chest cavity and fill it. This is known as hameothorax. If early treatment is not provided, the patient mostly dies. In a few cases, the lung gets badly damaged and this leads to complications. It should be treated at the right time by an expert or else the patient may die. If a person has received a hard blow to his chest either during a scuffle or while playing a game and he feels pain in the chest, he must consult a thoracic surgeon without delay. If anyone, while driving a scooter or a motorcycle, falls on the ground and suffers from chest pain or breathlessness, he must seek the advice of a thoracic surgeon on a priority basis. If you had a fall from a height, never miss to consult a thoracic surgeon. In a road accident, you are more likely to receive a chest injury besides injuries of the other organs. A flail chest develops when there is a major injury on the chest. The lungs get badly damaged. Flail chest hampers respiratory mechanisms. The combined effect is that the level of oxygen in the blood gradually goes down. If immediate treatment of the flail chest is not undertaken, it leads to the death of the patient. So, at this point the patient should be immediately rushed not to a general surgeon but to an expert thoracic surgeon and a centre that is well equipped for cardio-thoracic surgery. An injury on the cheast can also lead to ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome), which is fatal. There is only a 5 per cent chance of survival for the patients of this type. ARDS can develop after two weeks or two months from the date of injury. Here the respiration as well as the oxygenation process fails. As a result, the level of oxygen in the blood drops tremendously and thereby the amount of carbon dioxide in blood gets increased. The impure blood, instead of being purified in the lungs, returns back to the body circulation without purification. Thus the other organs of the body stop functioning. The X-ray of the chest depicts white colour and not black. This means the patient is now on the verge of death. The writer is Senior Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgeon, Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, New Delhi.
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Infertility is curable, but how? The main causes of infertility in females are irregular periods and menses at prolonged intervals which may lead to decreased egg formation and ovulation. The patient may have hormonal imbalance also. Such patients suffer from obesity, menstrual problems, hypothyroidism and sometimes increased serum prolactin levels. Antibodies against serum may be present in women which causes sperm death and ultimately leads to infertility. The next important cause in females is blocked fallopian tubes. The main function of fallopian tubes is to carry the ruptured egg from the ovary towards the uterus and normal fertilisation (union of sperms and eggs) occurs in fallopian tubes. So, if the tubes are blocked, fertilisation can’t occur which ultimately leads to infertility. Tubes can be blocked by different types of infections — after abortion, after deliveries, particularly when it is done in unhygienic conditions by untrained DAIS without antibiotic coverage, infections after any operation like appendectomy and tuberculosis of the genital tract. Tuberculosis of fallopian tubes is very common in India, and in 40 per cent cases both tubes are blocked. This problem is very difficult to treat with medicine alone, and sometimes even after treatment the tube may not open at all. These patients ultimately require IVF (test-tube baby) treatment. In males, the factors responsible for infertility are mainly the absence of sperms, decreased sperm count, decreased sperm motility which can be due to a hormonal imbalance, high alcohol intake, cigarette smoking, job in a hot climate, previous operation of hydrocele and hernia, mumps infection in childhood and high temperature due to any reason. So, it becomes important for the infertility specialist to look for the actual cause of the problem in both partners and then treat them accordingly. So, various diagnostic tests like transvaginal scanning, X-ray of the fallopian tube, blood hormone test, the husband’s semen examination etc, should be done.
Micromanipulation A male with a less sperm count can also become the biological father of his child by the micromanipulation technique (ICSI). In this technique, a healthy sperm is used to fertilise an egg and then it is transferred into the uterus.
Egg donation Women above 40 years of age or a female with no egg formation can conceive with the egg donation technique. Eggs may be taken from a young healthy woman, and the rest of the procedure is like IVF. In this way, even elderly women can become pregnant. The writer is a Jalandhar-based infertility specialist.
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Can popping pills protect you from radiation? It certainly helps. By stopping your body from absorbing radioactive iodine (also known as radioiodine) churned out as a byproduct in nuclear power plants and atomic bombs, potassium iodate pills have been invaluable for people who have been exposed. Now the government has instructed health authorities to increase stockpiles of the
chemical so there is enough to treat half the population. Radioiodine is particularly dangerous because it is so easily absorbed. "The almost unique property of the thyroid gland is that it's the only organ in the body that is so hell-bent on absorbing one particular element," says Stanley Bachelor, a radiation protection adviser at King's College London. Even very small amounts of inhaled or ingested radioiodine can cause damage because it can concentrate in the thyroid gland, which uses iodine to make hormones. Once in the body, radioiodine can lead to loss of thyroid function and, eventually, cancer. Taking potassium iodate pills floods the body with non-radioactive iodine and allows the thyroid to fill up with the element. If exposed to radioiodine, the body will simply absorb less. The effectiveness of the chemical depends on how much you take. According to Bachelor, 100mg (a typical dose) can reduce uptake of radioiodine by more than 50%. Potassium iodate will not protect anyone from other radioactive ingredients that may be found in a dirty bomb such as cobalt, caesium or uranium. These are not concentrated so readily by the body's organs. |
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Weight loss-exercise combination curbs onset of
arthritis
Washington: Moderate weight loss along with regular exercise can help in the treatment of osteoarthritis, claim researchers at Wake Forest University. "Considering that side-effects often limit the use of drug therapy and surgical intervention is often ineffective for mild or moderate knee osteoarthritis, our results give strong support to the combination of exercise and weight loss as a cornerst for the treatment of overweight osteoarthritis patients," Stephen Messier, Professor of Health and Exercise Science and principal investigator of the study, said. The study titled ADAPT (Arthritis, Diet and Activity Promotion Trial Researchers) was a joint venture by Wake Forest's Health and Exercise Science Department and the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. The researchers found that participants had a 24 per cent improvement in physical function after taking part in an 18-month programme of exercise and calorie-restricted diet. Participants also reported significant improvements in knee pain — a decrease of more than 30 per cent. —
ANI
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In the last few decades there has been a sharp advancement in the treatment of infertility. Now infertility in the case of a male or female partner can be treated successfully with the latest scientific techniques. The main obstacle is that the couple may not come forward due to illiteracy, poverty or ignorance about the modern procedures.