medical For All

Aspiration pneumonia occurs most frequent in patients that are in a coma or in those who are so seriously ill that they barely breathe. It affects more frequent the elders but it can also occur at other age categories.

Aspiration pneumonia refers to the problem of mouth contents entering the airways instead of going into the stomach. This can lead to an infection of the lungs, fever and breathing problems, even a bacterial pneumonia.

Generally, a person who has a malfunctioning swallowing mechanism, who does not posses a good cough reflex, could develop aspiration pneumonia. Even those patients who are fed with a tube that goes directly into their stomach could develop this problem, due to a regurgitation of the stomach contents into the throat and then into the lungs.

It is highly indicated for such persons to eat in an upright position, and stay in this position for 30 minutes after eating is done. Even the patient's own saliva may get into the lungs, especially if he has an increased production of saliva. To prevent this, cleaning the mouth with a dry bandage and frequent suctioning of the mouth is highly recommended.

Patients who still have tracheotomy should clean the tracheotomy tube of the coughed material, this way preventing mucus and bacteria from being aspirated back into the lungs and causing a bacterial pneumonia which is a serious illness.

There are some methods of keeping the lungs expanded, and so, helping to loosen up the material that needs to be taken out: clapping or cupping the chest, breathing exercises, changing the body's position more frequent, and using a vibrator over the chest.

Aspiration pneumonia can even lead to one's death by chocking with the sucked materials; this is why prevention is so important.

When a lung infection occurs treating it at the right moment and with the right drugs could lead to its cure and save the patient from developing other complications like producing a partial collapse (atelectasis) of the lung.

Signs of installed complications like bacterial pneumonia are: cough with yellow or greenish sputum, high grade fever, chest pains, breathing problems, muscle aches and fatigue. Treatment consists in administering antibiotic drugs, controlling the fever, and most of all, preventing lung aspiration of mouth materials from occurring again.

The treatment of aspiration pneumonia consists in administering oxygen, aspiration of the foreign materials from the airways, and total spell. The therapy will include anti-shock medication and antibiotics.

Surgeons now use life-saving bypass technique in brain tumour surgery.

Everyone’s heard of heart bypasses. But now, interestingly, brain bypass’ operations have also been carried out on patients with life threatening conditions.

The technique – currently, only available abroad-is is expected to help many who suffer from brain tumours or aneurysms.

Just like in a heart bypass operation, the blood supply to the brain is rerouted around the problem area through a piece of grafted vein.

Using the particular method, the bypass can be done without interrupting the blood flow-reducing the risk of stroke.

Christos Tolias, who heads a surgical team at king’s Collage Hospital, London, is one of the few neurosurgeons who have performed such a procedure.

The method involves taking a piece of vein from the patient’s leg and using it to make a new pathway around the tumour or aneurysm, so the blood flow is maintained.

After removing a piece of bone from the skull, the surgeon attaches two pieces of vein either side of the arterial weakness and they are stitched using a metal ring.

A hollow tube is slid into the veins and a laser is used to cut a hole in the artery where the vein is attached. Blood starts flowing into each of the grafts, which are temporarily clipped at the other end.

The two halves of the vein grafts are then stitched together and the clips removed so the blood flows through.

The aneurysm or tumour can then be clipped off and taken out of the brain’s blood circulation. It’s like a piece of hosepipe that takes the blood around the problem-just like a graft is used in a heart bypass,” Tolias said.

It is commonly assumed that people who are slim must be much healthier than those who are obviously overweight. But scientists have discovered that many outwardly slim people are storing up dangerous layers of fat inside their bodies. Their health is often far more at risk than those who are obviously fat or obese. Scientists have named these people Tofi –thin on the outside, fat on the inside.

Thanks to advancements in hi-tech magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) doctors can look inside the human body in far more detail. And they have found that many slim people carry large amounts of fat, rather than the fat around vital organs. It is this fat, rather than the fat under the skin, which can lead to serious health problems.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh studied for ten years 200 people who were at a high risk of developing schizophrenia because two or more family members had already been diagnosed with the illness. The researchers analyzed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of 65 of the 200 people, taken on average 18 months apart. They looked specifically for changes in the grey matter –brain tissue made principally of neurons that transmit messages and help store memories.
Eight of the 65 went on to develop schizophrenia an average 2.3 years after the first scan. The scans of each of the eight revealed that they had changes in the grey matter that had happened before they became well.
There is no preventative treatment for schizophrenia because the current methods are good only predicting who won’t develop schizophrenia but not who would. An accurate predictive test could help researches to assess possibilities for prevention in the future, scientists said.
Key changes take place in the grey matter and tracking these changes over time by scans combined with traditional assessments could help doctors to predict the illness.
“It needs to be independently replicated before it would make a difference to the thousands of people living with severe mental illness in the UK,” said Jo Loughran, a member of the schizophrenia charity Rethink.
Symptoms usually develop in men in their late teens or early 20s and 30s. In rare cases the symptoms, which include hallucinations, delusions, disorders, social withdrawal and several other cognitive deficits, could also appear in childhood.

A tiny heater that warms the lungs and airways is being used to treat asthma. The device which is inserted through the nose or mouth, gives ten seconds blast of mild heat to the muscles to stop them contracting. Researchers show that the beneficial effects of three sessions of the device can last for more than two years.

In an asthma attack, the smooth muscle around the walls of the airways -small tubes that carry air in and out of the lungs - tighten and narrow. The lining of these airways gets inflamed and starts to swell, a sticky mucus is produced, and the narrowing and irritation lead to the symptoms of asthma: coughing, wheezing and shortness of breath.There is no cure and the drug treatments relievers or bronchodilators, which relax the smooth muscles of the airways, and controllers, corticosteroids, which reduce inflammation -tackle the symptoms rather than the cause.
The technique, bronchial thermoplasty, is for patients with moderate and severe asthma.It is designed to have a similar effect to the relievers, but by using heat rather than drugs. It keeps the airways from narrowing by preventing the smooth muscle from contracting. The device consists of a flexible tube with an expandable wire basket, like a mini food whisk, at the working end, and a controller that delivers thermal energy and heat to the wall of the airways.
A flexible tube carrying the device goes through the mouth or nose. No incision is required and the patient is under conscious sedation with no anaesthesia.In the outpatient procedure, which takes about an hour, the tiny device goes down the tube and into the airway. Once in position, the four arms of the basket deliver controlled thermal energy for about ten seconds to heat the airway's smooth muscle to a warm temperature that causes no pain.
Exactly how the device works is not clear, but heat is known to relax muscles and it is thought the heat reduces the amount of smooth muscle around the airway, which in asthma tends to increase and be hypersensitive.