Breast carcinoma is among the most frequent malignant diseases in the world and is the leading cause of death among younger women in developed countries. Currently, 1 in 7 woman in these countries will have the disease in their lifetime (Boyle and Ferlay). Since 1940, the incidence of breast carcinoma has gradually increased at a rate of approximately 1 per cent per year in Western countries (Harris et al.).
LBP is one of the most common pain complaint and usually one of the hardest syndromes to treat. Interventional pain management offers an opportunity to assist in the diagnosis and management of back pain.
Technical progress, statistical evidence of significant increases in therapeutic success, as well as the participation of an increasing number of ambulatory physicians has made telemedicine successful.
Advanced diabetes care requires the creation of new guidelines, timely predictive diagnostics, effective prevention and creation of individualised treatment algorithms.
CNAPS offers a non-invasive approach to a wide range of clinical disorders that will allow the basic information necessary not only for use in predictive medicine but also for direct use in acute medicine.
As it has been realized that western diagnosis criteria for obese and metabolic syndrome do not hold true for Asian patients, anaesthesia care providers should be completely aware of the pathphysiology, risks and difficulties encountered by obese patients during the bariatric surgeries.
Early recognition of stroke signs and symptoms by the public and professionals, rapid transfer of the stroke patient to hospital, early stroke specialist assessment and treatment including thrombolysis and transfer to a specialist acute stroke unit are all evidence-based interventions leading to improved outcome with lower disability and mortality from stroke.
Heart failure is a major health problem worldwide. Current therapies manage the symptoms of heart failure. New experimental findings suggest possible future therapies that arrest the development of heart failure.
Most nations, except the US, have natural medicine traditions known and widely practised by the populace. With the increasing availability of Western technocentred medicine, there’s a seduction in favour of ‘modern’ medicine over traditional treatments. Health outcomes in the US indicate the risks on this path and the importance of staying patient-centred.
Contrast agents have been shown to be useful to improve the image quality in echocardiography. The development of new ultrasound contrast agents and imaging techniques has enabled the bedside assessment of myocardial function and perfusion.
Implantable devices, including pacemakers, defibrillators and cardiac resynchronisation systems, may play a role in helping monitor the progress of heart failure in an individual patient.
Prompt recognition of suspected stroke symptoms and immediate activation of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) are crucial to effective pre-hospital stroke care, early access to stroke specialist services and successful management.
The management of Colorectal Cancer liver metastases has evolved over the past decade as a result of using more sophisticated imaging technology, effective systemic therapies including multi-drug treatment regimes with advanced surgical techniques. This has greatly improved response rates, resectability rates and in turn survival.
With the number of individuals in need of assistance for chronic pain increasing each year, only a small fraction of patients with chronic pain are treated directly by the Pain Clinic.
The patient’s perspective is always, always central to the practice of Slow Medicine.
Those who die a sudden death, probably are never aware of the potential risk they carry. Recently, new tools for diagnosing those prone to SCD have been introduced. This marks a key milestone in the detection of sudden cardiac death signs among healthy individuals.
Given the unique skills of anaesthesiologists in pain management and regional anaesthesia, the role of anaesthesiologists is increasing in the care of cancer patients.
Collaboration and communication among all the team members of the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), where patient activity is high, goes a long way in promoting effective care of critically ill patients.
Diabetes Mellitus occurs in more than 165 million individuals worldwide and leads to both acute and long-term cardiovascular complications that can be tied to cellular oxidative stress. Three exciting novel therapeutic strategies offer significant promise to extend vascular longevity.
The FiberNet device is the first embolic protection device, which combines features of a filter, and an occlusion device in one system to overcome the complications of carotid angioplasty like distal embolisation of debris.
The future of safety in anaesthesia lies partly in technological advances in countries that can afford them. The priority, however, is to address the unacceptable deficiencies in anaesthesia services globally.
The vastly increased complexity of cardiac rhythm therapy over the past several years, demands commensurate improvements in overall device monitoring and telecommunication technology.
New treatment modalities such as immunotherapeutic strategies may help improve the currently poor prognosis and outcome of patients suffering from lung cancer. However, thus far, lung cancer has not been considered an immune-sensitive malignancy. Now, there is an increasing evidence that specific humeral and cellular anti-tumour immune responses can be evoked.
The notion of truth is same in ethics and science. However, the data in science and ethics are different. In science we rely on observation, in ethics we rely on considered moral intuitions. There is little agreement about when we should trust our ethical intuitions. It is remarkable, however, that neuroscience and psychology has recently shed new light on how our moral intuitions arise.
Profiling can be inherently valuable, but we must keep it in the perspective of the entire picture of a person's health, lifestyle, environmental factors, and the like.
The industry should be addressing these issues right now. Ethics is the biggest obstacle to the future success of genetic testing.
Technology and the worldwide coordination of efforts to push discovery in genetics has exacerbated the growth of opportunity in this sector.
DNA sequencing of human genes could provide the 21st century with the ultimate in evidence-based medicine allowing us to tackle not only cardiovascular disease, but many other life threatening diseases.
The standard “one size fits all” approach of treating many individuals may soon become obsolete. More targeted approaches promise to improve outcomes while reducing toxicity and medical costs.
Driven by market forces, a need for new growth avenues and an ever more conscious consumer, medical device, pharma and diagnostics companies are coming together to deliver innovative solutions.
Stem cell therapies offer great potential for treating diseases. However, a lot of questions remain to be answered before this potential can be realised.
New drugs are being developed in anaesthesia, so as to reduce the number of side-effects and to improve patient outcome.
Nanotechnology has many advantages when applied to medicine. However, continued research into disease processes at the molecular level is essential for its development.
Using biomarkers representing protien with diffrent biological functions will allow complimentarity in cancer detection, resulting in increased sensitivity without compromising specificity.
The focus of new techniques has been on making cardiac surgery safe, minimally invasive and cost-effective.
The challenge for the 21st century anaesthesia leaders will be to bridge the widening gap in practice and education within the speciality whilst at the same time increasing its safety.
India has approximately 33 million diabetic subjects today and the number is expected to rise to 57.9 million by 2025. More than 95 per cent of them belong to the type - 2 diabetes category.
To make a uniform level of pain relief available around the world may not be possible.
A number of changes have occured concurrently in the field of surgery and anaesthesia.
Heart disease is the second most common cause of death in Singapore today, comprising about 20 per cent of all deaths in the country in the year 2004.
Death from cardiovascular disease (CVD) in end-stage renal failure (ESRF) is 20 to 40 times higher than in the general population.
Over time, the characteristics of the acute renal failure (ARF) patient population in the ICU have changed considerably...
Human genetics studies reveal that all genes comprising the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) have several forms of polymorphism...
Mind-reading might sound like sci-fi stuff.Not any more, if indications from studies by two groups from Vanderbilt University, Nashville...
In Haemodialysis(HD) the Blood is Conducted, VIA Blood Lines outside the body and through the dialyser, where the purification takes place.
In the Asian context, intensive care medicine is a relatively new speciality. Although there has been a major thrust to improve the delivery of healthcare, the main focus has been on improving primary healthcare.
Anaesthesia has been defined as the state in which, as a result of drug-induced unconsciousness, the patient neither perceives nor recalls noxious stimuli.
Radiology is experiencing higher productivity from new-generation equipment that provides many more images in a shorter time than older equipment.
Multi-slice, wide-bore CT scanning has arrived for oncology applications, allowing greater visibility at a higher resolution than was possible before.
As antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria continue to emerge, the need to develop new antibiotics has become urgent.
Medtronic's Cardiac Rhythm Management is focused on managing the entire spectrum of cardiac rhythm disorders to improve long-term patient care.
Adverse effects of increased angiotensin II levels and catecholamines have traditionally been considered as two different therapeutic targets.