Doctors can learn a surprising amount about your health by simply listening to your body. The pulse and breathing rate in particular can indicate if a patient is stressed, or exercises often, or if he has a heart condition doctors should be watching. Now researchers from MIT have developed a new ingestible sensor that would allow doctors to continuously monitor a patient's vitals by listening to the body's sounds in the gastrointestinal tract, according to a study published today in PLOS One.
Apple is aiming to profoundly change the way doctors and patients interact. Last week, the company demonstrated one of its newest medical apps, called AirStrip, which allows doctors to read a patient's heart rate and other acute health statistics. The app can now be used on the Apple Watch, allowing doctors to view a patient's health information on the go, from their watch, anytime.
Eight years ago, doctors took nasal tissue samples and grafted them onto the spines of 20 quadriplegics. The idea was that stem cells within the nasal tissue might turn into neurons that could help repair the damaged spinal cord, and the experiment actually worked a few of the patients, who regained a little bit of sensation. But it didn’t go well for one woman in particular, who not only didn’t experience any abatement in her paralysis, but recently started feeling pain at the site of the implant. When doctors took a closer look, they realized she was growing the beginnings of a nose on her spine, New Scientist reports.
Doctors in Alabama give out almost three times as many opioid painkiller prescriptions as doctors in Hawaii. Doctors in the Northeast write more prescriptions for high-dose and long-acting opioids than anywhere else in the U.S. These numbers and more come from a survey that scientists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently analyzed. The survey couldn't answer why doctors in some states prescribe opioids so much more often than others, but it does show some peculiar regional trends.
When you check in to a hospital in the future, along with checking your vitals and ordering a blood panel, your doctors may assign you a personal mouse. The immune-deficient creature will receive a transplant of your tissue, which will allow it to mimic your immune system, or maybe your specific type of cancer. Then doctors can try out a cocktail of drugs or gene therapies to see what might work on you.
Heart attacks strike about 1.2 million people every year in America alone, many of them fatally. Of those, most are caused by coronary artery disease - the biggest killer of both men and women in the US - and something like 70 per cent of those strike without warning. Coronary artery disease is sneaky like that. Symptoms generally don't outwardly manifest themselves until someone is on the floor, short of breath, wondering what just kicked them in the chest. Doctors battling these cardiac blockages generally enter the fight at a severe disadvantage. The disease almost always benefits from the element of surprise.
Pain must be the bane of many a doctor's existence. It's a major symptom and indicator of many illnesses, but doctors have to rely on humans to describe and rate it, and humans are a distinctly unreliable source of information. What's a "7" on the pain scale for someone might be a "4" for another. What's a "pulsing" pain for someone might be a "pounding" for someone else. At Stanford, some doctors are figuring out the first steps to objectively measure pain, finally putting that all to rest.
