Health News

Baby with swollen head to undergo more surgeries

????????????????????Baby Roona, who had undergone a series of surgeries at a hospital here in few months ago for an oversized head, will undergo follow-up surgeries, doctors at a city hospital said on Saturday.

The child of a daily wage labourer from Tripura, two-year-old Roona Begum is suffering from hydrocephalus, a rare disorder that has caused her head to swell to an unprecedented 94 cm.

She was admitted to Gurgaon’s Fortis Memorial Research Institute here in April this year at the age of 18 months, where she underwent multiple complex procedures to get her head circumference reduced to 58 cm.

“The five surgeries we performed earlier have not only helped the child survive a potentially fatal condition, but also enabled her to attain improved nutritional status and vitals. She has gained weight, is showing better neck control and is even making noises,” surgeon and director of neurosurgery in the hospital, Sandeep Vaishya, said.

Elaborating on the likely follow-up surgery next week, Vaishya said: “This will be the first step in the next round of treatment for the child. We are monitoring her condition and will proceed with the surgery once we get a go-ahead from her attending paediatrician.”

Fortis Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Fortis Healthcare Limited, continues to oversee the treatment of the child.

Source: Times of India

Steroid injections for premature babies could raise ADHD risk

Injections are vital to baby’s survival but could increase likelihood of behavioral and emotional problems

Steroid injections commonly given to pregnant women due to give birth prematurely may raise the risk of the child developing behavioral problems such as ADHD, researchers have found.

The injections, which mimic the hormone cortisol, are essential in helping the baby’s lungs develop and lower the risk of life-threatening breathing problems caused by early birth.

But the steroids, known as glucocorticoids, may also increase the likelihood of the child developing emotional and behavioral disorders, researchers said.

They said the study should not scare women into avoiding the crucial steroid injections, but claimed their findings support a theory that cortisol released naturally due to stress during pregnancy can raise the risk of ADHD.

The scientists, from Imperial College London and the University of Oulu, Finland, compared 37 children whose mothers were given glucocorticoids before going into labor, and compared them against 185 children who were born at the same gestational age but whose mothers did not have steroid treatment.

Their findings, published in the PLOS ONE journal, showed that those whose mothers had been treated performed worse on average in general mental health tests at ages eight and 16, and were more likely to have ADHD symptoms.

The researchers said the benefits of the steroids far outweigh the potential harms, and that only a small proportion of children with treated mothers had been affected.

But they said their study could shed light on previous research showing that stress during pregnancy can harm mental development in the child.

The findings support the idea that cortisol, a hormone produced naturally in response to stress, causes this link because it is extremely similar to glucocorticoids, they explained.

Prof Alina Rodriguez, senior author of the study, said: “There are a lot of studies that have found links between stress in pregnancy and effects on children’s mental health, especially ADHD, and this might be related to cortisol.

“Synthetic glucocorticoids mimic the biological reaction when the mother is stressed, so we wanted to see if babies who were exposed to this treatment are affected similarly in terms of mental health outcomes.”

Source: Telegraph

New procedure allows jewelry to be implanted in the eye

A new procedure is allowing one New York woman to have a piece of platinum jewelry implanted in her eye, according to My Fox New York.

“It’s going to be a conversation maker,” Lucy Luckayanko, who received her eye implantation at Park Avenue Laser Vision in New York City, told My Fox New York. “I will be able to tell people. It will be unique. It will be sort of my unique factor.”

Dr. Emil Chynn, the medical director of Park Avenue Laser Vision, claims that the procedure is relatively safe.

“It’s a very thin piece of platinum that’s designed for insertion on the top of the eye. It’s not in the eye, so there’s no risk of blindness or anything at all,” Chynn told My Fox New York. “She could have a little bit of local bleeding. That could go away in a couple days or couple weeks. She could have an infection, but we’ll prevent that with antibiotics.”

Eye jewelry is not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) is warning consumers about the dangers of the procedure.

In a statement to My Fox New York, the AAO said there isn’t “sufficient evidence to support the safety or therapeutic value of this procedure.” They urged consumers to “avoid placing in the eye any foreign body or material that is not approved by the FDA.”

Luckayanko said the reactions to her new eye jewelry have been mixed – with some of her friends saying she is crazy and others claiming it looks “super cool.”

Source: Fox News

Confusing Laws Lead to Unsafe Abortions in Uganda

Confusing abortion laws and reproductive health policies in Uganda have forced women to turn to unsafe abortions and increased the number of unplanned pregnancies in the country, according to a new report, The Stakes Are High: The Tragic Impact of Unsafe Abortion and Inadequate Access to Contraception in Uganda, from the Center for Reproductive Rights, the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic and the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown Law.

The report, released today, documents personal stories of women impacted by the widespread and false impression that abortion is illegal in all circumstances in Uganda. In fact the country’s laws permit abortion for women not only to save a woman’s life but also on mental and physical health grounds.

“The perceived illegality of abortion services in Uganda has led to stigma, fear and secrecy—driving far too many women to desperate measures to end a pregnancy,” said Evelyne Opondo, regional director for Africa at the Center for Reproductive Rights.

“Leaders in Uganda must not only clarify the abortion laws, but also broaden access to information among health care professionals and the public at large about reproductive health care, including access to family planning and safe abortion services.”

Each year an estimated 297,000 induced abortions occur in Uganda, with nearly 85,000 women receiving treatment for complications from unsafe abortion. About 65,000 women experience complications resulting from unsafe abortion but do not receive any treatment. Unsafe abortion is one of the most easily preventable causes of maternal mortality, yet more than a quarter of maternal deaths in the country occur because of unsafe abortion, according to an estimate by the Ministry of Health in Uganda.

Many of these deaths are in large part because of confusion and ignorance of reproductive health laws, as women are often discouraged from accessing legal reproductive health services.

“Studies have shown that women’s ability to exercise reproductive autonomy, including access to effective contraception and safe abortion services, leads to better health for women,” said Dr. Charles Kiggundu, Vice President, Association of Obstetrics and Gynecologists of Uganda.

“It is tragic that women in Uganda continue to lose their lives as a consequence of their ability to become pregnant.”

Personal interviews in the report highlight how women are discriminated against when seeking modern contraception or legal abortion services.

Source: Reproductive Rights

 

Rural Ethiopians Spread Good Health Habits Over Coffee

The front porch is the setting for coffee ceremonies where women of Dosha discuss new health practices for the neighborhood (VOA/Joana Mantey)

Thousands of women in Ethiopia have joined a Health Development Army to turn the time-honored cultural practice of drinking coffee together into an opportunity to spread the word about better health practices in their rural communities. The army is made up of small groups of volunteers who gather in traditional coffee ceremonies to encourage behavior change among women and their neighborhoods.

Women in villages throughout Oromia, the largest and most heavily populated of Ethiopia’s rural provinces, gather and talk over several rounds of coffee served in tiny ceramic cups. The beverage is brewed with locally-grown and unprocessed coffee beans roasted and ground by a local woman dressed in traditional Ethiopian attire. The finished product is brewed over a small lemon grass fire and served to invited guests. They take their coffee with sugar, but no milk.

Gossip gives way to talk about hygeine

This long-standing social tradition and source of daily gossip – in a country that claims to be the birthplace of coffee – has become the educational platform used by the local health volunteers of the Health Development Army. They are trained by the government’s vast network of health extension workers to bring behavior change at the community level and whip up support for government health programs.

Datu Badadha, leader of a women’s group that meets for coffee in the village of Dosha, said these educational gatherings allow married women to get together with young women or men in the community for discussions.

The leader of the Health Development Army volunteers in the village of Dosha is Datu Badadha. (VOA/Joana Mantey)Pathfinder International, an international non-profit, provides technical, financial and managerial support to the Ethiopian government’s health programs.

“The Women Development Army are women that have implemented the health extension program of government very well so that others in their communities can see what they are benefitting out of this health extension program so that they can adapt or adopt what this Women Development Army are doing,” said Tariku Nigatu, who works with Pathfinder International in Ethiopia.

Latrines, vaccines and maternity

“In some households, people would not be using latrines and this Women Development Army member would encourage households to dig latrines and use it,” Nigatu continued. “They encourage women to take their children to vaccination. When there are pregnant women they also refer them to seek maternity care from health extension workers and from health centers.”

Tariku added that members of the army are able to interact freely with people in the community because they have a defined physical structure – a mud house with a living room, bedroom and store with separate accommodations for the kitchen, latrine and livestock. A house that fulfills the new requirements is called a model household and its inhabitants can supervise the implementation of health programs in five other homes.

Mesfin Nigussie of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Integrated Family Health Program said, “To be a model household they need to have a latrine, they have to use family planning and their children under one year should be fully immunized. They should have a separate house for living, cooking as well as for cattle. They should also have clean surroundings and eat balanced diets.”

Homes that meet these requirements are awarded certificates. Mesfin said 64 percent of of those in the Oromia region now live in model households, a marked departure from the single huts which used to serve both as sleeping quarters and kitchens.

He said the work of the Health Development Army is also helping to sustain behavior change in communities. Mesfin said the role played by members of the army in social mobilization is as well helping health extension workers to concentrate on clinical duties at the health posts.

Source: Voice of America

 

The curious case of Pentavalent vaccine

With the number of cases related to the deaths of children, most recently in Jammu and Kashmir, because of apparent administration of Pentavalent vaccine continues to rise, the vaccine is once again mired in controversy as the issue comes up for hearing in the Supreme Court on November 26 questioning its safety and demand to impose a ban.

Earlier this year, a PIL (public-interest litigation) was filed by a doctor in the Supreme Court alleging that the vaccine, which provides protection against the five life threatening diseases — Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus, Hepatitis B and Hib (Haemophilus influenza type B), had serious adverse effects on children. Subsequently, the court issued a notice to the government, which in turn gave a clean chit to the vaccine.

The Pentavalent vaccine, which has claimed over 21 deaths in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, was introduced in Jammu & Kashmir in February 2013, as a part of the Universal Immunization Programme (UIP). In Srinagar eight infant deaths were reported during Sep-Oct this year following immunization with this vaccine.

Soon after the report of deaths, the union health ministry deputed a team of expert doctors, headed by Dr N K Arora, additional professor, department of paediatrics, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, to investigate into these deaths.

While the final report of this team is still awaited, their preliminary report has stated that the children died from causes like septicaemia and pneumonia, and are unrelated to the vaccine. The team denied any link of Pentavalent vaccine with the death of the children.

Disappointed by the findings of the government team, a team from Peoples Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) visited the affected families in Jammu and Kashmir from November 8 to 10.

D Manjit and Asish Gupta, secretaries of PUDR, said, “This conclusion by the central team in J&K fails to explain why or how the babies were administered the vaccine in the first place if they were seriously ill at the time of immunization.”

“This vaccine is being promoted vigorously by several international agencies, specifically the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), an international network of vaccine manufacturers and philanthropic organizations such as the Gates Foundation. Concerns regarding the safety and efficacy of this vaccine, as well as the very need for it, have been repeatedly pointed out by public health professionals to the health authorities, which have been brushed aside. Given these problems with this vaccine, one is left questioning the wisdom and this urgency in promoting this vaccine, especially through ill-equipped peripheral health facilities such as dispensaries and sub-centres, which cannot manage the adverse reactions in the immunized infants. A detailed report of the fact finding team will be released soon,” added Manjit and Gupta.

Dr Jacob Puliyel, head of paediatrics at St Stephen’s Hospital, New Delhi told India Medical Times, “The safety of Pentavalent vaccine is in question for a long time because of apparent adverse effects and deaths related to it. The Pentavalent vaccine has caused deaths in different countries. This is across brands as different countries using the vaccine from different manufacturers have had the same problem.

“There are at least 80 deaths now that have been investigated and which must have been due to vaccine as there is no alternate explanation for the deaths so soon after vaccination in children who seemed perfectly well before vaccination. India has had over 38 deaths. There are at least 10 deaths in Kashmir. There are some 15 deaths in Kerala. The deaths appear like allergic reactions and only a few children react to the vaccine. This type of death is seen with drugs like Penicillin. Thousands of people can receive the drug and be helped by the drug but one person who is allergic can die of the drug.

“From data now available 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 100,000 children vaccinated die as a reaction to the vaccine. The 1 in 10,000 is a better figure as there is under reporting. This means that if the birth cohort of 25 million is vaccinated we will have 300 to 3,000 deaths. The death rate is seen in all the states where the vaccine has been introduced. In Kashmir and Kerala the people are more aware and so they are reported better.

“The fact that the vaccine has not been banned is a problem that is impossible to answer. Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Viet Nam had banned the vaccine but later were forced to resume the use of the vaccine under severe international pressure. In Sri Lanka the WHO report altered the Brighton Classification, which was earlier used by the WHO to classify adverse reactions following the vaccination. If the classification were not altered they would have had to report that the deaths were probably due to the vaccine.

“After the Kashmir deaths the central team went there for two days and reported in the press that the children died of septicaemia and pneumonia. A fact finding team recently visited some of these families and performed a detailed verbal autopsy. They have reported that the children were in perfect health before vaccination and the reaction in terms of fever, continuous crying and convulsions started within half an hour (of the vaccination) in some cases. They died in the hospital and some died before reaching the hospital in Srinagar. The matter is coming up for hearing. Unlike in other countries, the international organizations will not be able to pressurize the Supreme Court of India. We expect the full truth to come out here.

“It is time we stopped playing with the lives of these children. There is no way to check which child is going to react adversely to the vaccine. Unless we have a means to determine this before vaccination the vaccine must not be used. This vaccine is not used in the USA, as the FDA has not licensed it there. They use the components separately. This is safe. We can use the components separately,” added Dr Puliyel.

Dr Vinod K Paul, head of the paediatrics department at AIIMS New Delhi, who is also a member of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI), told India Medical Times, “I stand by the NTAGI recommendation for a national scale-up and that the Pentavalent vaccine is safe and effective. It is an important tool to reduce under-five mortality in India.”

The Pentavalent vaccine, which was recommended by the NTAGI in 2008 to be added to the universal immunisation programme, was introduced in Kerala and Tamil Nadu in December 2011. After an evaluation of the vaccination in the two states in August 2012, the decision to expand it in other states was taken. The Pentavalent vaccine was then introduced in phases in Haryana, Puducherry, Goa, Gujarat and Karnataka, with Jammu and Kashmir being the latest to join the list.

Dr Ashok Kumar Gupta, a paediatrician from Jammu, told India Medical Times, “The vaccine is doing more than good for children of J&K and such major cases of deaths related to it have been noticed. The vaccine is safe and helpful in controlling mortality. There are only mild side effects such as fever, pain, swelling and redness at the site of injection. Millions of doses have been administered to children since the vaccine was launched in eight Indian states. A meagre percentage of reaction and deaths due to it cannot overshadow the positive aspect of the vaccine that saves children from preventable diseases.”

Though no causative link between the vaccine and child has been established by the government but in the face of stiff resistance to the vaccine its continued use and nationwide rollout has been questioned. A clearer picture is expected to emerge after the Supreme Court gives a conclusive judgment on the future administration of the vaccine.

Source: India Medical Times

Polio-Free Countries Still Face Threat, Scientists Say

An outbreak of polio in a previously polio-free region of China shows that the crippling, potentially deadly disease will remain a global threat as long as the poliovirus circulates anywhere in the world, scientists say.

Researchers who investigated the outbreak of polio in the Chinese province of Xingjian in 2011 found the infection was caused by a poliovirus that originated in Pakistan, according to the study published today (Nov. 20) in The New England Journal of Medicine.

“Global eradication of poliomyelitis will benefit all countries, even those that are currently free of poliomyelitis,” the researchers wrote in their study.

Polio, or poliomyelitis, is a highly contagious and incurable viral infection of the nervous system. While some people recover completely, the virus causes lifelong paralysis in one out of every 200 cases.

In the 1980s, the virus killed or paralyzed around 350,000 people worldwide each year. But now, due to vaccination campaigns, the disease is eradicated in most parts of the world. Polio remains endemic in only three countries: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. In 2012, about 220 cases were reported worldwide, and almost all were in these countries.

Despite the progress, imported poliovirus has caused outbreaks in some previously polio-free countries in recent years, and scientists have found that the virus is circulating in some regions that had previously been declared polio-free, the researchers said.

In October, an outbreak of polio that affected at least 22 people was reported in Syria, and was a setback for a country that had a vaccination rate of 95 percent and was polio-free for 14 years. The outbreak is possibly being fueled by disrupted vaccinations amid the ongoing civil war in the country.

Experts warned that the disease might reach Europe as well, especially in regions where vaccination coverage is not sufficiently high; for example, Austria (83 percent) and Ukraine (74 percent). The World Health Organization recommends a target vaccination rate of 90 percent.

The outbreak in China struck in 2011, and affected about 40 people, according to the new study. A public health emergency was declared in Xinjiang, and health practitioners closely watched for any new case of sudden paralysis or “acute flaccid paralysis,” the signature symptom of polio, the researchers said.

Five rounds of vaccination with oral poliovirus vaccine were conducted among children and adults in the region, and the outbreak was stopped six weeks after the first case had been confirmed by lab results.

 

“The response most likely prevented poliomyelitis from spreading to other parts of China,” but given the fact the poliovirus still circulates in parts of the world, immunization and surveillance efforts should be boosted, the researchers said.

Source: one news page

People with Autism More Likely to Hear Colors, See Sounds

People with autism may be more likely than others to have synesthesia, a condition in which people experience a mixing of their senses, such as hearing tastes and shapes, and seeing numbers in colors, a new study from Europe suggests.

Researchers tested 164 people with autism and 97 people without autism by giving them online questionnaires designed to evaluate whether they had synesthesia. They found synesthesia occurred in about 7 percent of people who didn’t have autism, a figure within the range of previously reported rates.

In contrast, 19 percent of people with autism appeared to have synesthesia, according to the study published yesterday (Nov. 19) in the journal Molecular Autism.

The findings may provide new insights into common factors that underlie brain development in these separate conditions, said study researcher Simon Baron-Cohen, a professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge in the U.K.

“I have studied both autism and synesthesia for over 25 years, and I had assumed that one had nothing to do with the other,” Baron-Cohen said.

But now, looking back at previous studies, evidence does suggest there are underlying similarities between the two conditions, the researchers said. Brain-imaging studies have found evidence of particular patterns of brain connectivity in both synesthesia and autism.

According to one hypothesis, people with synesthesia have more neural connections between brain regions compared with people who don’t have the condition.  Similarly, studies have found that while people with autism have fewer neural connections between distant parts of the brain, they have more local or short-range connectivity in some brain areas.

It is possible that the normal process of pruning of neural connections early in life is affected in both conditions, and people with autism or synesthesia retain some of the connections that other people have lost during their brain development, Baron-Cohen said.

This idea would give researchers “an exciting new lead” to search for genes that are shared between the two conditions, and which might play a role in how the brain forms or loses neural connections, said Simon Fisher, another researcher in the study, and director of the language and genetics department at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, in the Netherlands.

Most synesthetic experiences are visual, but synesthesia can involve any pair of senses, the researchers said. Such experiences can range from seeing the letter A as purple, to conjuring mental images of a triangle shape when suffering a toothache.

Among the 31 people with autism in the study who had synesthesia, the most common forms of the condition were “grapheme-color,” in which letters are seen as colored, and “sound-color,” in which hearing a sound triggers a visual experience of color. Another forms of synesthesia reported were either tastes, touch, or smells triggering a visual experience of color.

“People with autism report high levels of sensory hyper-sensitivity. This new study goes one step further in identifying synesthesia as a sensory issue that has been overlooked in this population,” said study author Donielle Johnson, a researcher at the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University.

“These results suggest that some people with autism have synesthetic experiences that might influence their day-to-day behavior, preferences and aversions — just as synesthesia can affect the behavior of people without autism,” Johnson told LiveScience.

The questionnaire used in the study evaluated whether participants had synesthesia by asking questions about their mixing sensory experiences, when such experiences began, and whether participants had any medical condition or had ever used drugs.

To confirm the preliminary results of the questionnaire, the researchers asked the participants to find the colors they associated with letters and numbers, but only a few people completed that test that involved more than 240 choices, the researchers said. Future studies are needed to administer the test in the lab, rather than online, to confirm the self-reported synesthesia, they said.

Source: Live science

How one woman recovered from a 20 year struggle with Munchausen syndrome

When Lindsay* was 11 years old, she started having the same dream every night.  After she fell asleep, she would envision herself suffering from fainting spells, as various people stood around her and worried about her health.

Then, when she woke up, she would be embarrassed about how good the fantasies made her feel.

“I just thought over it a lot,” Lindsay told FoxNews.com.  “…I’d get these dreams so often, and they were very pleasant.”

Her recurring dream eventually manifested into reality when Lindsay was 13 years old, after a strong allergic reaction caused her to repeatedly pass out.  In order to determine the source of her fainting spells, Lindsay was admitted to the hospital, where she stayed for two weeks.

And the longer she stayed in the hospital, the more she didn’t want to leave.

“I loved it in the hospital,” she said. “I just loved it.”

Once she was released, Lindsay wanted so badly to find her way back to this new place she had enjoyed so much.  So in spite of her good health, she started pretending to be sick with stomach pains, hoping this would allow her to return to that pleasant hospital setting.

Lindsay credits this experience with sparking the beginning of her long struggle with factitious disorder – more commonly referred to as Munchausen syndrome.   Craving that good feeling she had experienced while staying in the hospital, Lindsay eventually began researching and faking illnesses that she knew would keep her hospitalized for as long as possible.

Over the course of her lifetime, Lindsay would go on to feign more than 12 physical and mental illnesses – including extreme disorders like schizophrenia, multiple sclerosis and even epilepsy.

A student of illness

Although Lindsay’s first bout with Munchausen began when she was 13, she didn’t start faking full-blown illnesses until she was a young adult.

Then, at 24 years old, Lindsay gave birth to her first child and was admitted to a psychiatric ward after doctors suspected she was developing severe postpartum depression.

While in the hospital, those good feelings from her childhood returned.  The admission to the hospital gave her relief from the obligations of being a new parent – and she didn’t want that relief to end.

“I wanted to stay; I enjoyed it,” Lindsay said. “So I started faking the symptoms of other peoples’ illnesses… I didn’t really know what I was faking.  I was just mimicking other patients, like their illusions and hallucinations.”

Lindsay became a student of all the patients around her, closely studying their movements and their behaviors.  She would often spend one-on-one time with individuals in order to gain an accurate understanding of how their psychiatric illnesses manifested.  Once, she spent an entire afternoon with a highly disturbed person with schizophrenia who talked using a word salad – a confusing mixture of random words and phrases. Lindsay would eventually mimic the behavior she learned from him to get diagnosed with schizophrenia herself.

Over the next three years, Lindsay was in and out of the psychiatric hospital nine different times, mostly for depression but also for the other mental illnesses she had adopted.  Having had a taste of what it felt like to feign psychiatric disorders, she decided it was time to ramp up her performances – and start faking physical symptoms.

At first, Lindsay presented to different hospital emergency rooms with abdominal pains. However, she would become too scared to follow through with her charade and leave before she was admitted.

Then over time, she did more research on the disorders she wanted to mimic and became much more sophisticated at faking the different signs and symptoms.  She eventually became so adept at acting out these diseases, she would go on to be diagnosed with epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, Guillain-Barre syndrome, stroke, insulinoma, appendicitis and status epilepticus.

Throughout this time, Lindsay knew what she was doing was wrong – but she felt like she couldn’t stop.

“A million different things were going through my head,” Lindsay said.  “I felt terribly, terribly guilty, yet I would get the relief that I wanted – the attention, the feeling of control over my life that I didn’t have that I wanted.”

Over the next seven years, Lindsay would be admitted to 100 different hospitals.

Getting help

Though Lindsay found comfort in her Munchausen syndrome, the disorder wreaked havoc on both the personal and professional spheres of her life.  She was never able to hold down a steady job, as she would miss too many days of work while staying in the hospital.  And her repeated absences from her family inevitably took their toll: After eight years of marriage, her husband filed for divorce and gained full custody of their three children.

Additionally, Lindsay’s body was starting to wear out.  Her veins had become grievously scarred due to numerous IV injections, and she developed radiation sickness from all of the X-rays she had undergone.  Faking her various physical illnesses was becoming an extremely painful process.

Feeling utterly exhausted and alone, Lindsay decided it was time to get help for her problem.  Eventually, she read a book by Dr. Marc Feldman – one of the nation’s leading experts in Munchausen syndrome. In his book Patient or Pretender, Feldman claimed that “curing” a patient with factitious disorder was incredibly difficult – and nearly impossible.

“The classic thinking about patients with Munchausen is they have always been described as hopeless cases, and the best thing the doctor can do is run in the other direction,” Feldman, who is based in Birmingham, Ala., told FoxNews.com.  “Most don’t really entertain the idea of providing treatment.  Recovery is considered so rare, it’s publishable in the medical literature and considered a medical anomaly worthy of attention.”

However, this way of thinking frustrated Lindsay, who was determined to get her life back on track.  So she reached out to Feldman, and he invited her to come visit him in Alabama.

“She came to Birmingham and stayed for two and a half weeks, and we met every day,” Feldman said.  “It was kind of a crash course; we’d meet over coffee or lunch and talk for an hour and a half each day, and I learned a lot from her – and we’ve remained friends ever since.”

After hearing more about Lindsay and her story, Feldman asked her if she felt comfortable speaking about her illness to other medical professionals.  So the two met in Washington D.C., where Lindsay presented her tale to members of the American Psychiatric Association during their annual conference.

It marked one of the first times a Munchausen patient had spoken out about his or her disorder.

“I wanted to stand up there and say, ‘I do want help, and I have the capability to understand, so work with me,’” Lindsay said of her motivations.  “’Don’t be afraid and don’t run away.’”

The road to recovery

Though Lindsay was never Feldman’s patient, he helped put her in touch with a number of psychiatrists and other individuals who could potentially help her.  According to Feldman, Munchausen patients often have additional psychiatric disorders, such as depression or bipolar disorder, which go unnoticed – and by treating these underlying illnesses, individuals can then start to recover.

“Sometimes they get better with treatment,” Feldman said. “The fuel for the Munchausen tends to dissipate, and they find healthier ways to move on. Life changes occur, either through a spiritual element or social element, and they start to find that feigning illness gets in the way of the things the like to do.”

Eventually, Lindsay learned that she had an undiagnosed form of bipolar disorder, and she underwent three years of intensive psychotherapy to help alleviate her manic-depressive symptoms. And in turn, the treatment helped erase her Munchausen urges.

To help with her healing, Feldman also put Lindsay in touch with other Munchausen patients who were working towards recovery as well.  Lindsay noted that this was extremely beneficial to her own recovery process, just as Alcoholics Anonymous can be very helpful for those suffering from alcoholism.

“It’s a daily struggle,” Lindsay said. “…I look at it in terms of how a drug addict would talk about their cure.  It’s always there, and you have to work at it all the time.  It’s more like addiction.”

After a more than 20 year battle with Munchausen syndrome, Lindsay says she is now in recovery, having not feigned any illnesses for the past two years.  Thanks to her therapy, she was able to go back to school, procure a steady job, and reconnect with her children during their teenage years.  More than anything, she hopes that her story will serve as an example to patients and therapist alike that Munchausen syndrome can be cured – and that there is hope for those who feel alienated.

“Don’t let shame get in the way of talking it out with somebody,” Lindsay said.  “I was so ashamed of how ugly the thoughts were in the first place that I wouldn’t bring it up with anyone for years and years…I would tell people, not to feel ashamed of their own thoughts. Just talk about it with somebody.

Source: USA News

New treatment discovered for deadly flesh-eating disease

In January 2012, Lori Madsen, then 51, was walking through a parking lot, when she fell and skinned her arm. Initially, she didn’t think much about the rugburn-like abrasion on her arm – but later that night, Madsen’s arm began to swell.

Two days later, the pain was so bad she couldn’t get out of bed.

“My husband had to take me to the ER and my blood pressure wasn’t reading and everything was shutting down,” Madsen told FoxNews.com. “I was in septic shock.”

Madsen was admitted to the intensive-care unit, where the infection in her arm raged on – causing fevers, blistering and swelling. A week later, Madsen was taken into surgery for the first time.

“They opened my arm up for the first time and excised some of the dead tissue in there,” Madsen said. “I got better for a couple days. My fever went down, but then I took another turn for the worse.”

At this point, Madsen feared she would lose her arm – or even worse – her life. Finally, she was introduced to Dr. John Crew, a vascular surgeon and wound specialist at Seton Medical Center in Daily City, Calif., where she was receiving treatment. Crew told Madsen he might know what was causing her health problems: A deadly disease known as necrotizing fasciitis.

The flesh-eating disease

Necrotizing fasciitis, commonly known as the flesh-eating disease, results from a bacterial infection and rapidly destroys the body’s soft tissue. The condition garnered national attention in 2012, when 24-year-old Aimee Copeland underwent a quadruple amputation after contracting necrotizing fasciitis in the aftermath of a zip lining accident.

Typically, necrotizing fasciitis is treated with antibiotics and surgical excision of the infected areas of the body. Though rare, the disease can carry a fatality rate of up to 70 percent – and those that survive are often left with devastating handicaps due to loss of limbs.

“They excise (the dead tissue), and (sometimes) you excise the hands and the legs and that’s a lousy way to end up,” Crew said.

Desperate to save Madsen’s limbs and life, Crew, director of the hospital’s Advanced Wound Care Center, devised a plan in which he would excise the dead tissue from Madsen’s arm and then regularly irrigate the area with an FDA-approved wound cleanser called NeutroPhase. Crew is a paid consultant for NovaBay Pharmaceuticals, the company that manufactures NeutroPhase, and he had been using the product to sterilize wounds for many years. NeutroPhase contains hypochlorous acid, a common chemical disinfectant.

“Hypochlorous acid is produced by the body’s white blood cells when it fights infection,” Dr. Harvey Himel, medical director of the wound program at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, told FoxNews.com. “(It) is one of the common chemicals found to purify water in swimming pools and is used as a disinfectant in food preparation.”  Himel was familiar with the study, but not involved in Madsen’s treatment.

Luckily, Madsen’s initial surgical treatment –coupled with the NeutroPhase irrigation – appeared successful.

However, six days later, Crew noticed another infected spot in a different area on Madsen’s arm. This time, Crew decided to simply insert a catheter and irrigate the area with NeutroPhase – without performing surgery to excise any more of the tissue in her arm.

Remarkably, this area of Madsen’s arm healed just as quickly as the area that underwent the standard surgical excision. Additionally, using NeutroPhase bypassed the severe scarring that now covered much of the rest of her limb.

Madsen noticed a difference in her condition almost immediately after being treated by Crew.

“Before they started NeutroPhase, the pain was unbearable. You can’t describe the way the pain is, and the fever I had was just unbelievable,” Madsen said. “But then, after they started the NeutroPhase and started killing all of the toxins in my arm, the fever subsided and went away. The pain wasn’t as bad…It wasn’t the kind of pain that you feel when it’s infected, and your arm is dying.”

‘People don’t have to lose their limbs or their lives’

Madsen eventually made a full recovery, and while she sustained some nerve damage in her arm, she has regained full function in the limb and now lives a normal life.

After Madsen’s recovery, Crew set out to discover what it was about NeutroPhase that had halted the infection.

“We had to go back to the lab after Lori was healed,” Crew said. “They isolated five or six of the toxins involved in this kind of necrotizing fasciitis, and individually, they treated cells in the lab… and it killed them.”

Crew and his fellow researchers discovered that NeutroPhase seemed to effectively neutralize the toxins produced by the infection, halting the body’s inflammatory-reaction and allowing the patient to begin to heal normally.

Crew recently published his findings in the peer-reviewed journal,Wounds, and he hopes to convince other doctors to begin using NeutroPhase to treat necrotizing fasciitis. Since Madsen’s case, Crew said he has successfully treated several other patients with necrotizing fasciitis using NeutroPhase – even avoiding surgery, in some cases.

“I had one 95-year-old, (and) when I just put in a catheter and irrigated it with NeutroPhase, she healed from that standpoint,” Crew said. “We didn’t need a big massive operation to drain or excise necrotic tissue. We’re looking to tell people this is the way to treat this problem. We won’t make big massive incisions, but small incisions to get the irrigation going as quick as we can.”

Himel warned that while this case appeared to be successful, more research is still needed.

“Since this is a single case report, it is hard to say if this treatment was instrumental in the patient’s recovery,” Himel said. “In order to scientifically prove the value of this additional treatment, they would need to conduct more extensive research.”

For Madsen, her hope is that this treatment will eventually help prevent others in her situation from going through the same agony she did.

“I don’t want to see anyone go through what I went through. I want the word out there that this stuff works on this necrotizing fasciitis,” Madsen said. “People don’t have to lose their limbs or their lives.”

Source: inagist