health tips

First full face transplant recipient in U.S.

A December 2010 photo shows Dallas Wiens prior to receiving a full face transplant. Wiens was injured in an electrical accident in Texas in 2008. Before his face transplant, he had surgeries to graft smooth skin over much of his face.

Dallas Wiens, first full face transplant recipient in U.S., grows comfortable in his new skin

‘My entire life is a miracle,’ said Wiens, 28, speaking at a conference of the Radiological Society of North America. Doctors are learning more from Wiens and other facial transplant patients about how the body evolves and adapts following the experimental surgeries.

The nation’s first full face transplant patient Dallas Wiens looks on during a news conference about new research into full facial transplants. Wiens was the first person in the U.S. to receive the surgery, in 2011.
The nation’s first full face transplant patients are growing into their new appearances—literally.

The nation's first full face transplant patient Dallas Wiens looks on during a news conference at McCormick Place in Chicago, Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2013. Despite still visible facial scars from the March 2011 surgery, Wiens looks and sounds like a recovered man. Medical imaging shows new blood vessel networks have formed, connecting transplanted skin with the patients' facial tissue, a finding that may help improve future face transplant surgeries, doctors announced Wednesday. (AP Photo/Paul Beaty)

Medical imaging shows new blood vessel networks have formed, connecting transplanted skin with the patients’ facial tissue, a finding that may help improve future face transplant surgeries, doctors announced Wednesday.

Dallas Wiens, the first U.S. man to get a full face transplant, is a remarkable example of that success. The 28-year-old Fort Worth man attended Wednesday’s annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America with his new wife and golden retriever guide dog. Despite still visible facial scars from the March 2011 surgery, he looks and sounds like a recovered man.
A 2008 family photo shows Dallas Wiens with his daughter Scarlette prior to an electrical accident that disfigured his face.

“My entire life is a miracle,” Wiens said at a news conference.
His face was burned off in a 2008 painting accident at his church. He was on a cherry-picker lift when his head hit a high voltage wire.
After surgery, Wiens lived for two years with no facial features and just a two-inch slit for a mouth, until his transplant at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

A December 2010 photo shows Dallas Wiens prior to receiving a full face transplant. Wiens was injured in an electrical accident in Texas in 2008. Before his face transplant, he had surgeries to graft smooth skin over much of his face.

Dallas Wiens (r.) poses for a photo with his wife Jamie Nash and his guide dog Charlie. Despite still-visible facial scars from the March 2011 surgery, Wiens looks and sounds like a recovered man.Imaging studies on Wiens and two other full face transplants done at Brigham in 2011 show that a network of new blood vessels had formed just a year after the operations. A fourth full face transplant was performed at Brigham earlier this year.
The same thing typically happens with other transplants and it helps ensure their success by boosting blood flow to the donor tissue. But Brigham doctors say this is the first time it has happened with full face transplants.
The finding could eventually shorten the operating time for future face transplants, Brigham radiologist Dr. Frank Rybicki said. The operations can take up to 30 hours and include attaching spaghetti-thin arteries in the patients’ existing tissue to the donor face, but the findings suggest attaching only two facial or neck arteries instead of several is sufficient, he said.

Dr. Samir Mardini, a Mayo Clinic expert in reconstructive transplant surgery, said blood vessel reorganization occurs with other types of tissue transplants — doctors call it “neovascularization” and it helps ensure the tissue’s survival by improving blood flow.

“It’s interesting that they’ve shown it” with face transplants, but it’s not a surprise, Mardini said.
Face transplants, using cadaver donors, are still experimental. Fewer than 30 have been done since the first in 2005, said Dr. Branko Bojovich, a surgeon involved in a 2012 face transplant at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

He called the Boston team’s findings “very reassuring” for surgeons and for future patients.
“We’re assuming that these patients will hopefully go on to live productive and long lives,” Bojovich said.
Wiens’ life before the accident was troubled, and he says he misses nothing about it except possibly his eyesight.

Source: Daily news

It is possible to think yourself well

What if you had the ability to heal your body just by changing how you think and feel? I know it sounds radical, coming from a doctor. When people are doing everything “right”—eating veggies, avoiding red meat and processed foods, exercising, sleeping well and so forth—we should expect them to live long, prosperous lives and die of old age while peacefully slumbering, right? So why is it that so many health nuts are sicker than other people who pig out, guzzle beer and park in front of the TV?

I consider myself one of those health nuts. I drink my green juice, take my vitamins, hike and practice yoga daily, get quality sleep, see a doctor and avoid harmful toxins. And yet I have come to believe that the purely physical realm of illness—the part you can diagnose with laboratory tests—is only part of the equation. It’s a big part, mind you, but not the whole shebang. My experience with patients (as well as my personal background) has led me to the conclusion that whether they become sick or stay healthy, as well as whether they remain ill or manage to heal themselves, might have more to do with everything else that’s going on in their lives than with any specific health standard they abide by.

When healthy habits aren’t enough
Five years ago, I started working in an integrative medicine practice. My new patients were some of the most health-conscious people I’ve ever had the privilege to serve. Many of them ate a vegan diet, worked out, slept soundly each night and took vitamins every morning. But some of them were also mysteriously sick, complaining of fatigue, aches, gastrointestinal disturbances and other symptoms. I was baffled! I ran batteries of tests, and occasionally I would pick up something that eventually resulted in the complete resolution of a patient’s symptoms. But more often than not, I would find nothing.

I was really motivated to solve the puzzle of why these “healthy” patients were so sick. Instead of focusing exclusively on physician-recommended behaviors, medical history and other traditional factors, I dug deep into their personal lives. I asked them questions: “What do you love about yourself? What’s missing from your life? What do you appreciate about your life? Are you in a romantic relationship? If so, are you happy? If not, do you wish you were? Are you fulfilled at work? Do you feel like you’re in touch with your life’s purpose? Do you feel sexually satisfied? Do you express yourself creatively? Do you feel financially stable, or are you stressed about money? If your fairy godmother could change one thing about your life, what would you wish for?”

My patients’ answers often gave me more insight into why they might be sick than any lab test or exam could. They were unhealthy not because of bad genes or poor habits or rotten luck, but because they were lonely or miserable in their relationships, stressed about work, freaked out about their finances or profoundly depressed.

On the flip side, I had other patients who ate junk, forgot to take their supplements, rarely exercised and enjoyed seemingly perfect health. Their responses revealed that their lives were filled with love, fun, meaningful work, creative expression, spiritual connection and other traits that differentiated them from the sick health enthusiasts.

Source: health

New Artificial hearts won’t beat

The human heart beats 60 to 100 times a minute, more than 86,000 times a day, 35 million times a year. A single beat pushes about 6 tablespoons of blood through the body.

An organ that works that hard is bound to fail, says Dr. Billy Cohn, a heart surgeon at the Texas Heart Institute. And he’s right. Heart failure is the leading cause of death in men and women, killing more than 600,000 Americans every year.

For a lucky few, a heart transplant will add an average of 10 years to their lives. For others, technology that assists a failing heart — called “bridge-to-transplant” devices — will keep them alive as they wait for a donor heart.

Unfortunately, more often than not, the new heart doesn’t arrive in time.

That’s why Cohn and his mentor — veteran heart surgeon Dr. O.H “Bud” Frazier — are working to develop a long-term, artificial replacement for the failing human heart. Unlike existing short-term devices that emulate the beating organ, the new machine would propel blood through the body at a steady pace so that its recipients will have no heartbeat at all.

The concept of a pulseless heart is difficult to fathom. Cohn often compares it to the development of the airplane propeller. When people started to develop flying machines, he says, they first tried to emulate the way birds fly — by flapping the wings aggressively.

“It wasn’t until they decided, ‘We can’t do this the way Mother Nature did,’ and came up with the rapidly spinning propeller that the Wright Brothers were able to fly,” Cohn says.
The idea of an artificial heart goes back decades.

Frazier began medical school in what he describes as “the Kennedy Era.”

“We were going to the moon; we were going to achieve world peace,” and Frazier wanted to develop the first artificial heart. In 1968, he left for Vietnam as a flight surgeon. Thirteen months later, his helicopter was shot down, and he nearly died.

“That experience convinced me I should stick to something more meaningful for the rest of my life.”
That he did. The veteran surgeon, inventor and researcher has devoted the last half century to developing technologies to fix or replace the human heart, the most notable of which is the newest generation of continuous flow Left Ventricular Assist Devices, known as LVADs.

Modeled after an Archimedes Screw, a machine that raises water to fill irrigation ditches, the continuous flow LVAD is a pump that helps failing hearts push additional blood through the body with a rapidly spinning impeller.

Today, the continuous flow LVAD has been implanted in 20,000 people worldwide, including former Vice President Dick Cheney before he received a heart transplant nearly two years later.

In some cases, the LVAD’s turbine has essentially taken over the pumping process entirely from the biological heart. In these instances, the implant recipient barely has any pulse at all.

Observing what happened in these patients led Frazier to one compelling question: If the LVAD can take
over for a weakened heart, could it replace the organ entirely?

In 2004, Frazier asked Cohn to collaborate on a new research project. Cohn’s interest in heart surgery dates back to when he was a young boy reading articles about world-renowned heart surgeons Dr. Michael E. Debakey and Dr. Denton Cooley, who developed and played a role in the transplant of the first artificial heart in a human in 1969.

Now the holder of some 70-odd U.S. patents, Cohn says his work with Frazier to build an artificial heart is the most ambitious project of his career.

The surgeons set out to combine two LVADs to replicate the functions of the heart’s right and left ventricles. Using two commercially available LVAD turbines, Frazier and Cohn combined the devices with plastics and other material used for implants: hernia mesh, Dacron cardiovascular patches and medical silicone. Everything met FDA standards, but Cohn describes the final product as “rather kludged together.”

The surgeons tested their invention by installing it in around 70 calves. All of the cows produced a flat line on an EKG, which measures heart electrical activity, yet they stood, ate and walked around, paying seemingly no notice to a small technicality: They had no heartbeat.

In order for the FDA to approve the device for clinical trials, the calves needed to live for at least one month. Cohn and Frazier’s device trumped these standards, with many calves living healthily for full 90-day studies.

Cohn and Frazier were encouraged, and in March 2011, put their artificial heart into a human patient.
Craig Lewis, 55, was admitted to the Texas Heart Institute with amyloidosis, a rare autoimmune disease that fills internal organs with a viscous protein that causes rapid heart, kidney and liver failure. Without some intervention, Lewis would have been dead in days. Frazier and Cohn decided it was the right moment to test their device and the surgeons undertook the lengthy procedure.

Less than 48 hours later, Lewis was sitting up, talking and using his laptop. When doctors put the stethoscope to Lewis’s heart, all they heard was a steady whir of what sounded like a boat propeller. Lewis survived for six weeks until his failing kidneys and liver got the best of him and his family asked doctors to unplug the device.

Source: CNN

Triplet Births Due to Fertility Treatments Are Declining

More than one-third of U.S. twins, and more than three-quarters of triplets and other multiple births, are now born as a result of fertility treatments, according to estimates from a new study.

In 2011, 36 percent of twin births and 77 percent of triplet and higher-order births (quadruplets, etc.) were aided by fertility treatments, which include both in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other treatments, such as the use of drugs to stimulate the ovaries and induce ovulation, the study found.

Between 1998 and 2011, the national rate of triplet and higher-order births decreased by nearly 30 percent — a trend that researchers called good news.

Part of that decline may be related to a 1998 change in guidelines that discouraged doctors from implanting three or more embryos during a single IVF cycle. After that, the proportion of triplet and higher-order births attributable to IVF declined by 33 percent (from 48 percent in 1998 to 32 percent in 2011).

However, there’s still a lot of work to be done to reduce the U.S. rate of multiple births, said study researcher Dr. Eli Y. Adashi, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Brown University. The percentage of twin births resulting from IVF and non-IVF fertility treatments is still on the rise.

Why a decline in multiple births is good

Twin and other multiple births increase the risk of complications for the mother and infant, including the risk of premature delivery. An unintended consequence of fertility treatment technology was an increase in the nation’s multiple-birth rate, Adashi said.

The new study also suggests that non-IVF fertility treatments deserve greater attention, as they now contribute to a greater proportion of multiple births than IVF does. The percentage of triplet and higher-order births resulting from non-IVF treatments increased from 36 percent in 1998 to 45 percent in 2011, the study found.

“When people hear ‘multiple,’ they intuitively point at IVF,” Adashi said. The study found “IVF is an actor,” he said, but “not the leading culprit when it comes to the genesis of multiples.”

But unlike multiple births from IVF, which result from the number of embryos that are intentionally implanted, multiple births from non-IVF fertility treatments are difficult to prevent, Adashi said. That’s because non-IVF treatments, including oral and injectable drugs, stimulate ovulation in ways that cannot be precisely controlled, Adashi said.

How to reduce multiple births

But there are a few steps doctors can take that may reduce the rate of multiple births from non-IVF fertility treatments, such as lowering the doses of the ovulation-stimulating drugs, Adashi said.

“Increased awareness of multiple births resulting from non-IVF fertility treatments may lead to improved medical practice patterns and a decrease in the rate of multiple births,” the researchers wrote in the Dec. 5 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

To come up with their estimates, the researchers analyzed information on birth rates between 1962 and 1966 — before the advent of fertility treatments — to get a measure of the natural rate of multiple births. They also used publicly available data on IVF births between 1997 and 2011.

Because no database tracks multiple births due to non-IVF treatment, the researchers estimated this number by factoring in the natural rate of multiple births and IVF births. The researchers also took into account maternal age, which increases the chance of giving birth to multiples, but were not able to account for other factors, like obesity, which some studies suggest increases the chances of giving birth to twins.

source: live science

5 Common Cold and Flu Facts, Fictions, and Surprising Half-Truths

No matter how many cold and flu seasons you’ve weathered in your years, chances are you’re still buying into some far-too-common illness myths. So before you waste another perfectly good sick day lying around in bed (instead of out playing hooky), we ran some of the most popular pieces of cold and flu wisdom past New York City physician Jennifer Collins, M.D., a diplomat of the American Board of Allergy and Immunology and Internal Medicine. Here’s how they held up.

You Shouldn’t Exercise With a Cold: Myth
Skip the gym and you’ll actually stay sick longer. “Light to moderate exercise when you’re sick can actually boost your immune system’s function,” Collins says. She recommends reducing your workout intensity by 75 to 80 percent to prevent overstressing your body. Also, make sure you wipe down your gym equipment—and your hands—both before and after use. One study in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine found the cold virus (a.k.a. rhinovirus) on 63 percent of fitness centers’ machines.

Chicken Soup Fends Off Colds: Fact
No wonder you still want your mom when you’re sick. Her chicken soup really does make you feel better. Research published in Chest found that chicken soup reduces the movement of certain white blood cells in the body to reduce cold symptoms. What’s more, typical chicken-soup ingredients like carrots, parsnips, celery, garlic, and onions are packed with vitamins A and D, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, and potassium to help your immune system work at its best, Collins says.

Cold Weather Can Make You Catch a Cold: Myth
Record lows don’t cause colds—viruses do. Rhinovirus just happens to be more prevalent in the U.S. during the winter, largely due to migration patterns from other countries. In fact, the biggest contributor to cold-weather colds is found in the warm indoors where people (and their germs) are confined together, she says. You could make like a bear and hibernate—or you can just be extra-generous with the Windex this season.

Dairy Can Worsen Your Symptoms: Half-Truth
A stuffy nose can turn you into a veritable mouth-breather. The result: a dry, itchy throat. While fluids are key to quelling the irritation, and milk is thick enough to coat your throat, that’ll only make it feel even more constrained, Collins says. That doesn’t mean you have to avoid it, though. Contrary to popular opinion, dairy is not a phlegm factory. Just take your milk, cheese, or yogurt with water or juice, she says.

Flu Shots Can Give You the Flu: Myth
You finally gave in and got a flu shot, and the next day you’re in bed with a fever. Coincidence? Actually, yes. “The influenza virus infects you 48 hours before you have any symptoms, so if you get the vaccine during this time period, it will appear that the vaccine caused the flu, but you would’ve gotten sick anyway,” Collins says. Looks like you’re getting a flu shot this year

Source: Details

Risk of falls increases between cataract surgeries

Older adults with cataracts appear to double their risk of falling after surgery on their first eye and before surgery on the second, suggests a new study.

The finding that corrective eye surgery may – at least temporarily – be linked to an increase in falls comes after years of conflicting study results on the subject, researchers write in the journal Age and Ageing.

But the topic remains important as the global population ages and demand for cataract surgery increases. In Australia, where the study was conducted, cataract surgeries tripled over the past two decades.

“This study tells us that timing of cataract surgeries is very important,” Dr. Ediriweera Desapriya of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, told Reuters Health.

Desapriya has researched falls in older adults at the Center for Clinical Epidemiological and Evaluation Research, but wasn’t involved in the new study.

“In the past, you didn’t really want to get both eye surgeries done at the same time,” Desapriya said. That was in case of problems like infection or swelling. “But now the technology has improved and complications occur less often,” he said.

For their study, Lynn Meuleners of Curtin University and her team in Perth looked back through detailed electronic health records from Western Australia’s hospitals and its death registry.

Between 2001 and 2008, nearly 28,400 older adults in the region had cataract surgery on both eyes. The researchers found 1,094 of them also took a fall serious enough to warrant a hospital visit during that period.

People waited an average of 10 months between eye surgeries. Compared to the two-year period before any cataract surgery, their chance of falling doubled between procedures.

In the two years after surgery on their second eye, people’s fall risk was 34 percent higher than before their first surgery. The risk of falling also rose with age.

Most people who fell were older than 80, women, city dwellers and were not married.

“It’s a well-conducted study,” said Stephen Lord, a senior principal research fellow with Neuroscience Research Australia in Sydney. Lord was not involved with the current study, but researches balance and falls among older adults.

“In the intervening time between surgeries, you have a person with two eyes that are no longer equal and this can lead to various effects,” Lord said – like on visual sharpness and depth of field.

“For these things, we need two eyes working together,” he told Reuters Health.

However, at least one previous randomized controlled trial – medicine’s gold standard for research – found people had fewer falls after cataract surgery, Lord said.

Based on this study, doctors could warn patients to be extra cautious after having surgery on their first eye, Desapriya said.

“It is also important to encourage patients to have a second eye cataract surgery early,” Desapriya said. “Otherwise, eyes continue to function monocularly (with just one eye) and patients lose their depth perception.”

The new research cannot point to cataract surgery as the primary cause of the falls – it only suggests they are linked.

The researchers said a limitation of their study is a lack of knowledge about people’s lifestyles, including their living situations, and co-existing eye conditions, both of which could strongly influence fall risk.

They also did not look at falls among people who had not undergone cataract surgery. Such comparisons are helpful when considering changes in risk.

“The aging population is growing rapidly in the U.S. and Canada,” Desapriya said. “And this surgery is becoming a very common clinical procedure.”

According to the National Eye Institute, more than half of all Americans have a cataract or have had cataract surgery by the time they’re 80.

Lord compared cataract surgery to a major change in prescription eyeglasses: in both cases, the brain needs time to adjust to the changes in vision.

But patients and doctors should not shy away from cataract operations, Lord said.

“The last thing we want to have happen is to prevent people from receiving cataract surgery,” Lord said. “This surgery has many benefits, such as improving quality of life, increasing a person’s participation in the community and even preventing falls in the longer term.”

“It just seems that, in the short term, there may be a problem while people adjust to their new vision,” he said.

Source: Khaleej times

Spike in U.S. measles cases shows disease still a threat: officials

The number of reported cases of measles in the United States this year is nearly three times the annual average, federal health officials said on Thursday, highlighting the continued threat of the disease 50 years after development of a vaccine.

There have been 175 measles cases so far in 2013, compared with the typical national average of about 60 cases a year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The federal health agency said home-grown measles were eliminated in the United States in 2000, but the disease has continued to be carried into the country from people who have traveled abroad.

The CDC said 172 of the 175 U.S. cases this year involved patients who were infected overseas or caught the disease from someone who had traveled internationally. The source of the other three infections remains unknown, the agency said.

“A measles outbreak anywhere is a risk everywhere,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said. “The steady arrival of measles in the United States is a constant reminder that deadly diseases are testing our health security every day.”

Earlier this year, the CDC linked 58 cases of measles in Brooklyn, New York, to an unvaccinated 17-year-old who had traveled to London. Twenty-three cases in North Carolina this year were tied to an unvaccinated resident who contracted the disease while on a three-month visit to India.

The CDC said 158,000 people die worldwide each year from measles.

The last measles death in the United States was in 2003, according to the agency. Before the country launched a widespread vaccination program in 1963, it had 450 to 500 measles deaths each year.

Measles is highly contagious and transmitted when an infected person breathes, coughs or sneezes. The disease can be spread even before an infected person has developed a rash from the virus.

The CDC recommends that children get two doses of vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella, starting at 12 to 15 months of age.

Increased vaccination worldwide and improving the ability of public health agencies to rapidly respond to outbreaks are keys to reducing measles and other diseases, the CDC said.

Source: Yahoo news

Monthly injection to prevent Alzheimer’s in five years

Scientists are hopeful of a breakthrough in dementia within five years – with drugs that could be given to prevent disease

Scientists are hopeful of a breakthrough in dementia within five years – with drugs that could be given preventively to delay the onset of disease.

Researchers say a new drug has shown some promise in patients with mild dementia, and might be yet more effective if given to those at risk of disease long before they show any symptoms.

Dr Eric Karran, director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said scientists were “full of hope” that a breakthrough in drug therapy to prevent dementia could come within five years.

If further trials on the drug succeed, it could mean that those with a family history of dementia are given monthly injections of the drug a decade before any signs of disease show – in the same way that millions of people now take statins to ward off heart disease, he said.
Speaking ahead of a G8 summit next week on dementia, Dr Karran said trials have suggested that a drug called solanezumab may delay the onset of disease, halting problems with brain function and behaviour in those with mild dementia.

The studies originally tested the drug on patients with mild to moderate dementia, where the treatement did not achieve effective results.
But when analysis examined the impact of the drug only on those with mild dementia, researchers found it had an effect both on their daily behaviour and the functioning of their brain and memory.
Now researchers in the US are recruiting to a new study which will examine the impact only on patients with mild dementia.

If the trials prove that the drugs work, it would be “logical” to prescribe them to patients preventively, Dr Karran said, given that changes in the brain associated with dementia occur as far as a decade before symptoms are shown.
Dr Karran said the promise from the drug, and from two other treatments now undergoing trials, left him optimistic that a breakthrough is on the horizon, despite years of disappointment in the field of dementia research.

He said: “I am full of hope that we are going to have a breakthrough in five years.”
If trials on sufferers with mild dementia succeed, “there is a logic” to use the drug therapies at least a decade earlier, to prevent the onset of dementia, he said, in the same way that statins have been widely prescribed for those at risk of heart attacks and strokes.

“That’s exactly the path that blood pressure-lowering agents have taken – people taking them before they have a stroke,” he said. “It’s the path that’s been taken with statins which first showed efficacy against the disease and then you go earlier. That has to be the pathway we take. There is very very good human genetic data which shows that if you can effect this amyloid early on – and only modestly – you have the potential to dealy the onset of that disease very significantly indeed.”

Currently, the only drugs used for dementia can mask symptoms, but do not delay the onset of disease.
Brain scans have found that changes in the brains of patients with diseases such as Alzheimer’s can occur a decade before you have symptoms.

Providing people with anti-body drugs five or 10 years before the condition would otherwise develop could have a “drastic impact” on prevalence of disease, he said.
Dr Doug Brown, director of research and development for the Alzheimer’s Society, said: “If we can delay the onset by five years we could probably cut the numbers with dementia in yhalf – and recent research evidence suggests this could be a possibility.”

Prof Nick Fox, from the Institute of Neurology, at University College London, said that preventing disease before symptoms were present offered the best “window of opportuntity” to halt the impact of disease.

He said: “Let’s just hope that we can slow the devastation at the stage when there is much to save … rather then when we are bed bound or mute – because that is the end result of these dreadful diseases.”
Next week science and health ministers from G8 countries will meet in London for the first ever G8 dementia summit.

Charities called on them to draw up a shared global plan to tackle dementia, and invest heavily in research, which currently receives a fraction of the funds devoted to cancer in this country.
David Cameron has said he will use the UK’s presidency of the G8 to lead coordinated international action.

Source: Telegraph

“Lifestyle changes makes city dwellers aloof”

With the city dwellers spending a greater time outside the home, either at work, or in traffic or in social networking sites, there is lesser interaction happening with one’s own relatives, said Dr Mahesh R Gowda, consultant physiatrist, Spandana health care.

He was speaking on the sidelines of the national seminar held on Thursday at Jyotinivas autonomous college on “Relationship management- An essential investment fro better living.”

Dr Vijay Nagaswamy, psychiatrist from Chennai who took part in the seminar observed the growth of phenomenal growth of the nation in the last thirty years, “We have seen changes in all spheres; an arranged marriage to the new trend of ‘hook up’ relationships. Increased mobility among the youth has given them greater opportunity to live away from home. There is greater focus on the individual than collective. There is a decrease in frustration tolerance among youth,” said Dr Vijay Nagaswamy.

“Improve interactive skills”

Speaking at the seminar Sr Elizabeth C S, Principal of Jyoti Nivas college said that what is needed for a job seeker is good communication, relationship management skills. “Thirty years ago, a person with excellent technical knowledge would have been hired by companies. But now what is being sought after is the communicative skills of a person and his/her ability to perform as a team player and maintain good relation with people around,” she said.

Source: Times of India

Medical Tourism Market is Expected to Reach USD 32.5 Billion Globally in 2019:

Transparency Market Research is Published new Market Report “Medical Tourism Market (India, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Mexico, Brazil, Taiwan, Turkey, South Korea, Costa Rica, Poland, Dubai and Philippines) – Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2013 – 2019” The global medical tourism market was valued at USD 10.5 billion in 2012 and is estimated to reach a market worth USD 32.5 billion in 2019 at a CAGR of 17.9% from 2013 to 2019.

Medical tourism is defined as an act of travel of patients from their home country to other destinations for availing medical services. Rise in healthcare costs in developed countries coupled with the availability of high quality medical services at a low cost in developing countries have given a boost to the medical tourism industry. These medical services range from elective procedures such as cosmetic surgeries to complicated surgeries such as cardiac, orthopedics, neurosurgery and others. Significant growth in this industry is due to economic developments in developing countries that in turn has led to the growth in the medical industry and quality of medical services.

Rise in the healthcare expenditure in developed countries coupled with in the growing elderly population has also contributed to the gowth of the medical tourism across the globe. Economic crisis in the U.S. increased the number of uninsured population, consequently further triggering the growth of this market. Recently, there are approximately 50 million uninsured Americans that are willing to travel abroad for affordable and quality medical care. Globalization and improved communication technology act as a catalyst to boost the growth of this industry.

The development of medical tourism industry is based on several factors such as reduced cost of procedures, long waiting time and high demand for cosmetic surgeries. Medical travel is not only witnessed for intricate procedures but is also expanding due to growing demand for cosmetic and dental procedures since these are usually not reimbursed under regular health insurance policies. Patients travelling abroad can save from 30% to 90% on a procedure, including their travel expenditures, as compared to the medical costs in their own countries. Long waiting time is another factor which has substantially boosted the growth of this industry. Patients based in Canada and U.K travel to low cost destinations for their treatments in order to avoid long waiting periods in their own countries and receive timely access to serious ailments.

Medical tourism industry is dominated by the Asian region that has captured the maximum share of the market. This region is highly competitive owing to the presence of technologically advanced medical specialties, less stringent government regulations and attractive locations. Thailand and India are recognized internationally for their high end medical services and receive patients from across the globe. Singapore is renowned for its healthcare infrastructure and receives patients primarily for complex medical procedures. Thailand, India and Singapore accounted for approximately 60% of the total revenue of the Asian region in 2012. The Latin American countries such as Brazil and Mexico attract maximum number of patients from the U.S owing to the geographic proximity and cultural similarities. Similarly, growth in Turkey is witnessed on account of growing demand of cosmetic surgeries.

However, a paradigm shift in the market is seen owing to strong competition among the players of this industry. Malaysia is poised to have a significant growth in this market and is likely to emerge as a fastest growing country in terms of medical tourism with a CAGR of over 25% from 2013 to 2019. This advent in Malaysian medical tourism market is due to cost advantage over Thailand and Singapore. Moreover, rise in popularity of Malaysian region is attributed to many factors such as advanced healthcare infrastructure, highly skilled professionals, visa benefits and others. Additionally, robust government support for promotion of Malaysian medical tourism has propelled the growth in this nation.

Moreover, increase in the government initiatives and growing inclination of private sector hospitals towards medical tourism is further supplanting the growth of this market. Key healthcare providers in this industry include Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd., Bumrumgrad International Hospital, Bangkok Medical Center, Prince Court Medical Center and others.

The Medical Tourism market is segmented as follows:

The global medical tourism market is segmented into the following categories:
Medical Tourism Market, by Geography
India
Overview
Cost Comparison of Procedures
SWOT Analysis
Government Support
India Inbound Medical Tourism (No. of patients)
India Medical Tourism: Top Revenue Contributing Country (%) (2012)
Thailand
Singapore
Malaysia
Mexico
Brazil
Turkey
South Korea
Taiwan
Prospective Countries
Costa Rica
Poland
Dubai
Philippines

Source: Information Week