medical news

Georgetown hospital receives US$10,000 donation of urology equipment

Members of the visiting Caribbean Medical Mission on Tuesday presented medical equipment to the Urology Clinic of the Georgetown Public Hospital valued around US$10,000 to 15,000.

The team is a part of the Organisation for Health Advancement for Guyana/ Caribbean. Dr Winston Mc Grill, a member of the team (residing in New Jersey) told Guyana Times that the gesture was initiated through good relationships he shared with friends in Guyana.
Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) Chief Executive Officer Michael Khan said the donation was timely, and noted that Dr Mc Grill will be conducting surgery with the Guyana team today.

Dr Chris Prashad of the Urology Clinic said the hospital needed new equipment since the old ones have deteriorated, pointing out that the fight is on to battle cervical and prostate disease.

Dr Mc Grill said this is his first visit to Guyana but will not be his last as the tour was worthwhile and visibly appreciated by those seen and treated. He further noted that there is much more to be done and his mission will continue.

During the simple presentation ceremony, questions were raised about prostate cancer, more specifically if it is true that men are reluctant to do checkups because they are ridiculed by their womenfolk.

Dr Prashad, who responded, said this is not so since women often urge their husbands, fathers or other male relative to take necessary actions as the need arises.

Though there is no data on men suffering from prostate cancer, Dr Mc Grill said the number of African men affected has been on the increase.

Source: Guyana Times

Artist carves stunning portraits in Oreo frosting

We’ve all been taught not to play with our food, but for Massachusetts artist Judith Klausner playing with food is a craft.

Since 2010, Klausner has been creating works of art from items like Oreo cookies and Chex cereal for her “From Scratch” series on expertly altered food stuffs.

The series includes embroideries made on toast, portraits carved in Oreo frosting, wallpaper painted with condiments, cross-stitching in Chex cereal and stained glass made from gummies.

“This nostalgia for the culinary past—before packaged foods and high-fructose corn syrup—fails to take into consideration just how much time it takes to make three full meals a day from scratch,” Klausner writes on her blog. “Today, as we come to realize that something has been lost in the mechanization of everything around us, there is a return to the idea that making something from its most basic parts has great value.”

Source: Fox news

9 Evidence-Based Medicinal Properties of Oranges

Orange is one such food-medicine marvel, containing a broad range of compounds increasingly being recognized to be essential for human health. We consider it a sweet treat, its juice a refreshing beverage, but do we ever really reflect on its medicinal properties? GreenMedInfo.com has indexed no less than 37 distinct health benefits its use may confer, all of which can be explored on our Orange Medicinal Properties research page. What follows are some of its most well-established therapeutic applications, divided into three parts: the juice, the peel and the aroma:

The Juice of the Orange
Many of us mistakenly look to orange juice today as a dangerous source of highly concentrated fructose – simple “carbs” – without recognizing its profound medicinal properties. We sometimes think we can get the vitamin C activity oranges contain through the semi-synthetic ‘nutrient’ ascorbic acid, without realizing that an orange embodies (as do all whole foods) a complex orchestra of chemistries, the handiwork of millions of years of evolution, which is to say a process of intelligent biological design. The ‘monochemical nutrient’ – ascorbic acid – is merely a shadow of the vitamin C activity that is carried and expressed through only living foods. The orange, after all, looks like a miniature sun, is formed as a condensation of energy and information from sunlight, and therefore is capable of storing and after being eaten irradiating us with life-giving packets of information-dense gene-regulating nutrition, by a mechanism that will never be fully reducible to or intelligible by the chemical skeleton we know of as ascorbic acid.

Orange Juice Improves “Good” Cholesterol: While it is debatable that lowering so-called “LDL” cholesterol is nearly as good for heart health as statin drug manufacturers would like for us to believe, raising “HDL” cholesterol does seem to have real health benefits. This is, however, quite hard to do with diet and nutrition, and impossible through medication. Other than taking high-dose fish oil, few things have been studied to be effective. Except, that is, orange juice. A 2000 study found that the consumption of 750 mL of orange juice a day, over a 4 weeks, improved blood lipid profiles by decreasing the LDL-HDL cholesterol ratio by 16% in patients with elevated cholesterol.

Orange Juice Boosts Bone Health: A 2006 animal study in male rats found that orange juice positively influenced antioxidant status and bone strength.

Orange Juice (mixed with Blackcurrant Juice) Reduces Inflammation: A 2009 study in patients with peripheral artery disease found that orange and blackcurrant juice reduced C-reactive protein (11%) and fibrinogen levels (3%), two concrete measures of systemic inflammation.[3] A 2010 study found that Orange juice neutralizes the proinflammatory effect of a high-fat, high-carbohydrate meal and prevents endotoxin induced toxicity.

Orange Juice Boosts Weight Loss: A 2011 study found that children who regularly drank orange juice consumed an average of 523 calories a day more than children who did not drink orange juice regularly. Yet surprisingly, there was no difference in the weight levels between the orange juice consumers and the non-orange juice consumers.

Orange Juice May Dissolve Kidney Stones: A 2006 study found that orange juice consumption was associated with lower calculated calcium oxalate supersaturation and lower calculated undissociated uric acid, two indices of lowered urinary calcium stone formation.

Orange Juice Extract Suppresses Prostate Proliferation: Despite the fructose content, a 2006 study found a standardized extract of red orange juice inhibited the proliferation of human prostate cells in vitro.

The Peel of the Orange

The peel of the orange contains a broad range of potent, potentially therapeutic compounds. These include pectin and flavonoid

constituents, such as hersperiden, naringin, polymethoxyflavones, quercetin and rutin, various carotenoids, and a major odor constituent known as d-limonene, which makes up 90% of the citrus peel oil content, and is a compound that gets its name from the rind of the lemon, which contains a significant quantity of it. It is listed in the US Code of Federal Regulations as generally recognized as safe (GRAS), and is commonly used as a flavoring agent. D-limonene has been studied to have potent anti-cancer properties, including against metastatic melanoma.

Source; Green med info

Online medical education tool aspires to improve patient interactions in challenging situations

Drexel University College of Medicine has developed an online medical education program to help healthcare professionals hone those skills in simulated interactions with patients and their families.

Although the goal is to improve performance by physicians and other healthcare professionals, it is also designed to help hospitals boost patient satisfaction scores, which impact Medicare reimbursement. This is one trend in healthcare that startups are increasingly addressing.

Dr. Christof Daetwyler of Drexel University College of Medicine will use the $100,000 he received from the University City Science Center QED Proof of Concept award to fund a pilot program with a well-known hospital next year and build a company around the technology.

In an interview with MedCity News, Daetwyler said one of Drexel’s collaboration partners is the Gift of Life donor program in Philadelphia, which licensed the technology.

A prototype of the technology was developed in 2002 at the Technology in Medical Education group at Drexel. It was used as a video conferencing tool to help medical students prep for the Objective Structured Clinical Examinations through simulated patient interactions.

Since then, technology advancements have made it easier to bring the platform online. User interactions with simulated patients are recorded online. Users get structured feedback on performance. They can also access videos that offer examples of best practice. In addition to organ donation and breaking bad news, it also includes modules on how to broach other difficult situations such as smoking cessation.

A separate joint venture between the College of Medicine and the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare, Doc.Com, produced 41 modules to improve communication skills.

The company’s approach also helps address the physician shortage, which is projected to worsen as Obamacare extends healthcare access to millions of people.

Several other health IT companies are taking different approaches to medical training using simulators. Shadow Health and Kognito Interactive have focused on developing patient simulator tools to improve patient and physician communication. SimplySim developed a way to train physicians to properly use a stethoscope and CaseNetwork developed a training tool to reduce readmissions. The idea is to provide more meaningful interactions to improve adherence and so that healthcare professionals better understand their patients’ needs.
Source : Med City News

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