Pneumonia

Pneumonia is a medical state that affects the air sacs in the lungs identified as alveoli and it can be defined further as an inflammatory lung condition. This condition is tends to be caused by either viral or bacterial infections, as well as certain microorganisms or some drugs which individuals are ingesting. In addition, pneumonia might be caused by autoimmune diseases which make it easier for infections to occur in the lungs. Among the most typical symptoms of this condition coughs, pain in the chest, a certain amount of fever, as well as the person infected having difficulty in breathing. There are various tools which are used in diagnosing this condition and these include the use of x-rays, or taking a sample of sputum for testing. There are various types of vaccines available for the prevention of pneumonia and these are complemented by the treatment measures available for those who suffer from the infection. The treatment of this condition depends on the agent that caused it, whether it is viral or bacterial. If the infection is caused by bacteria, then the condition is treated using antibiotics but if the condition is caused by a virus, on the other hand, the most common treatment used are neuraminidase inhibitors. When an infection is deemed to be severe, the most likely cause of action that doctors tend to take is to have the patient admitted to hospital because if left untreated, this condition often proves to be fatal. It is estimated that on an annual basis, pneumonia affects over four hundred million people and of these, about four million meet their deaths from the condition. While this condition has been made treatable with the advancement of the development of antibiotic therapy as well as vaccines, pneumonia still remains one of the most dangerous as well as the a leading cause of death, especially in developing countries. The people, in these countries, who are at the most risk of infection, tend to be the young, the elderly, and those who are extremely ill.

Those who are infected by pneumonia tend to display certain symptoms which provide the evidence that they have indeed been infected. Among the symptoms that they display include coughing, a fever, a stabbing pain in the chest when taking deep breaths, and most of all, an increase in the rate of respiration because of the shortness of breath that they experience. One of the most prominent symptoms that is displayed by older people is that of being confused. Among children, on the other hand, there is often a fever, coughing, as well as difficulty in breathing. When making a diagnosis of the condition, too much insistence should not be put on the detection of a fever because this is a common symptom that can be found in quite a number of diseases such as malaria among other severe diseases. In addition, coughs should also not be considered to be a common symptom among children who are less than a year old and instead, more severe signs should be looked out for. Among the severe symptoms of this condition is the appearance of a blue tinge on the skin, a decrease in the infected person’s thirst, convulsions, and the most severe of all, a decrease in consciousness level. Whatever the source of infection, whether bacterial or viral, the victims of pneumonia often display the same symptoms and this is the reason why specific tests have to be carried out to ensure that the correct treatment is prescribed to a patient.

While pneumonia is often caused by either bacterial or viral infections, it is not uncommon to find that even fungi and other parasites can cause this condition. It has, however been estimated that of the over one hundred agents that can potentially cause pneumonia, only a few of these agents are actually responsible for the majority of the cases involved. In a little more than 45% of the cases studied in children, it has been found that the causing agents have been a mixture of bacterial and viral infections. Among adults, on the other hand, the potential for there being a mixed bacterial and viral infection as a cause for pneumonia has been estimated to be about 15%. The causing agent of an infection cannot be identified in more than half of the cases tested, despite the tests being conducted carefully. This is the reason why pneumonia has come to be a all-purpose term for any illness that causes the inflammation of the lungs. There are various factors which influence the development of pneumonia and these include the following: smoking, chronic kidney disease, immunodeficiency among other factors. The use of medications that are meant for the suppression of acids as well as old age are risk factors that also expose individuals to pneumonia.

The diagnosis of pneumonia is often done using a combination of both the physical symptoms as well as the conducting of a chest x-ray but despite these; the underlying causative agents of this condition are difficult to determine. This is because of the fact that definitive tests for the determination of the causative agents of this condition have yet to be made. According to the World Health Organization, this condition in children is defined as their having coughs or difficulty in breathing as well as having a rapid respiratory rate. The latter is defined as rapid when the rate of breathing is more than sixty breaths a minute, especially in children who are less than two months old. It has been found that in children, it is much more effective to check for an increased respiratory rate and chest in drawing than having to listen to their chest crackles using a stethoscope. Among adults, it is not necessary to conduct investigations in cases where there are mild symptoms, as long as all the vital signs of the individual are normal. Among those people who require hospitalization after infection, it is recommended that chest radiography and blood tests should be conducted. It is a fact that many of the viral infections that cause pneumonia are based on influenza, and because of this, it must not only be confirmed by symptoms, but also through the conducting of tests.

Among the best ways that have been found to prevent pneumonia is the use of vaccines as well as taking measures which are appropriate for the treatment of other health problems that might be a cause of the condition. It has been estimated that if preventive measures are to be taken to deal with the condition, the quite a large number of children, nearly half a million, would be saved from death per annum. It has also been found that if the necessary treatment for the condition is made available, especially for children, worldwide, then the mortality rates would be reduced by another half a million, meaning that a combination of preventative measures as well as treatments would ensure that the mortality rates among children would be brought down by a million, an extremely significant reduction indeed. Pneumonia vaccines prevent some infections that are either caused by viruses or bacteria in the entire human population, but influenza vaccines have also been found to be effective in preventing infections. It is recommended that individuals who are over six months old should undergo vaccination every year so that the risk of infection, especially those caused by viruses, can be reduced.

It is recommended that those people who smoke cease to do so because they are at a higher risk of getting infected than other people. Furthermore, the reduction of indoor air pollution goes a long way in preventing the development of pneumonia, and to achieve this end, indoor cooking using such fuels as wood should cease. Other preventative measures include the keeping of good general hygiene as well as coughing into ones sleeve in order to prevent any possible infection from getting transferred to others. It is further recommended that those people who are infected by the condition wear surgical masks because to do so will ensure that the risk of the infection being spread within the population is greatly reduced. Pneumonia is sometimes caused by underlying diseases such as HIV or malnutrition, and as a preventative measure, these diseases have to be treated appropriately so that this risk can be reduced. Mothers who exclusively breastfeed their children who are less than six months old ensure that the risk of their contracting pneumonia is reduced, and that if these children are infected, then there is a reduction in the severity of the condition.

When a specialist in the infections that cause pneumonia is making a treatment plan, he or she should also consider other possible treatments for the condition apart from the administration of oral antibiotics. If there is no improvement in the condition of the patient through home care, and the symptoms he or she displays seem to worsen, then it will be necessary for such a person to be hospitalized so that he can receive specialized care. There are times when the only option left for specialists is to design a treatment plan which include the trial of new drugs or treatment methods for their patients. Such options tend to come about especially in situations where other treatments have failed to work. While these new treatments are designed to help the patients involved, they also help in the assessment of how different drugs work on them. This helps in future research, which comes up with even better treatments for pneumonia. In conclusion, it can be said that pneumonia is a medical condition that has plagued the human population for a long time, and it can affect anyone, no matter how young or old they are. Because of this, it is essential to ensure that enough funding is provided so that research in the treatment of this condition can be advanced. In almost every instance that one develops this disease, it comes to affect everyone who is close to them. In severe cases, it is quite possible that an infected person might transmit the condition to those around them, and this is something which is highly undesirable. There are times when treatment for the condition while the patient resides at home proves to be difficult, and the solution is often to have then hospitalized. It is, therefore, essential that the specialist involved in the treatment of the disease to provide the patient with all the treatment options available for them, so that the patient is aware of all the possible ways that their condition might be treated. After doing this, it is the duty of the specialist to advice the patient on what the best treatment options for them are available. When the patient is aware of all the treatment options open to them, it will be immensely easy for them to adjust their lifestyle so that they can dedicate themselves to their recovery.

Teenagers and Plastic Surgery

Over the past few years, statistics have shown that there has been an increase in the number of teenagers opting to go for cosmetic surgery. The most popular of the non-surgical cosmetic procedures among teenagers include laser hair removal and chemical peels, which have grown in popularity especially over the last two years. It has been stated that the most popular cosmetic surgery among teenagers has been cosmetic ear surgery, also known as otoplasty. Some experts in cosmetic surgery state that for some teenage patients, plastic surgery could have a very positive effect in their lives not only physically, but also in their emotional development. Moreover, cosmetic surgery has become so popular among teenagers that their parents are now bestowing them to their children as gifts for their birthdays or even graduations. Many surgeons state that they are seeing more teenagers than ever coming to their practices for the various cosmetic surgery procedures available to them. Despite the fact that many parents and their teenage children have been advised against turning to major surgical procedures as a fix for the teenagers’ self-confidence, the number of teenagers who have undergone these procedures has continued to rise. For example, the number of teenage girls under the age of 18 years who undergo breast augmentation procedures has nearly tripled from one year to the next. Teenagers undergoing cosmetic surgery have become a common phenomenon and it is no longer a procedure reserved for the rich as it has previously been.

In the initial stages before a surgeon can put a teenage patient in the cosmetic surgery procedure, he must assess whether this patient is suited for the procedure, otherwise, the entire procedure would be unethical because the surgeon will only be interested in the patient’s money and not their well-being. The most important thing that a surgeon must consider is whether the patient is physically mature this is because performing an operation on a physical feature, which has not fully developed could interfere with its growth and lead to or could have a negative impact on the surgery in the future. Secondly, the surgeon has to consider the emotional maturity of his patient and not only should he inform the teenager of the benefits of the procedure, but also its limitations and he should make sure that the patient is ready to live with the consequences of the procedure whether it meets their expectations or not. Lastly, teenagers and their parents should be made to understand the risks of undergoing the cosmetic surgery as well as the time it takes to recover from the procedure.

In addition, there has been a growing trend among teenagers towards undergoing cosmetic surgery to improve their appearance. From a handful of these procedures that were done some two decades ago on teenagers, today, a large number of teenagers in their hundreds of thousands, undergo cosmetic surgery. This number has kept on growing over the last ten years and it is actually becoming quite common. For example, the number of lipoplasty procedures for teenagers under the age of 18 years has continued to increase over the years and this has continued to be so despite the very careful selection by surgeons of the patients in this group. Furthermore, of the women who underwent breast augmentation procedures in the year 2010, about two percent of them were under the age of eighteen and this is quite a significant number. The reasons why teenagers go for cosmetic surgery to reduce or increase the size of their breasts, correct the balance between a pair of body parts and in this case mostly breasts and ears, correct the severe underdevelopment of some body parts and finally the need to increase their self-confidence in an environment where they feel insecure.

Many teenagers who wish to undergo plastic surgery are motivated by factors, which are very different from those that influence adults to do the same. Most of them want to improve the physical characteristics, which make them feel and look awkward; moreover, they believe that this awkwardness may pursue them for the rest of their lives. In fact, teenagers are always motivated by the current trends of the time and many undergo surgery just so that they can look similar to their friends or their favorite celebrities. This motivation is quite different from that of adults because they tend to undergo the cosmetic procedure not only to look different from their peers, but also to stand out. The most common physical characteristics, which teenagers often want to change for the better through cosmetic surgery include misshapen noses, protruding ears and either small or overly large breasts. After a successful procedure, many teenagers often regain their confidence because their perceived physical deformities have been corrected. In fact, this procedure if successful tends to make teenagers more confident in their social skills and this ensures that the social withdrawal, which had haunted them before is gone.

There are very strict procedures, which have been put in place to ensure that all teenagers who undergo cosmetic are well suited for it. The most common procedure that is supposed to be undertaken is to establish whether the teenager is mature enough emotionally and that this teenager understands the limitations of the surgical procedure which he is to undergo. Teenagers, and their parents, whose consent they need in order to have cosmetic surgery, have to understand that the effects of the surgical procedure on their bodies will be permanent and cannot be reversed and that they should therefore be very realistic in their expectations about what it will do for them. Moreover, the body of a teenager is more often than not fully developed and those perceived deformities that a teenager may have could be outgrown in time without the need for any surgery.

Many people believe that the increase in the number of teenagers undergoing plastic surgery is not a trend but an evolution, which has led to a new way of life. It is stated that one of the main reasons for this growth is the visibility of the procedure considering the fact that most teenagers are today growing up with parents who have undergone cosmetic surgery and they therefore have more knowledge about it. Media of all types has also made teenagers more aware of the procedures that one has to go through in a plastic surgery procedure and this awareness has ensured that their interest in it is whetted and it has become an acceptable thing among them (Janet, 2004). Teenagers have come to realize that plastic surgery does not only repair their physical appearance but it also boosts their self-confidence, something that they tend to require in the very competitive environment in which they live today. Plastic surgeons are also aware of the problems that teenagers’ face, which leads them to come to the decision to undergo the procedure and the surgeons, therefore, assess their psychological condition before putting them under the knife. Surgeons also recognize the fact that the surgical procedure may not do anything to help a teenager make an advance in their self-confidence and this is as a result of their prior experiences with celebrities who have remained very insecure despite undergoing so many cosmetic surgery procedures. Teenagers should be made to understand that although it is their right to have cosmetic surgery, they should be very careful in their consideration of whether to have it or not. They should realize that their wish to have the surgery should not be expressed lightly because the effects of this procedure will stay with them for the rest of their lives. Whether it is a trend or not, it has to be recognized that teenagers undergoing plastic surgery is something that is here to stay and that it should no longer be a surprising thing.

Menopause

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Implementing Electronic Patient Records

The implementation of electronic patient records is a software based solution that provides for the digital computerization, recording, and maintenance of patient and medical practice information and it deals the need to set up excellence in patient care and practicality in medical practice. It is one of the main tools currently being used to fix the ailing health care system in the developed world through patient monitoring which will enable doctors to shift from only curing ailments to preventing them instead. One of the main goals for using this system is to increase efficiency within the healthcare system to the point of significantly reducing health care costs while saving millions of lives. Over the past several years, health care providers, insurers, drug firms and research institutes have been encouraged to initiate a massive transformation from a paper-based health-care system to one that increasingly relies on electronic records to manage patient data. While this has been easy in developed countries, the same cannot be said concerning developed countries, especially those in Africa.

The increasing number of those who are expected to be regular users of the health care system in Africa has been touted as one of the reasons why digitizing the medical data of patients is very important in managing the already burdened health care system. Putting people’s health information in databases will not only reduce redundancies but is already shifting the way people receive and seek health care. With better contact to an individualized health record, whether it is through an official electronic record by a doctor, a private record created by an individual, or a fast instant messaging contact with a doctor, the customary roles of doctors and patients are experiencing swift changes. It is expected that in the future, patients will arrive for appointments with their doctors having gone through their medical records and the recommended articles about their health concerns.

It is believed that even more people will be able to skip the hospital visit altogether due to their busy schedules and will instead prefer to stay in touch with their doctors through text messaging and emails in order to receive answers for their health concerns. Electronic medical records are the future because in emergencies, such as attending to a patient with a heart attack, finding and reading the paper medical records of a patient costs a lot of time, and this time might be crucial in the saving of the life of this patient. If electronic data is available, then it would be easier to treat whatever medical condition a patient has because the doctors have almost instant access to their medical records, and in fact, the chances of such a patient living would be significantly higher.

Electronic medical records are here to stay because they reduce the chances of physicians making errors in their diagnosis of a patient’s illness due to the fact that they will have the patient’s entire medical history before they start attending on him or her. Although electronic medical records have been said to have saved the lives of many and that there are even higher possibilities of their doing so in future, it still has the problem of cost. Installing an electronic medical records system in a hospital or clinic, for example, can be very expensive and many doctors opt not to do it because of the cost. Unless cheaper ways are found to ensure that electronic data systems are more available to doctors in Africa at cheaper prices, then the future of electronic medical records within it is threatened, not only increasing the risk to the lives of the patients but will also continue to burden the already strained medical health care system as it is today, making medical services even slower.

The problem with having electronic medical records currently is that although many medical practitioners keep electronic records, they have no centralized system through which the patient’s information can be shared and this leads to the same problem as that experienced by the use of the paper system, that is, the loss of time. It is estimated that only a handful of doctors in Africa have the necessary technology to share their patients’ medical information with other medical practitioners and it is believed that the efficient sharing of this information will not be in place for quite a number of years.

The main beneficiaries of the electronic medical records, if implemented in African countries, will be the patients themselves because sometimes, medical and diagnostic errors occur because complete patient information is not available at the time of patient care and doctors are forced to provide care based on a patient’s recollection or in worst cases no information at all. An integrated electronic medical records system could help resolve this problem because doctors will have all the information they need about a patient’s medical history hence reducing the chances of errors occurring.

Furthermore, the use of electronic medical records protects the patient’s privacy from eavesdropping because these records are password protected hence limiting their access to only the patient and their doctor. It has been found that adequate technology is available to protect the patient’s privacy and this can be found cheaply. However, the making of medical records electronic can have some unforeseen effects in the future because even though it is safer in matters of privacy, any breach in the security of the electronic system can completely compromise the privacy of a patient and their information might be available for all to see especially online. With very few controls over the internet, the patient’s medical history and personal information can no longer be kept private.