Word: patients
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Jimmy Fund was born five decades ago, when a 12-year-old cancer patient, known to the world as "Jimmy," asked for a television set to watch baseball games...
Does this mean that patients in Maryland should gather up their IVs and run screaming to the prairies? Not at all, says Bob Speildenner, spokesman for the United Network for Organ Sharing. "Patients should not panic. They should talk to the doctors at the hospital about their concerns, about the numbers in the study." This data, Speildenner emphasizes, is several years old, and the results are still very much open to interpretation. "When these numbers are analyzed, they?ll be much more valuable to everyone." At that point, discrepancies will be explained, or at least fleshed out. Already, experts...
...that may take the edge off depression (or appetite). The treatment, called vagus nerve stimulation, consists of mild electric shocks from an implanted generator that are fed into the depths of the brain via a nerve in the neck. The current travels from the pacemaker-like gadget in the patient?s chest, through wires to the vagus nerve, and delivers the "feel good" or "I?m full" message to the brain every few minutes. While the precise connection between the treatment and the emotional or physical response remains a mystery to scientists, this treatment could hold real promise: The Associated...
...more elegant version of techniques that have been used to treat depression for decades," says TIME medical writer Christine Gorman. Promising initial results aside, there are some risks to the stimulator: One severely depressed test subject became manic for a short time after the initial implant; fortunately, the patient?s mood returned to a normal ? and happy ? state after doctors adjusted the electric input. Another potential problem: The implant could be abused by patients trying to lose weight; canine test subjects lost up to one third of their body weight using the stimulator, a percentage that would render an average...
Nobody wants to be an anomaly when it comes to medical matters, the kind of patient who prompts doctors to shake their head and say softly, "I've never seen this before...