Why you should ALWAYS wear medical gloves

Medical gloves are one of the most important pieces of medical equipment in the medical and health industry! They are an essential PPE that the Food and Drug Administration regulates, and they must ALWAYS be leak and tear resistant and packaged in sterile packaging.

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Medical gloves are disposable, so they are specifically designed to be worn only once. The main purpose of gloves is to protect patients and health care workers from germs, infection and from coming into contact with certain dangerous substances.

Gloves should be worn every time you touch blood, bodily fluids, bodily tissues, mucous membranes, hazardous drugs or broken skin. Doctors take note here: you should wear gloves for this sort of contact, even if the patient you are dealing with seems healthy and has no sign of any germs.

It is so important that the gloves actually fit your properly and cover the hand and part of the wrist. The gloves should be made of latex or a strong synthetic material like PVC or nitrile. Caregivers should always wash their hands properly before putting on the gloves and take special care when handling sharp objects.

Gloves can accidentally become ripped or torn, this means that they should be changed immediately and the old gloves should be thrown away. In fact, the golden rule is to NEVER ever reuse gloves!
But how you properly remove gloves?

When you take the gloves off make sure the outside of the gloves do not touch your bare hands.

Always follow these 6 simple steps:

1. Grab the top of the right glove with your left hand
2. Pull toward your fingertips – the glove will turn inside out
3. Hold onto the empty glove with your left hand
4. Put two right hand fingers in the top of your left glove
5. Pull towards your fingertips until you have pulled the glove inside out and off your hand. The right glove should be inside the left glove now
6. Throw the gloves away in a proper bin

It is essential to maintain excellent hygiene when dealing with patients, especially during surgeries and operations. Doctors always need to wear medical gloves to protect the patient from infections during surgeries and maintain hygiene.

5 Reasons why you should own a Breathalyzer

Owning your own breathalyzer can be a huge benefit for your personal safety and convenience, as well as those of the people around you too. Here are five specific advantages of owning a breathalyzer.

Quick and easy to use

Breathalyzers are not complex mechanical items, nor do they take a long time to use. Simply blow, read the resulting display, and you’ve got your answer. You can even test multiple people in quick succession. 

Accurate readings

Breathalyzers are programmed with a mathematical formula that equates the presence of alcohol in your breath with the percentage of alcohol in your blood. This formula is absolute, and breathalyzers are not prone to errors. If the unit says your BAC is too high to drive, there’s no arguing with it.

Non-invasive 

There are other ways to check your BAC. Taking a blood test is one, and it is as accurate as a breathalyzer. But blood tests, aside from being inconvenient and difficult to obtain for individual use, also involve invasive needles and blood draws, and are most often performed after you’ve already been in an accident or been pulled over by the police. The best breathalyzer ensures you’ll likely never need a blood test.

Check yourself before you wreck yourself

As a corollary to the last item, checking your BAC before you get in a car will decrease your chances of getting into an accident by up to 100%; if you don’t get in the car, you can’t crash it into anything or anyone. 

Take the decision out of your own hands

Finally, because the breathalyzer is not a person with feelings or emotions like you are, letting its BAC reading determine whether or not you get in a car after a few drinks will allow you to have fun with lowered risk of misjudging your own intoxication. Instead of considering how you might feel, just test yourself with the breathalyzer, and if it says your BAC is too high, don’t get in the car. 

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How to Avoid the Flu in an Open Office

Teamwork is a beautiful thing…until it makes you sick. According to a recent study, it takes just four hours for the germs on a contaminated workplace door to spread to the work surfaces and hands of half the employees in the office! Other office germ hot spots include coffee pots, microwaves and refrigerator door handles.

Protect yourself from office germs with our six tips for staying healthy in an open office environment. You’ll be healthier, more productive, and continue to love your co-workers—even through cold and flu season.

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How to stay healthy during allergy season

If you find yourself suffering from sneezing, itchy eyes, and pressure headaches every spring, welcome to the seasonal allergy club. Here are some common questions about pollen allergies — and how to survive them without losing your mind.

How do I know if I have allergies, a cold, or a sinus infection?

It can be tough to tell sometimes. Unlike allergies, a cold or respiratory infection often brings on a fever, so that’s a key indicator. If your nasal congestion clears up within one to two weeks, chances are you had a cold rather than allergies. Seasonal allergy symptoms tend to last three weeks or more, depending on the types of pollen you’re allergic to.

Is it possible to prevent allergies?

You can’t prevent seasonal allergy symptoms from occurring, but you can do things to minimize the impact of the symptoms on your quality of life. Here are some recommended steps you take before and during allergy season:

- Start a steroid nasal spray about four to six weeks ahead of pollen season.

- Stay indoors during peak pollen hours, such as mornings. On high-pollen days, stay indoors as much as possible.

- Do your seasonal cleaning before pollen’s in the air. You may still have to cope with dust allergies while cleaning, but at least you won’t have to deal with dust and pollen.

- Keep windows closed when pollen counts are high.

- Place air filters inside your air conditioning vents to prevent pollen from getting blown into your living space.

- Get a dehumidifier. These devices also filter the air in your home, which may help improve your indoor air quality.

- Remove outer garments outside and shake them off before bringing them indoors. Even though you may not be able to see pollen on your clothing, it’s there.

- Wash pollen down the drain by showering as soon as you get home. Pollen sticks to your hair and skin, so rinsing it off will help keep it out of your bed, carpet, and furniture.

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15 Health Care Quotes From Famous Thinkers

Few topics in our culture today have burned with such fire as health care. TV news programs battle over who has the better plan to lower costs and raise quality daily.

Books and many articles are written and published to voice more opinions, and for people to line up and take sides.

It seems like everybody is rushing to get to the end, urgently goading people to follow their particular plan of escape, and no one can see where they're going.

In cases like this, there is clarity in simple and enduring ideas. So take a time-out from the political and economic world. Instead, let these thinkers remind us of what's really at stake--the person who suffers right in front of us. Each of us is armed already with the power to heal without the need for cash, without the risk of side effects. The human spirit and our connection to each other; that too, is medicine!

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
― Hippocrates

“Always laugh when you can, it is cheap medicine.”
― George Gordon Byron

“We look for medicine to be an orderly field of knowledge and procedure. But it is not. It is an imperfect science, an enterprise of constantly changing knowledge, uncertain information, fallible individuals, and at the same time lives on the line. There is science in what we do, yes, but also habit, intuition, and sometimes plain old guessing. The gap between what we know and what we aim for persists. And this gap complicates everything we do.”
― Atul Gawande, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science

“It is very expensive to give bad medical care to poor people in a rich country.”
― Paul Farmer

“Disease is the biggest money maker in our economy.”
― John H. Tobe

“After you find out all the things that can go wrong, your life becomes less about living and more about waiting.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

“Isn’t it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do “practice”?”
― George Carlin

“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.”
― Mother Teresa, A Simple Path: Mother Teresa

“The physician should not treat the disease but the patient who is suffering from it”
― Maimonides

“Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“How do you tell the psychiatrists from the patients in the hospital?
The patients get better and leave.”
― Lisa Scottoline, Every Fifteen Minutes

"Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in early stages."
― James Madison

"I'm great at a death bed. I've never given tranquilizers or psychiatric medicine. I've given love and fun and creativity and passion and hope, and these things ease suffering."
― Patch Adams

"To array a man's will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine."
― Henry Ward Beecher

"If we want to fight people in the world, we should fight them with pillows - pillows stuffed with food, medicine, music...That would be so much cheaper than bombs."
― Alice Walker

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Here’s proof that vegetarians live longer!

For a long time vegetarians have been insisting they are healthier than their meat-eating peers. Now, finally, there's proof that they are not only healthier – they might even live longer.

A new protein-focused study shows eating more protein from vegetarian foods and less from animal foods is associated with a massive reduction in deaths from all causes including cancer and heart disease.

The study was conducted by researchers from America’s Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and followed 131 000 people over 32 years.

According to the study, by replacing a mere 3% of calories from processed meat with vegetarian sources of protein you can cut the risk of a developing a heart attack by 39%. And for unprocessed red meat, the reduction is 18%.

“Eating more plant protein [is] associated with a 10% lower risk of death from all causes for every 3% increment of total calories and a 12% lower risk of cardiovascular death,” the researchers said.

The lead author of the paper, Dr Mingyang Song, a researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told CNN their findings have important public health implications.

 “They can help refine the current dietary recommendations about protein intake and really get to the point that it is not only the amount, but also the food sources of protein that are critical for long-term health.”

UK based international nutritional expert Patrick Holford agrees with Song. “In this study, having less eggs and more vegetable protein was also consistent with reduced mortality from all causes, including cancer and heart disease,” he says.

“The greatest risk, however, was in people with other unhealthy behaviours and a high intake of red and processed meat and a low intake of vegetable protein. Super-healthy lean meat eaters may not fare so badly. However, the benefit from plant-based protein foods remains a clear trend of this substantial study.”

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How to Measure a Wheelchair

When it comes to wheelchairs, there is nothing more important than making sure the chair is a perfect fit for its owner. If any one element of the chair is too long, too short, too wide or too skinny, it can become incredibly uncomfortable, especially over a long period of time. Read the following article to learn how to measure a wheelchair and ensure it will be a good fit for the owner.

1. Measure the width of the person who will use the wheelchair. Take the measurement with the person in the seated position, on a fairly firm surface. This will determine the width of the seat.

      ·         Add approximately 2.5 to 5 cm for slight movement and comfort when sitting. Allow for the thickness of bulky clothing, which could be worn in the winter.

2. Measure the widest part of the subject's chest. This will usually be from directly under one armpit to the other. This will influence the width of the seat back.

3. Measure from the back of the heel to the back of the knee. This will determine the length of the leg rest extension and influence the seat height.

      ·         Add a minimum of 2 inches (5 cm) to this measurement to determine seat height. Unless the wheelchair is going to be foot propelled, the footrest needs that much room for clearance.

      ·         Take the next measurements while the person is sitting down. The arms should be at a 90 degree angle, and the shoulders should be relaxed and neutral.

4. Measure from the back of the hips to the back of the subject's knee. Add approximately 2.5 to 5 cm to determine the ideal seat depth. For an adult, there should be that much space from the edge of the seat to the back of the knee.

5. Measure from the tip of the elbow to the top of the hips. Again, the person should be in a sitting position with both arms at a 90 degree angle. This will determine the height of the armrest in relation to the seat.

6. Measure from the hips to the shoulders. This will determine the height of the seat back.

7. Measure from the hips to the top of the head. This will determine the necessary height of the headrest.

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6 Common Types of Diagnostic Medical Devices

Diagnostic medical equipment and supplies help clinicians to measure and observe various aspects of a patient's health so that they can form a diagnosis. Once a diagnosis is made, the clinician can then prescribe an appropriate treatment plan.

Diagnostic medical equipment is found in outpatient care centres for adult and paediatrics, in emergency rooms, as well as inpatient hospital rooms and intensive care units.

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The following list provides an overview of some of the most commonly used diagnostic tools.

Stethoscopes

Stethoscopes are probably the most recognizable of all medical diagnostic tools. They are used to listen to heart sounds, the lungs and even blood flow in the arteries and veins.

• Stethoscopes help diagnose:
• Pneumonia
• Bronchitis
• Heart palpitations
• Heart disease
• Arrhythmia
• Heart valve issues

Stethoscopes are also used along with a sphygmomanometer to measure blood pressure.

Electronic Stethoscopes improve sound quality when listening to the low-pitched heart sounds and the high-pitched pulmonary sounds. They can be connected to a computer to record and save the sounds. 

They can be hooked up to distributors that allow multiple people to listen on adjoining stethoscopes. This last feature is important when training interns, residents and fellows.

Sphygmomanometers

Evidence-based medicine has proven that the measure of blood pressure is important in determining the overall health of a person.

The sphygmomanometer can help diagnose:

• Diabetes
• High or low blood pressure
• Artery hardening
• Arterial plaque
• Hypotension

High blood pressure has been linked to several diseases. There are a few products that are used to measure blood pressure.

Manual sphygmomanometers are considered the most reliable. Mercury manometers don't require routine calibration, and therefore are used in high-risk scenarios.

Aneroid sphygmomanometers are a little less reliable because they can lose their calibration when bumped, which can be a common occurrence in health care settings. Wall-mounted styles can reduce this possibility, but should still have calibration checks to be sure. The aneroid style is easily identified as a mechanical unit with a dial for the readings, as well as a bulb and air valve.

Digital finger blood pressure monitors are the smallest and most portable. While easy to operate, they are a bit less accurate.

Digital sphygmomanometers, like the digital finger blood pressure monitors, are also electronic. They can be inflated either manually or automatically. They are easy to use, but derive blood pressure in an indirect way. Digital units measure mean arterial pressure, which basically translates into an average of the systolic and diastolic pressure. The digital sphygmomanometer then must derive what the systolic and diastolic readings would be.

Opthalmoscopes

Ophthalmoscopes are handheld tools that allow a physician to see into the fundus of a patient's eye. This type of diagnostic tool is commonly used in physical or outpatient exams.

Ophtalmoscopes can help diagnose:

• Bacterial infections
• Detached retinas
• Glaucoma

There are two types of ophthalmoscopes.

Direct ophthalmoscopes produce an upright image of approximately 15 times magnification. These tools are held as close to the patient's eye as possible.

Indirect ophthalmoscopes produce an inverted image of 2 to 5 times magnification. Indirect ophthalmoscopes are held 24 to 30 inches from the patient's eye. Indirects also have a more powerful light so they are more effective than directs when used in patients with cataracts.

Otoscopes

Otoscopes are handheld devices that allow physicians to look into the ear canal and view the tympanic membrane through the magnification lens. 

Otoscopes help diagnose:

• Ear infections
• Tinnitus (ringing in the ears)
• Causes of vertigo or dizziness
• Meniere’s disease
• Swimmers Ear

The head of the otoscope also has a light. The light, together with the magnifying lens, make it possible to view the outer and middle ear. The portion that the physician inserts into the ear canal is called the disposable speculum. Disposable specula are stored in a dispenser in the exam room so that a new, clean one can be attached to the otoscopes for each patient.

Electrocardiographs

Electrocardiographs measure the electrical activity of the heart. During this examination, heart rate can be recorded, as well as the regularity of the beats. These are two key indicators of any issues in the heart. Physicians can even read an electrocardiograph to determine the size and position of each heart chamber. And finally, a major use for the electrocardiograph is to diagnose damage to the heart, and the impact and efficacy of drug treatment or device implant.

Thermometer

Thermometers are used in all areas and levels of care, from routine physical exams, to emergency department triage, to inpatient care. There are now electronic thermometers that shorten the time necessary to measure a patient's temperature. The electronic ones can be set for the specific part of the body being measured, such as the mouth, under the armpit, rectally, or the ear.

4 Types of Protective Surgical Supplies for your Head

Operating Room staff members wear personal protective apparel to prevent themselves from acquiring an infection during a surgical procedure. From head to toe, there are different products and materials that provide protection and comfort.

Protective Gear Options:

• Surgical Caps
• Hoods
• Eye Protection
• Surgical Masks

Material Options:

Surgical Caps

• A paper-like absorbent material called scrim reinforced material

• Multi-layer polypropylene, for fluid resistance balanced with ventilation spun lace, the most absorbent, while still comfortable and soft

Surgical Hoods

• Lint-free, latex-free options lightweight multi-ply and heavy-weight polypropylene

• Lightweight single-ply polypropylene or heavyweight polypropylene material

Eye Protection

• Disposable Face Shields provide maximum eye and face protection. This product has a contoured foam material that wraps across the forehead, and the shield extends down from that foam band to protect the face. The shields typically resist fogging.

• Goggles that protect from fluids are used over normal prescription eyeglasses. These are typically made of soft, vinyl frames with built-in air vents and anti-fog lenses.

• Safety Glasses are usually the most economical choice for eye protection. Most manufacturers make them with a built-in brow bar and side shields with wide view lenses.

Surgical Masks

Procedure: Procedure masks have a few options for materials within this category alone. The basic materials however consist of a tissue material on the inner and outer of the mask, with the potential to opt for a softer cellulose material on the inside as well. Additionally, the polypropylene styles improve fluid resistance for the wearer.

Isolation: Fluid-resistant on the outside, with the comfort of cellulose on the inside, these masks also have a bendable nosepiece to ensure proper fit.

Hypoallergenic: These are helpful for people with sensitive skin. Manufacturers can achieve the hypoallergenic feature by not using any dyes or other colorants in the masks. These masks still are able to provide comfort by lining the inside and outside of the mask with cellulose, and by including a bendable nosepiece for enhanced fit.

Breathing Chamber: The breathing chamber mask looks like a Procedure Mask with the area in front of the mouth tented outward away from the wearer's lips. This keeps the mask off the face for easier breathing and clearer speech. The inner and outer lining could be cellulose, or the outer lining could be polypropylene for added fluid protection.

Cone-Style: Cone-style masks are easy to put on. The elastic-like headband straps over the back of the head, the nosepiece can be pinched by the wearer to ensure a tight fit around the nose, and the mouthpiece extends away from the wearer's mouth to provide easier breathing and speech.

Anti-Fog: Anti-Fog masks work to keep the wearer's eyeglasses from fogging. They accomplish this with a foam strip lining across the top edge of the mask which prevents condensation from escaping up behind the eyeglass lenses. There are Chamber-Style and non-Chamber-Style Anti-Fog masks available on the market.

Fluid-Protective: Manufacturers make "fluid-protective" masks typically with cellulose on the inner and outer linings. They will often incorporate the foam strip at the top edge of the mask to limit condensation from escaping. A full-width nosepiece provides the wearer with a custom fit.

Fluid-Resistant: It's important to clarify here that "Fluid-Resistant" means that it provides better protection against fluids than "Fluid-Protective". Fluid-Resistant masks generally are made of polypropylene on the outside for fluid resistance and cellulose on the inside for comfort while still providing a degree of fluid resistance.

Fluid Resistant/Protective with Eye Shield: Both the Fluid-Resistant and Fluid-Protective style masks can be found with an added eye shield option for enhanced eye and face coverage. The eye shield extends up from the mask and cover the eyes and the forehead to beyond where the surgical cap meets the forehead, thus ensuring no skin exposure in that area of the body. The eye shields are made of non-glare material to maintain optimum visibility, and a foam strip is in place to protect against condensation from rising up from the mask.

By wearing these types of protective supplies, medical staff not only increase their own odds in avoiding infection, they also help protect their patients from the same problem.

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Why are medical scrubs usually green or blue?

Medical professionals can choose from a wide variety of scrubs with different colours and patterns. So why are plain blue and green ones so popular?

It used to be that doctors, especially those performing surgeries, didn’t even wear special work garments and simply operated in their regular clothes and with bare hands! However, the 1918 flu pandemic and the rise of antiseptic theory led to the use of surgical masks and rubber gloves and, eventually, antiseptic drapes, gowns and caps in the operating room.

Early OR garments were white, which emphasized cleanliness, but led to eyestrain and headaches for surgeons and their staff. Sometime in the mid-20th century, hospitals began to ditch white linens and switched to various shades of green, which made things easier for both the institutions and their surgeons.

For the hospitals, doing laundry was less of a headache. Ever try to wash blood out of something white? At best, you’re left with a green/brown discoloration. While white linens had to be frequently tossed and replaced (either because the discoloration was too bad or because frequent washing and bleaching destroyed the fabric); green and blue scrubs have a bit of a longer lifespan.

For surgeons, operating was less of a literal headache. Green and greenish-blue surgical linens make looking at the inside of a human body easier on the eyes, since they’re opposite red on the colour wheel.

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Why laughter really is the best medicine

Cat videos. A tickle attack. Tina Fey doing basically anything.

Chances are at least one of these things has reduced you to a fit of giggles or you can think of something else that’s left your eyes watery and your abs aching. Think about how that felt — did all your muscles turn to jelly and your entire body relax? Did you momentarily forget your annoying day at the office?

However you’d describe the experience, it probably felt great. And there are plenty of reasons why: a good laugh can do everything from soothing tension by taming stress and stimulating circulation to boosting endorphins, the feel-good brain chemicals responsible for that post-hilarity high. A study even found that participants had a higher tolerance for pain after watching funny clips from South Park, The Simpsons, and Friends.

Cracking up is also a great way to bond — studies show it’s 30 times more likely to happen in a social context than when alone. Sharing a joke or a laugh helps us connect on a personal, human level, it builds and strengthens relationships. These strong bonds have been shown to be possibly the most important piece in long and healthy lives. There’s always time for a good joke.

But laughter isn’t just a temporary fix — research shows it has long-term benefits too. Some studies indicate that a sense of humour is associated with enhanced immune function and one study found that depressed patients who took part in a Laughter Yoga group (which is exactly what it sounds like) experienced a significant decrease in depression and a significant increase in life satisfaction, suggesting the laughing practice was at least as effective as group exercise for boosting mental health.

It may not come as a surprise then that laughter plays a pretty important role in health care too. In fact, it’s a sneaky way many doctors get nervous patients to relax and the tactic is often hugely successful.

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The top 4 most shocking medical stories

This catalogue of medical oddities, miraculous recoveries, open questions and unsolved mysteries is so complex and fascinating, that millions of books and articles have been written about them.

While oddities are not particularly desirable, miracles make us happy and strengthen our faith. 

Unfortunately, many medical mysteries remain unsolved. They are similar to an intriguing puzzle, but with most of the pieces missing. They make us realize how much we still need to learn about something we thought we knew so well: the human body.

Here is the top 4 list of the most shocking medical stories that are both captivating and unbelievable!

Miraculous Recovery after Falling 47 Stories

The Moreno brothers, Alcides and Edgar, were working on a window-washing platform attached to a skyscraper in New York, when the platform collapsed. The 16-foot-long aluminium swing to the roof failed and sent Alcides and Edgar Moreno falling 47 stories, Edgar didn’t survive, but Alcides cheated death.

The doctors performed at least 16 surgeries, after Moreno broke his ribs, both legs and his right arm, plus he badly injured his spine. The medical staff described the victim’s recovery as “miraculous” and “unprecedented.” Doctors predicted that Moreno’s recovery would be complete in one to two years.

Teen Survives 118 Days Without a heart

D’zhana Simmons is literally a walking, talking medical miracle. The brave teenager lived for about four months without a heart, as she a waited a new, functional heart to replace the damaged one. 

Simmons suffered from dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), meaning her weak and enlarged heart wasn’t pumping blood efficiently. The surgeons performed an initial transplant, but the heart malfunctioned and had to be quickly removed. Meanwhile, D’zhana was kept alive by a custom-built artificial blood-pumping device.

Allergic to H2O

Whether it’s taking a hot bath, brushing your teeth, cleaning the house, or simply quenching your thirst, water is an essential part of our daily routine. We just cannot live without water! That is why it is a wonder to us that people can be allergic to water.

Alexandra Allen developed a one in 230 million skin disorder – Aquagenic Urticaria. If her skin comes in to contact with water, itchy red welts, lumps and blisters appear all over the body. Showering is a really painful experience for her. Alexandra cannot drink water, coffee or tea, she cannot even eat fruits because they trigger the burning rash on the skin and make her throat swell up, but her body seems to tolerate Diet Coke.

Giving Birth to a Mummy

Zahra Aboutalib delivered a child she’d been carrying for almost half a century. This shocking yet fascinating story began in 1955 when Zahra went into labour. She was rushed to a hospital, but after watching a woman dying on the operation table during a Caesarean section, Zahra fled back to her small village outside Casablanca. After the pains were gone and the baby stopped kicking, Zahra considered him a “sleeping baby”. “Sleeping babies” are, according to Moroccan folk belief, babies that can live inside a woman’s womb to protect her honour.

When Zahra was 75, the excruciating pains occurred again. Doctors performed an ultrasound test and discovered that her “sleeping child” was actually an ectopic pregnancy. What is even more amazing is how Zahra survived and how the dead foetus was accepted by the body just like another organ. 

Generally, this doesn’t happen. If not discovered in time, the growing foetus will eventually strain and burst the organ that contains it. Under these circumstances, the mother has few surviving chances. After nearly five hours, the surgeons successfully removed Zahra’s calcified foetus.

The world of medicine is full of tales of the bizarre from the rarest and mysterious diseases to the oddest medical anomalies. Every so often, doctors encounter a patient with a problem so unusual that tests the limits and mysteries of the human body.

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How to use an AED machine the right way!

An AED (Automated External Defibrillator) is a medical device that gives the heart an electric shock when someone’s heart has stopped and they go into cardiac arrest.

The great thing about an AED machine is that you can use it on children over one year old and adults of any age.

Ambulances have them on board, but using an AED in the minutes before an ambulance arrives can double someone’s chances of survival. So it is up to you to think quickly and find the nearest AED.

If you would like access to an AED at all times, why not buy one for your home or office? Supply Doctor’s online medical supply store has a wide range of AED machines to choose from, plus even a training manikin to practice on! Take a look today and place your order.

Many public places keep an AED as part of their first aid equipment. Places such as shopping centres, train stations, airports, offices and schools. If you don’t have access to an AED and you haven’t purchased one for yourself yet, then it is time to call the emergency personnel and do ordinary CPR until the ambulance arrives.

So, how do you use an AED device? An AED device is pretty simple to use, and you can use it with no training at all. The machine will analyse someones heart rhythm and then use visual or voice prompts to guide you through each step.

     ´        First, make sure someone has called for an ambulance, and if an AED isn’t immediately available, give CPR until someone can bring you an AED.

     ´        As soon as you’ve got an AED, switch it on! It will immediately start to give you a series of visual and verbal prompts informing you of what you need to do. Follow these prompts until the ambulance arrives or someone with more experience can take over.

     ´        Take the pads out of the sealed pack. Remove or cut through the clothing and wipe away any sweat from the chest.

     ´        Remove the backing paper and attach the pads to their chest.

     ´        Place the first pad on their upper right side, just below their collarbone as shown on the pad.

     ´        Then place the second pad on their left side just below the armpit. Make sure you position the pad lengthways, with the long side in line with the length of their body.

     ´        Once you have done this, the AED will start checking the heart rhythm. Make sure that no one is touching the person. Continue to follow the voice / visual prompts that the machine gives you until help arrives.

Shocking surgical items that have been left inside patients!

Other than removing the wrong kidney or something like that, the worst thing a surgeon could possibly do is leave something inside of you that doesn’t belong there! While this is rare, almost 800 patients have had surgical instruments left inside of them, leading to readmission, additional surgeries, abscesses, intestinal fistulas, obstructions, visceral perforations and even death.

Studies have estimated that this happens once in every 5500 to 7000 surgeries, and a typical hospital has about two of these incidents each year.

It is not surprising that these mistakes are expensive ones. In 2007, the average price of removing one of these items was $63 631 plus let’s not forget the lawsuits which can run from about $2 million to $5 million.

The most common item that is left behind is usually a surgical sponge, those small squares of gauze that are used to mop up blood. Traditionally, nurses keep track of sponges by counting them before and after surgeries. But sponges can be hard to find when they are soaked in blood and tucked away out of sight; they are often left in the abdomen, pelvis and thoracic cavity.

In the past, hospitals used X-rays and bar codes to help detect lost material, but the best detection system is radiofrequency! Each piece of gauze has a tiny chip sewn into a pocket and operating room personnel can use a wand to detect whether a sponge has been left inside.

A recent study found that this technology helped locate 23 sponges left behind in nearly 3000 patients over 11 months.

However, sponges are not the only items being left inside patients. Equipment like sponges, towels, needles, instruments, retractors and other small items and fragments of tools have been found in patients.

In one of the most shocking cases, 16 objects were left in the body of a German patient named Dirk Schroeder. After a routine prostate cancer surgery, Schroeder experienced poor recovery and intense pain. It took several weeks for doctors to discover that objects had been left inside his body. These included a needle, a six-inch roll of bandage, a compress, swabs and even part of a surgical mask.

It seems like it is time for stricter, more standardised counting systems that involve all member of the hospital team, including surgeons, nurses, techs, anaesthesiologists, and radiologists.

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How an alcohol tester works in 4 quick steps

Many people wonder how an alcohol tester can work by simply testing your breath. How can that possibly be linked with the amount of alcohol in your bloodstream? Especially if you’ve had plenty water to drink and something to eat in the meantime. However, alcohol testing with breath analysis is highly accurate – here’s how it works.

You drink alcohol

The amount of alcohol you drink is constant, but individual variables will affect the speed at which it is absorbed into your body.

Absorption occurs

Alcohol is quite a small molecule and it doesn’t change as it is absorbed into your bloodstream, unlike the larger proteins and carbs in the food we eat.

Alcohol circulates

The alcohol moves around your body, affecting the way signals are sent around your brain – causing the effects of alcohol as we know them.

It reaches the lungs

When the alcohol circulating in your blood reaches the lungs, it will readily diffuse out of the blood, just as carbon dioxide does. Therefore, if you have alcohol in your blood you will also exhale alcohol, which can be detected by alcohol testing.

Problems with Alcohol Testing

Some problems can occur with alcohol testing because of two assumptions:

     ·         Alcohol detected on the breath may not have come from the bloodstream

     ·         The conversion of amount of alcohol measured to percentage of blood alcohol can vary among individuals.

Still, alcohol testing with the current breathalyzer and tools gives us readings that are generally accurate to ± 10%. This is accurate enough for the police to require blood alcohol testing, if you blow above a certain amount.

Supply Doctor is an online medical supply store that can provide you with the medical equipment you need at an affordable price. Looking for an alcohol tester to take with you on the go? Browse through the website and you'll find exactly what you need!

5 of the coolest dental offices you’ll ever see

Most of us cringe when we think of going to the dentist; no one looks forward to having their mouth wrenched open, while a vacuum sucks up your saliva. It gets a lot worse than that when the dentist finds a cavity. So here are 5 dental offices that are so cool, you’ll almost forget all about the pain.

The Hello Kitty Dental Office

There are Hello Kitty restaurants, hotels, hospitals, so why not a dentist office? For those that simply can’t stand the sterile environment of the standard dental office, the Hello Kitty dentist office is a welcome alternative. However, you’re going to have to travel to Japan just to clean your teeth.

The Royal Dental

It’s good to be king! And at the Royal Dental office in Romania, everyone is treated like royalty. Well, not exactly, but at least your dental needs are treated amongst office décor that looks like it comes from a royal palace.

The DFT – Dentistry for Teens

If your teenager is fussing about going to the dentist, then this dental office will have them hooked for hours. The office looks more like a place you would hang out at in the mall, with a counter that offers smoothies, game play, MAC browsing and online music. A comic book wall houses the latest comics while video screens have been installed against it for PlayStation and Xbox video games. Visitors can also choose between a DVD jukebox and Ms. Pacman console for entertainment.

The Kinderdentist

Located in Berlin, this dental office is something your kids will absolutely love to visit. The kinderdentist features a unique underwater world experience for kids, complete with pixilated fish and huge visual waves. Children will feel as if they’re in a submarine, searching the ocean floor for treasures as they get their teeth fixed.

The Jungle Roots Children's Dentistry

Here’s another dental office that would definitely attract kids. This Jungle themed office is complete with panoramic jungle scenes, stone benches, sculptural trees and even a bamboo hut. The dental office also has different zones appealing to visitors of all ages.

These dental offices will leave you awestruck for sure, and make you want to visit them time and time again.

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7 revolutionary medical technologies of the future

If we look into the near future, we can see the beginnings of a whole new world of medical treatments and equipment that the doctors of the past couldn’t even begin to imagine.

Take a look at these revolutionary medical technologies that could very well shape the future…

Anti-Bleeding Gel
The anti-bleeding gel creates a synthetic framework that copies the extracellular matrix, an awesome natural substance that helps cells in the body grow together. In a video, pigs blood is piped into a cut of pork, and when the pork is sliced it begins to bleed, but is stopped instantly with the Veti-Gel.

If this product becomes commercial, it could save millions of lives, especially in combat zones.

Magnetic Levitation
In 2010 scientists began looking into a way to create realistic human tissues using nanomagnets that allowed lab-grown tissue to levitate above a nutrient solution.

The result was the most realistic synthetically grown organ tissue ever grown! Typically, lab-grown tissue is made in a petri dish, but elevating the tissue allows it to grown in a 3D shape. The 3D growth pattern is a more perfect simulation of the way cells grow in the human body, which means this is a huge step forward in creating artificial organs for humans.

Artificial Cell Mimicry
If one organ isn’t working, it would be ideal to be able to replace it with a new one. Now this idea is moving down to the cellular level with a gel that mimics the action of specific cells.

The synthetic gel will take t

he place of the cytoskeleton in a cell, and when it is applied to a wound, it replaces any cells that were lost or damaged. In a way, it kind of works like a tiny sieve. Fluids can pass through the cell, which allow the wound to continue healing, but the artificial skeleton prevents bacteria from passing through the wound.

Brain Cells from Urine
Biologists have taken waste cells from urine and modified them with the use of retroviruses to create progenitor cells, which the body uses as the building blocks for brain cells. The urine-based cells have proven to shape into neurons with absolutely no unwanted mutations, like tumors.

The obvious medical benefit here is that getting cells from urine is pretty much freely available.

Electric Underwear
Believe it or not, but electric underwear can really save thousands of lives. When a patient is lying in a hospital bed for days, weeks or even months, they can develop bed sores. And you may not know this, but bed sores can be deadly

!

The electric underpants deliver a small electrical charge every 10 minutes – this effect is the same as the patient moving on their own as it activates muscles and increases circulation.

Brain Damage Repair
The alternative to extensive brain damage rehabilitation could be a zap on the tongue! Your tongue is connected to the nervous system and some lead directly to the brain. Based on that fact, the PoNS (Portable Neuro Modulation Stimulator) stimulates specific nerves on the tongue to hopefully focus the brain on repairing the damages.

The PoNS could be used to repair the brain from anything, including alcoholism, Parkinson’s, strokes and multiple sclerosis.

Human Powered Equipment
Pacemakers are used in about 700 000 people right now to regulate their heart rhythms. However after seven years or so, the device runs out of juice and needs to be replaced. Well, scientists may have solved the problem by developing a way to harness electricity from the motion of a beating heart and use it to power a pacemaker.

If this device works, it could revolutionize medical science as a whole by using human-generated electricity to power a range of medical devices.

It goes without saying that society is moving faster than it ever has. As the years have gone by, medical technology has truly evolved and surged forward with speed and accuracy – we look forward to these revolutionary medical technologies of the future!

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Doctors reveal how a stethoscope actually works

Stethoscopes still play an important role in diagnosing heart, lung and vascular conditions. But how exactly do they work? Dr. Bhavani Balaravi of Raleigh Cardiology explained:

A stethoscope enhances body sounds and transmits those sounds to our ears. A typical model has a flat, round chest piece covered by a thin, tightly stretched skin of plastic called a diaphragm. The diaphragm vibrates when sound occurs. These high-frequency sounds travel up the hollow plastic tubing into hollow metal earpieces and into the doctor’s ears.

What sounds does the doctor hear when using a stethoscope? A healthy adults heart makes tow sounds called a “lub” and a “dub”. The lub sound is created by near simultaneous closure of the mitral and tricuspid valves located between the atria and ventricle of the heart. When the blood leaves the heart via the aorta and pulmonary arteries, the near simultaneous closure of the aortic and pulmonary valves create the dub sound.

When the valves do not close completely, a raspy or blowing noise can occur. This is a heart murmur, an extra sound produced as a result of turbulent blood flow during heart beats, which can mean a valve disorder is present.

Stethoscopes can be used for a number of different health problems, including determining blood pressure. Overall they are an incredibly important tool that doctors have been using for decades.

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One size doesn't fit all: How to find the perfect doctor for you

While it may not seem that important, a doctor-patient relationship is actually one of the most intimate and important relationships there are. Doctors are among the few professionals we interact with in an open, exposed and completely vulnerable way, plus they also have a tremendous influence on your health and well-being.

That is why finding the perfect doctor should be your number one priority. If you are in the market for a new doctor, use these steps.

Step One: Gather names of potential doctors
Nothing can compare to the real life opinions and insight of people you trust, so start by getting doctor recommendations from friends and family. Once you’ve gotten a few names, take to the internet.

There are numerous sites to help find and grade physicians. The best option is to simply search for “primary care physician” or “general practitioner” on Google. A great consumer-friendly site which allows you to search by city and specialty is recomed.co.za.

Step Two: Vet each potential doctor
Now that you have a list of doctors who might fit your criteria, it is time to do some deeper sleuthing. Here are six primary considerations you should have when you are researching a new doctor.

1. Cost (My bill is how much???)

2. Doctor expertise (Do I need a specialist?)

3. Board certification (Prove it!)

4. Location and availability (Are you there for me?)

5. Doctor style (Dr. Right?)

6. Office amenities and overall experience (All the little things)

The Takeaway
Finding the perfect doctor for yourself does take some time and homework, but it is worth the investment. By asking for recommendations, using the internet and call around, you can narrow down the options and find Dr. Right.

How did you find your doctor? 

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