The heart is composed of 4 chambers: left and right atria, and left and right ventricles. These are composed of muscle. Like any other muscle in the body, when the heart is forced to work, it grows bi gger...
I agree with Kelly. Of course, cognitive therapy should be combined with antidepressants. The combination of both has been clearly shown to have the most benefit.
Chronic narcotic use is a very challenging issue. The data seems to indicate that chronic narcotic users show no better quality of life and no less pain than those managed with non-narcotics. Addition ally...
There is not necessarily a good answer to this. I have seen stents have clot form in them as early as a month or so and as late as years later. When one is years out, generally the same factors that c ause...
Fraternal twins have no more or less likelihood of sharing genes/traits than any other non-identical twin siblings. If your mother is BO (blood type B) and your father is OO (blood type O), then there remains...
As mentioned above, this is likely tinea versicolor, a fungus that lives on your skin. It is (usually) benign and does not need to be treated unless you do not like it cosmetically. It can be very dif ficult...
For severe refractory cases, it is usually best to provide an extended course of vancomycin with a taper at the end. Though not necessarily supported by data, I also tend to give people probiotics suc h...
Ventricular fibrillation, or vfib, is an arrhythmia which is incompatible with life. If a person has vfib, they need electrical defibrillation. As it is a pulseless rhythm (meaning there is no pulse i f...
Nausea and bloating are common side effects from any antibiotic. They generally go away on their own once an antibiotic have been stopped. You should talk to your doctor to see if an alternate antibio tic...
There are 3 main blood vessels of the heart: the right coronary artery, the left circumflex artery, and the left anterior descending artery. There are several branches as well. During a typical cardia c...
Long term use of simvastatin (years!) is safe, but a physician needs to monitor blood tests periodically to ensure there are no side effects on the liver or the muscles.
One of the other issues to consider is skewing the data and potentially preventing a drug that works from being approved. If people with low Hemoglobins are excluded, and somebody receives a blood tra nsfusion...
Gallstones are the most common disease in the gallbladder. They generally cause pain on the right side of the abdomen, just under the lungs. The pain can be flared with eating, particularly when eatin g...
FISH stands for Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization. It is a technique used for a variety of genetic conditions and cancers. A FISH being negative means that whatever is being tested for is not present Without...
This is well known among the medical community. People who are homozygous for CCR5 mutations are immune to HIV. However, to perform a stem cell transplant is not a benign procedure and may place someb ody...
Ablation should be reserved for patients who are either very symptomatic with their atrial fibillation or for whom medication control has proven difficult or impossible. There are a couple of differen t...
Homeopathy is the practice of diluting a substance in water until there is less than a molecule of that substance present in the water. The theory is that the water retains some memory of that substan ce...
There are many possible causes of seizure:
- The one most commonly associated is a seizure disorder, for which there may be no specific explanation. These almost always present in children and a dolescents...
The blood pressure given is not possible - the top number is, almost without exception, always higher than the bottom number. That being said, blood pressure control in patients with Alzheimer's disea se...
The color of mucus does not help much in determining if there is a sinus infection or not. A sinus infection is diagnosed clinically based on symptoms such as fever, tenderness over the sinuses, and t he...
Pyelonephritis refers to an infection of the kidney and the entire urinary tract and requires treatment with antibiotics. It is usually clinically diagnosed using urinalysis (UA) and urine cultures co mbined...
Ectopic pregnancies may decrease fertility if the embryo implanted itself in a location that causes scarring of the fallopian tubes, or if the surgery to remove the ectopic pregnancy causes scarring. This...
In theory, the cast prevents movement of the bones and is specifically designed to allow one to perform activities without worrying about the bones shifting and healing incorrectly. In practice, no ca st...
The white matter are the parts of the brain which contain axons, as opposed to gray matter, which contains the neuron cell bodies themselves. Axons are the part of the neuron which transmit informatio n...
In general, decreases in sex drive can be divided into two groups: biological and psychological. The biological group includes things like decreased testosterone (from things such as testicular atroph y...