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Showing posts from April, 2015

Hospital News - Dirty Hospital Canteens and Rats

From Malay Mail Online Serdang Hospital canteen is a disgrace PETALING JAYA, April 19 — Customers are wary of dining in hospitals after news broke about the filthy state of Tengku Ampuan Rahimah Hospital canteen in Klang on Tuesday.   Malay Mail checked seven hospitals in the Klang Valley and Putrajaya yesterday on their state of hygiene.   The checks revealed an appalling state of affairs in Serdang Hospital canteen, with the floor littered with plastic containers, cutlery, plastic straws and soiled tissue paper.   There was a foul smell in the canteen due to poor ventilation and washbasins were clogged with stagnant water. Despite signs asking customers to put their dishes away after eating, there was no proper indication of where to put them. Although there were cleaners present, there were not enough to clean the tables quickly enough for the next customer, forcing them to eat on sticky tables with plates and cups left behind for more than 15 minutes. Housewife Se

Does Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) Injection Work?

From PainScience.Com - Sep 2014 Blood therapy, anyone? Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections bathe troubled cells in a concentrated mixture made from your own blood. Hopefully this stimulates healing where it is otherwise failing — especially stubborn, slow-motion injuries like tendinitis — but no one really knows for sure yet. Despite all the not-knowing, it’s easy to pay someone to do this for you these days: extract some of your blood, spin it in a centrifuge to get the platelets, and then pump them back into you. It’s not cheap, but PRP injections have become super popular, particularly with elite athletes (ever the guinea pigs for unproven, expensive new treatments for musculoskeletal injuries). In the fall of 2009, ScienceBasedMedicine.org scathingly criticized the marketing of PRP: Without any clear evidence of benefit beyond placebo, PRP is now being marketed aggressively as a cure-all for sports injuries. And at about $300 per injection (the NYT reports $2000/treatmen

Adult Sinusitis Guidelines Updated

From NEJM Journal Watch - April 2015 By Kelly Young Edited by Susan Sadoughi, MD , and Richard Saitz, MD, MPH, FACP, FASAM The American Academy of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery Foundation has updated its 2007 guidelines on managing adult sinusitis. The guidelines, published in Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery , stress shared decision-making between clinicians and patients, particularly in determining whether to try watchful waiting for uncomplicated acute bacterial sinusitis or to prescribe antibiotics right away. Some of the other changes in recommendations include: To relieve the symptoms of acute bacterial rhinosinusitis, clinicians may recommend analgesics, topical intranasal steroids, nasal saline irrigation, or a combination. When antibiotics are prescribed, the recommended first-line treatment is amoxicillin with or without clavulanate for 5–10 days. For chronic rhinosinusitis, clinicians should assess the patient for other chronic conditions (e.g., as