"Extreme Makeover" Cosmetic Surgery
In this Age of Obesity, more and more people are opting for multiple cosmetic surgery procedures in one sitting.
These so-called "extreme makeovers," which take their name from recent TV shows about plastic surgery, provide a number of benefits to the patient. These include the fact that they are customized to each individua's health situation, total surgical time is shorter, fewer incisions are needed, the overall cost is lowered, and there is only a single recovery period instead of several.
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Weight-Loss Surgery Cures Teen Diabetes
When stomach-stapling surgery is performed on obese adolescents, they usually experience immediate and complete relief from health-imperiling type 2 diabetes, a recent study has showed.
While other studies have indicated such a benefit for adults with type 2 diabetes, this is the first research to examine the issue in children. Type 2 diabetes is usually connected with obesity, which has been characterized as an epidemic in America today. More than 17 percent of American children age 6-19 are obese (having a body mass index of 30 or more), according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Bariatric Surgery Patients Lead Comparatively Unhealthy Lifestyle
Patients who have undergone weight-loss surgery, even though they may have lost 100 pounds or more, engaged in poorer eating and exercise habits compared with obese people who lost the same amount of weight through diet and exercise, a recent study has found.
The study also found that adopting a strict diet and an exercise regimen can produce the same results as bariatric surgery for severely obese people in terms of keeping weight off over the long term.
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MRI Excellent in Investigating Back Pain
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is becoming more and more useful to doctors in identifying the multiple possible causes of back pain, according to a recent evaluation of the technology from an orthopedic perspective.
The evaluation, which appears in the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, observed that MRI is effective and even vital over a wide range of clinical disorders, and that, in years to come, technical developments will produce yet more orthopedic benefits.
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MRI Excels at Detecting Wrist Ligament Tears
The most advanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine is nearly as effective as going in surgically to detect tears in wrist ligaments, according to a recent study.
The author of the paper in the American Journal of Roentgenology, Thomas Magee of Neuroskeletal Imaging in Merritt Island, Fla., examined the magnetic resonance (MR) wrist images of 300 patients at his community imaging service. The scans were performed with a so-called 3-Tesla MRI machine, which is twice the magnetic strength of the most common system, the 1.5-Tesla MRI.
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Brain Scan Reveals Bullies' Pleasure Pattern
In two unexpected findings of a recent brain-scan study, bullies appear to gain pleasure from fighting, lying and destroying property - and they seem to lack the ability to control their violent and thrill-seeking emotions.
In the study, which appeared in the journal Biological Psychology, the researchers examined the brain activity of eight 16- to 18-year-old boys with histories of lying, stealing, committing vandalism, and bullying - a clinical condition known as aggressive conduct disorder. Their brain scans were compared with those of a second group of boys without the disorder.
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Exercise Improves Outcome of Bariatric Surgery
Patients who incorporated regular physical activity into their lives after bariatric surgery lost more weight and had better general health and vitality and less depression and anxiety than those who were inactive, a recent study shows.
"Bariatric surgery is quickly emerging as a standard treatment for severe obesity, although weight loss outcomes vary. These results suggest that patient behavior, particularly physical activity, may promote both enhanced weight loss and greater improvements in health-related quality of life following bariatric surgery," said lead author Dale Bond, of the Miriam Hospital's Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine.
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Weight-Loss Surgery Helps Obese Moms' Pregnancies
Women who underwent dramatic weight loss after bariatric surgery had fewer pregnancy and delivery problems and fewer newborn complications than obese pregnant mothers, according to a recent study. The investigation, which analyzed the data from 75 clinical studies, discovered that pregnant women who had undergone weight-loss surgery (laparoscopic adjustable band surgery) experienced fewer complications than obese women. In particular, 0 percent of weight-loss women suffered from gestational diabetes, versus 22.1 percent of obese women, and 0 percent of weight-loss women had pre-eclampsia (pregnancy-induced high blood pressure), versus 3.1 percent of obese women. Also, women with bariatric surgery had less weight gain than the others.
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Weight-Loss Surgery May Eliminate Liver Disease
A dangerous liver disease that's a side effect of obesity appears to be completely overcome in a majority of patients as a result of the weight loss following bariatric surgery, according to a recently published report. Obesity, which has become epidemic in the United States, has grown from afflicting 15 percent of the population in 1980 to 32.9 percent in 2004. It leads to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in around 70 percent of the obese and in 85 percent to 95 percent of those who are morbidly obese. Obesity is defined using body mass index (BMI), which relates an individual's weight to his or her height. A person with a BMI of 30 or above is considered obese. People who are morbidly obese have a BMI of 40 or more.
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Weight-Loss Surgery With One Small Incision
Stomach banding is an important weapon in the war chest of the bariatric surgeon - but it typically requires five incisions and a considerable recovery time. But a new technique just coming into use needs just a single incision to accomplish the task of gastric banding, that is, tying off the top portion of the stomach so that food flow is restricted and slowed down. When the small, top part of the stomach is full, it signals the brain, which tells the body it's no longer hungry. This can lead to large reductions in weight for the morbidly obese, who are the only category of patients allowed to undergo the surgery.
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