Results for search "Surgery: Misc.".
Seniors who’ve had a heart attack should probably delay any elective surgeries for three to six months, a new study advises.
People aged 67 and older face double to triple the risk of life-threatening complications -- like a stroke or a second heart attack -- if they m...
In a finding that challenges conventional thinking on when people with failing heart valves but no symptoms should get surgery, a new study suggests these patients would fare far better if they had their valves replaced right away with a minimally invasive procedure.
The results, published this week in the New England ...
A new guidance issued jointly by groups representing U.S. surgeons, anesthesiologists and gastroenterologists affirms that most people taking popular GLP-1 weight-loss meds can keep taking them in the weeks before a surgery.
Concerns had arisen because the drugs, which include semaglutide (Ozempic...
Some rectal cancer patients might be spared surgery and the lifelong need for a colostomy bag if they undergo MRI screening, a new study finds.
The scans might accurately predict which patients have a higher odds for cancer recurrence and require surgery plus chemotherapy, and which can forgo surgery and opt for a "watch-and-wait" strategy instead.
“After undergoing chemothera...
Heart bypass operations have gotten safer, but not everyone is benefiting equally: New data shows that Black patients face a 22% higher odds of dying in the hospital after their surgeries.
“We found Black patients who have coronary artery bypass surgery experience higher rates of severe postoperative complications, including death and cardiac arrest," said study lead author
Cataract surgery could restore good vision to older people and by doing so cut their odds for potentially life-threatening falls, a new study finds.
Folks who got the surgery had significantly lower odds for bone fractures and brain hemorrhages linked to falling compared to people with cataracts who didn't get the operation, researchers report.
The benefits were even greater than ex...
The repeated fasting required for multiple surgeries in a row can slow a patient’s recovery and increase the risk of death, a new study warns.
Surgical patients are asked to not eat after midnight prior to their procedure, to reduce the risk that they&r...
After Black patients undergo a surgery, they are much more likely than their white peers to receive only an opioid for post-op pain relief, rather than a more nuanced combo of analgesics, a new study finds.
So-called "multimodal analgesia" is the recommended way to go, experts say, but Black patients are 29% less likely to receive it.
“We know that multimodal analgesia provide...
Pop tunes, smooth jams and banging beats can help people more easily recover from surgery with fewer painkillers, a new review finds.
Listening to music reduces the anxiety, pain and heart rate of patients waking up from surgery, researchers found.
As a result, surgical pati...
Women and men experience similar rates of dangerous complications after a major heart surgery.
So why are women dying at higher rates than men when these complications strike?
That's the main question raised by a new study that involved more than 850,000 cases of Medicare beneficiaries who underwent high-risk heart surgeries.
These operations included heart bypass, aortic ane...
A shorter course of post-mastectomy radiation doesn't jeopardize a patient's chances of successful breast reconstruction, a new study finds.
About 40 percent of people with breast cancer have mastectomies, followed by five to six weeks of radiation therapy to kill any can...
Hopping backward is a good test to see if someone’s ACL surgery has gone well, a new study says.
That backward hop is an effective way of measuring the strength of a patient’s knee function, as well as the strength of their quadriceps, researchers reported recently in the Journal of Sp...
There have been 50 face transplants performed in 11 countries since the surgery was pioneered back in 2005, and long-term outcomes have been favorable, a new review finds.
In total, 85% of people receiving these complex surgeries survived five years and 74% were still alive a decade after transplant completion, researchers report.
When the numbers focused on deaths linked to the tra...
Fluorescent light can be used to highlight bacteria that hides in wounds, causing infections and slowing down the healing process, a new evidence review says.
A handheld fluorescent device can light up bacteria in 9 out of 10 wounds that traditional clinical treatment would overlook, according to a study in the journal A...
The risk of death associated with donating a kidney is at an all-time low, a new study finds.
A kidney donor’s risk -- already small a decade ago -- is now lower by more than half, researchers found.
Fewer than one death occurs for every 10,000 kidney donations, according to res...
At least 20 million hernia surgeries are performed globally each year, making it one of the most common medical procedures in the world. But does gender matter when it comes to hernia risk?
New Australian research says yes: Half of the nearly 436,000 hernia repair procedures performed in adults in that country between 2017 and 2021 were for inguinal (groin) hernias, with men accounting fo...
Wildfire smoke could interfere with the safety of surgeries, a new study warns.
Inhaling the smoke could complicate the effects of anesthesia on surgical patients, and it also might hamper their recovery, researchers reported Aug. 6 in the journal Anesthesiology.
“Wildfire smoke poses significant health risks, particularly in people with preexisting heart and lung dis...
Surgery is being overused to correct breastfeeding difficulties in infants, a new report says.
A growing number of newborns are being diagnosed with ankyloglossia, also called “tongue-tie.â€
Tongue-tie restricts the tongue’s range of motion in a baby. An unusually short or tight band of tissue holds the tip of their tongue close to the bottom of their mouth, making...
The virus responsible for COVID-19 is widespread among wildlife, a new study finds.
SARS-CoV-2 was detected in six common backyard species, including deer mice, opossums, raccoons, groundhogs, cottontail rabbits and red bats, researchers reported July 29 in the journal
Women who are diagnosed with breast cancer in one breast, even in the early stages, sometimes opt for a double mastectomy, due to the fear that the cancer will migrate to the other breast.
But that decision may not offer any real benefit in terms of survival, an exhaustive new study of more than 600,000 patients tracked for two decades has found.
Canadian researchers report that wh...
Brent Ruch, a collegiate basketball center, opted to have his left knee replaced at age 35 after struggling with pain for years.
“Walking with a limp and living with a consistent aching pain was physically and emotionally difficult. I didn’t want to live like that,†said Ruch, who lives in a suburb of Chicago.
When his doctor told him he’d be pla...
Many tweens and teens are filling prescriptions for opioids far in advance of surgeries unlikely to be associated with severe pain afterward, a new study says.
Worse, a significant minority continue to fill those opioid prescriptions three to six months after
Diabetes can make lumbar spinal fusion surgery much more likely to fail, a new study says.
People with diabetes are nearly three times more likely to have their vertebrae fail to properly heal and fuse together, what surgeons call a non-union complication, according to results recently published in the journa...
Opioid addiction often starts with a prescription for post-surgery pain relief, and two new studies identify a handful of procedures that account for large shares of those prescriptions.
The findings were published recently in two major medical journals.
"Our findings suggest that surgical opioid prescribing is highly concentrated among a small group of procedures," said
You're getting heart surgery, but your surgeon notices a new anomaly that perhaps could be fixed at the same time.
That's more likely to happen if you're a man than a woman, new studies find.
The findings came as little surprise to lead researcher Dr. Catherine Wagner, an integrated thoracic surgery re...
John Nicolas was deep into kidney transplant surgery when he decided to ask his doctors if they'd started yet.
"At one point during surgery, I recall asking, 'Should I be expecting the spinal anesthesia to kick in?'"Nicolas, 28, recalled in a news release. "They had already been doing a lot of work and I had been completely oblivious to that fact. Truly, no sensation whatsoever."
Ni...
A surgery that helps 7- to 10-year-olds with cerebral palsy walk also helps older kids and teens with the condition, a groundbreaking study shows.
"We had thought that the older kids would not do as well, but there was really no difference in outcomes between the two groups," said senior study author Dr. Robert Kay, director of th...
British retiree David Butler was surprised to find that he had prostate cancer, and that it had spread to the lymph nodes and other places near the prostate.
"I had literally no symptoms apart from needing to pee more quickly whenever I did go to the toilet,"Butler, 77, said in a ...
Older adults who avoid surgery because they fear general anesthesia will cause thinking declines need not worry, researchers report.
A study of more than 1,000 patients who had heart surgery at four hospitals in Canada found that the amount of anesthesia used did not affect the risk of delirium after surgery. Post-surgery delirium may contribute to cognitive decline.
How much anesth...
Despite recent concerns that taking Ozempic, Wegovy or other GLP-1 medications might be unsafe before a surgery, a new review has uncovered no such danger.
The issue arose because weight-loss drugs slow gastric emptying. The thought was that food might linger in the stomach so patients might be at higher risk of aspirating food particles and choking while under anesthesia.
But a ne...
A woman who was the second person to ever receive a kidney from a genetically modified pig has had the transplanted organ removed due to complications linked to a heart pump she is using, her doctors said.
Lisa Pisano, 54, remains hospitalized and has been transferred back to kidney dialysis after having the transplanted organ removed.
The organ, transplanted 47 days earlier, had n...
Nerve surgery can reduce the number of headache days for people who suffer frequent migraines, a new review finds.
The procedure also can decrease the frequency and intensity of migraine attacks, according to results published in the June issue of the journal
California skateboarder Jared Hager has become the first person to receive a transparent skull replacement, which allows doctors to better view the function of his brain.
The window has allowed doctors to both monitor his progress and test new and better scanning methods for assessing brain health.
Hager, 39, of Downey, Calif., sustained a traumatic brain injury from a skateboarding...
A 4,000-year-old skull provides evidence that ancient Egyptians might have tried to treat cancer, a new study claims.
Microscopic observation of the skull revealed 30 or so lesions scattered across its surface that are consistent with cancer, researchers report.
T...
Heading for surgery? The ratio of women to men in the operating room could influence your recovery, new research shows.
Hospitals in Canada that had 35% or more surgeons and anesthesiologists who were female on staff tended to produce better outcomes for patients undergoing surgery, ...
Chicago resident Arthur "Art"Gillespie fell ill in early March 2020 with COVID, after he and his father went to visit an uncle in a nursing facility.
"I was hospitalized for 12 days with a high fever and cough, and during that time, they were taking scans of my lungs, which showed stage 1 lung cancer on my right lung,"Gillespie, 56, recalled in a news release. "I had no symptoms of lung c...
Robot-assisted total knee replacements tend to have better outcomes on average, a new study reports.
Unfortunately, there's a downside"having a surgical robot assist a human surgeon can make the procedure much more costly.
Patients who had a robot-assisted knee replacement stayed i...
A blood test could help doctors spot the signs of knee osteoarthritis at least eight years before it shows up on X-rays, a new study claims.
After analyzing the blood of 200 white British women, half diagnosed with knee osteoarthritis and half without, researchers discovered a small number of biomarkers distinguished the women with osteoarthritis from those without it.
"We found we ...
Each year, thousands of Americans head home after a surgery clutching prescription opioids to help ease post-surgical pain.
Trouble is, most won't use all those pills, and that could lead to a lot of misuse and addiction, one study found.
And with National Prescription Drug Take Back Day slated for Saturday, it's time yet again to rais...
Most seniors probably view any emergency surgery with a certain level of anxiety.
Now, a new study seeks to sort out who might be at highest risk for a complication from such surgeries -- and which surgeries are more prone to trouble.
Two key factors emerged: How frail any patient over 65 was prior to their emergency procedure, and whether the surgery was deemed to be high- or low...
New Jersey native Lisa Pisano was staring down the end of her days.
The 54-year-old had heart failure and end-stage kidney disease, but several chronic medical conditions excluded her as a candidate for heart and kidney transplants.
"All I want is the opportunity to have a better ...
It's long been documented that women have a slimmer chance of surviving heart bypass surgery compared to men, and researchers believe that they now know why.
Women tend to be more vulnerable to blood loss during surgery -- red blood cells, specifically -- than men are, concluded a team from Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City.
Early-onset arthritis may hit as many as one in every four young people who undergo anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction surgeries, new research warns.
The arthritic pain emerges within 6 to 12 months post-surgery, according to Michigan State University (MSU) researchers.
Many of these cases occur in people under 40 and go unrecognized and untreated.
"We're trying...
Researchers say they are close to perfecting a bioengineered, 3D printed replacement human ear that looks, feels and resists injury like the real thing.
Such an advance would greatly benefit people with congenitally malformed ears from birth, or those who have had an ear lost or damaged through injury, says a team at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City.
Right now, "ear reconst...
People taking weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy need to drop them in the days or weeks prior to surgery, a new study warns.
Folks on one of these drugs -- known as GLP-1 receptor agonists -- have a 33% higher risk of developing pneumonia by breathing in their own vomit during surgery, researche...
Dr. Gary Gibbon didn't have long to live.
A harsh cocktail of chemotherapy, radiation and immunotherapy for his advanced lung cancer had permanently destroyed his lungs and caused irreparable damage to his liver.
But Gibbon, a 69-year-old resident of Santa Monica,...
A surgical treatment used to treat conditions like carpal tunnel syndrome and back sciatica might also help relieve the pain of patients with diabetic neuropathy, a new study finds.
Surgical nerve decompression significantly eased pain among a small group of people with diabetic neuropathy for up to five years, researchers report.
In the surgery, researchers removed inflexible tissu...
THURSDAY, March 21, 2024 (HealthDay news) -- For the first time ever, doctors have transplanted a genetically edited pig kidney into a human suffering from advanced kidney failure.
Such pig kidneys, altered to lower the risk of rejection and disease, have been successfully placed into monkeys and brain-dead human donor bodies.
But Rick Slayman, 62, is the first living patient to rec...
Weight-loss surgery may help patients struggling with obesity and kidney failure become eligible for a lifesaving transplant, researchers report.
Obesity is a key reason why some kidney patients are turned down for a transplant.
But weight-loss surgery "not only helps in reducing the patients' weight to a level where they can safely receive a transplant, but also addresses the broad...
Nurses who specialize in anesthesia have issued new guidelines to reduce the risk that patients taking weight-loss drugs like Ozempic or Wegovy throw up during surgery.
"These medications have exploded in popularity," said
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