Therapy

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The ‘sepsis team’

‘We are all aware of the importance of early diagnosis and rapid appropriate treatment of patients with severe sepsis. Yet, many patients still do not receive satisfactory early management and the application of recent guidelines for sepsis management is still inadequate,’ writes Jean-Louis Vincent MD PhD, from the Intensive Care Department, Erasme Hospital, Université Libre de Bruxelles,…

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World Health Summit 2011

The World Health Summit, to be held in Berlin on October 10 - 13, 2010 will bring together researchers, physicians, leading government officials and representatives from industry as well as from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and health care systems. Its aim is to address the most pressing issues that medicine and health care systems will face over the next decade and beyond and to develop…

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Bariatric surgery: A last resort -- or the only way to go?

More than half of the European population is overweight, or worst, obese. When diet and lifestyle changes do not result in permanent weight reduction in obese patients, bariatric surgery is now considered a final option. But, that’s far too late, says Professor Rudolf A Weiner, head of the surgical department at Sachsenhausen Hospital in Frankfurt/Main, Germany, and President of the German…

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MRI: Still the best tool for seizures

Anti-seizure medication is not successful in all patients, while in others such medication can have side effects. In recent years significant technical advances have delivered better imaging results, which, combined with growing demand for a surgical solution from patients whose medications do not control seizures, or those not wanting to take medication constantly, has led to an increase in…

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Proton therapy

As one of the most advanced forms of precision radiotherapy, proton therapy enables the irradiation of tumours located deep within the body, in the proximity of critical organs, such as the optic nerve or some brain areas. The Institut Curie has renovated its proton therapy centre in Orsay near Paris. Since 1991, when the original centre opened, it has treated over 5,000 patients (4,000 for eye…

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Plasma therapy: an alternative to antibiotics?

Cold plasma jets could be a safe, effective alternative to antibiotics to treat multi-drug resistant infections, says a study published this week in the January issue of the Journal of Medical Microbiology. The team of Russian and German researchers showed that a ten-minute treatment with low-temperature plasma was not only able to kill drug-resistant bacteria causing wound infections in rats but…

Liver Cancer in Cirrhotic Patients Effectively Treated with Radiofrequency Ablation

Researchers from Italy determined that radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is a safe and effective therapy for managing hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in cirrhotic patients. The high repeatability of RFA is advantageous in controlling recurrences of cancerous tumors in the liver. Results of this 10-year retrospective study are available in the January 2011 issue of Hepatology, a journal published by…

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Europe's inconsistent use of device therapy in the prevention of sudden cardiac death

Even though the use of implantable devices for the treatment of heart failure and heart rhythm disturbances has increased enormously in Europe in recent years, there still remain large differences between countries. Indeed, a report last year in the European Journal of Heart Failure found that there is an underuse of devices in many of the European countries surveyed.(1) This is especially so in…

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No more machines!

For many ICU patients, entering the Kloster Grafschaft, in Schmallenberg, Germany, a hospital specialised in pneumology and allergology, is a last resort. On average, they have been in an ICU for seven weeks and have failed three attempts to be weaned from the ventilator. They have been deemed ‘unweanable’.

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CT and PET - Improving radiation therapy planning

When planning radiotherapy the combination of positron emission tomography (PET) and Computed tomography (CT) can provide a better outcome than CT alone. Michael Krassnitzer asked Terri Bresenham MSc BSc, Vice President for Molecular Imaging at GE Healthcare, for her views on the value of PET/CT, the new EANM guidelines, novel tracers and the future of other hybrid imaging technologies.

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Ventilation-associated pneumonia

Every year in German hospitals about 15,000 patients acquire ventilation-associated pneumonias (VAP). This number, and the associated mortality, is striking enough to make it one of the topics at HAI 2010, the annual conference of the German Society for Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine (DGAI). Like many physicians, Dr Maria Deja, senior physician at the Charité Clinic for…

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