While there have been fewer deaths in
recent years due to medical advancements, the number of men who are being
diagnosed with heart issues remains high, and prevention is better than cure.
Here are a few
ways to improve your heart health. For more information and advice, visit https://thenewalpha.com/
Eat
good fats.
Eating the right kind of fats is crucial
for keeping the heart healthy. Diets high in saturated fats such as red meat,
trans fats found in processed and fried foods, and hydrogenated oils can clog
arteries and cause high levels of cholesterol. By comparison, unsaturated fats
are proven to be good for heart health. Eat foods rich in these fats, such as
nuts, avocados, and olive oil to raise your good cholesterol and lower your bad
cholesterol.
The omega-3 fatty acid is also proven to
prevent heart disease, so adding oily fish to your diet twice a week can also
improve your heart health. These fats are also present in walnuts and flaxseed,
so sprinkle these on salads or cereals for a heart-healthy boost.
You should also up your intake of fruits
and vegetables, as these foods are high in fiber and antioxidants. They also
keep blood pressure levels healthy. High blood pressure increases the risk of a
heart attack. This is because they’re packed with potassium, which is proven to
lower blood pressure.
Get a check-up.
More
than half of American men don’t get regular medical check-ups, and many don’t
even know they’re at risk of a cardiac event. Conditions such as high blood
pressure and diabetes may have no symptoms, but can hugely increase the risk of
a heart attack. Make annual visits to your doctor, and any potential problems
are more likely to be caught early.
Exercise.
Obvious
and essential. Many men don’t exercise regularly, and the older we get, the
harder it is for us to get motivated to start a new regimen. Simply lifting
weights isn’t enough. Men need 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise, such as
aerobics, running, or swimming five times a week. Make it vigorous. You need to
be breaking a sweat for it to work.
Quit smoking.
There
are tens of millions of men in the United States that smoke, but smoking, even
chewing tobacco, is a major risk factor for heart issues. If you’re a smoker,
it’s time to quit. We know it’s hard, but ask friends and family for advice and
talk to your doctor about any help they may be able to offer you.
De-stress.
Men
tend to handle stress by keeping it all inside. This type of chronic stress can
lead to increased risk of heart disease. If you don’t feel comfortable talking
about the things that are causing you stress just yet, try other techniques
such as breathing techniques, massage, or meditation.
Getting a sprained ankle disrupts your routine. It keeps you from your sports or exercise regimen, forcing you to cut back your activity to virtually nothing. If you’re competitive, you’ll get antsy while in recovery mode right out of the gate. As much as you want to get back out there, you have to take the healing process seriously, so you don’t risk prolonging or exacerbating the injury. The goal is to get back out there as soon as possible, not to aggravate a simple sprain by acting on your impatient impulses. How can you heal a sprained ankle both quickly and efficiently?
Ice and Compression
Cryotherapy
should be one of the first things you do after suffering a sprained ankle. The
principles of applying cold compresses to an injury are proven to speed up the
healing process. However, it isn’t a situation where more is better. Only ice
your ankle to the extent it’s necessary since you don’t want to get frostbite.
A routine ice compress with gel packs on your ankle should last no longer
than 20 minutes at a time. If you feel that the cold is becoming too painful to
bear before that threshold, then only ice as long as you’re comfortable.
Regular
compression is necessary as well. The best way to stop swelling and provide
stability is with a brace or a wrap, whichever you have access to in order to
put some pressure on the injury.
Elevation
Another simple
home remedy is to elevate your ankle. Whenever you’re sitting or lying down,
which should be most of the time, prop up your ankle so that it’s resting above
your waist or heart. When you raise the ankle, the swelling has a chance to go
down. Elevation discourages unwanted fluid buildup around the injury, so let
gravity do the work. As you begin to get restless, just remember to capitalize
on the chance to relax and prop up your feet. You don’t know when you’ll get an
opportunity to have an extended break again.
Rest and Exercise
Of course, you
need to get adequate rest after any injury. Once you have recuperated, speak
with your doctor about the best time to get back on your feet. Entering into
the physical therapy portion of your recovery will have you feeling much more
encouraged about returning to normal. This isn’t the time to go full speed,
though. You need to achieve a balance between rest and exercise. It’s important
not to overwork your injury, but not pushing hard enough could weaken your
ankle. You know your body, so if something doesn’t feel right, speak with your
doctor about holding back or trying different exercises.
RICE is an
acronym that describes the treatment to follow when dealing with a sprained
ankle, and if done correctly, your recovery should be relatively seamless.
Rest, ice, compress, and exercise are the standards of care throughout the
healing process. When followed, you’ll be back out on the field or in the gym
before you know it.
Removing the
barriers of access to technology does not close the digital divide for African
American and older patients, according to new research from The
Ohio State University College of Medicine.
As part of a
larger examination of patient portal use, this study published in the journal Telemedicine and e-Health
looked at the use of patient portals while people are admitted in the hospital.
Over a one-year period, researchers found patients age 60 and over used the
portal less than patients ages 18 to 29, and African American patients used the
portal less than white patients.
“Patient-facing
technology like inpatient portals are intended to engage patients in their
health care by improving communication with the care team and allowing them to
access test results, progress notes and other information in their medical
records,” said Daniel
Walker, assistant professor of family medicine and biomedical informatics
in CATALYST,
the Center for the Advancement of Team Science, Analytics and Systems Thinking
in Health Services and Implementation Science Research in the College of
Medicine. “The lack of use of this technology may be limiting its ability to
improve health and health care.”
The overall
study has been led by Ann
Scheck McAlearney, professor of family medicine and executive director of
CATALYST, and was funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
McAlearney explained, “This large, pragmatic, randomized and controlled trial
has been recruiting patients admitted to six Ohio
State University Wexner Medical Center hospitals over the past two years.
It enables us to examine various factors influencing patients’ and providers’
use of and experience with the patient portal, including identifying these
disparities we have found.”
Patients enrolled in the study used a hospital-provided tablet with a password-protected patient portal application they could access. Patients were not prompted to use the patient portal by the study team. To measure portal usage, researchers looked at the total number of tasks completed during the hospital stay such as logging into the application, sending messages to the care team, viewing test results, ordering meals and accessing tutorials.
The 60 to 69 age group used the inpatient portal 45 percent less than the 18 to 29 age group and the 70 and over age group used the inpatient portal 36 percent less than the 18 to 29 age group. African American patients used the portal 40 percent less than white patients.
“When we
looked at the data, we saw older patients used the tutorial feature more than
younger patients signifying older patients may need more training resources in
order to increase use,” Walker said. “The use disparity between African
American and white patients suggests the differences in use may be more nuanced
and not simply an access issue. Additional intervention is needed to close the
digital divide.”
Future
analyses will explore the factors that contribute to the age and race
disparities to help develop educational interventions to close the gap in
technology use.
“There’s been
a rapid growth of technological resources to help patients manage their
health,” said Dr.
K. Craig Kent, dean of Ohio State’s College of Medicine. “With continued
innovation, it’s vital that all patients, regardless of age or race, are able
to use these tools that can significantly enhance communication and patient
care. As helpful as these tools can be, the research of our team at Ohio State
shows that we need to create approaches that are usable to all patients,
regardless of age and race.”
Additional
researchers from Ohio State who worked on this study include: Jennifer Hefner,
Naleef Fareed and Timothy Huerta.
By Abhinav Shashank, CEO and co-founder, Innovaccer.
Abhinav Shashank
The Johnsons were blessed with twins the day before; two healthy baby boys, haphazardly named Jill and John in the health records. Definitely, this marks the start of pediatric services in the family. Hospital records set for the twins hardly mark any difference, gender, weight, parents, address; all records read the same. The only visible difference is a skin allergy with the second baby.
Their names were changed to Jack and Ross in a
month, and records got multiplied by two. Vaccinations done within the first
month were registered in the records of Jill and John, while Jack and Daniel
got registered under fresh EHRs.
Is the
pediatric space ripe enough for Machine Learning?
How should the healthcare industry deal with
data redundancy or data hop, and maintain data integrity to ensure reliable
records? This is a real serious concern for pediatric organizations.
However, to our rescue is machine learning technology aiding the critical issue of record matching and streamlining medical procedures in child healthcare. ML has the potential to revolutionize the pediatric care ecosystem and assist the major challenges in healthcare operations of the young population.
With the global healthcare market estimated to reach a sweeping $11,908 billion by 2022 and fast-growing problems in the younger population, there is certainly a vast frame of exploration for pediatric focus and care delivery for the young. Being a continuously evolving age group with tailored and sensitive healthcare needs at different stages of growth, the pediatric population is most challenged when it comes to successful reforms and insights.
How are
EHRs doing injustice to the future of healthcare?
Kids from their birthdate are expected to face the EHR duplicity that scatters their record and essential medical data. The key facts of a newborn like weight, height, allergies, among others, are stored in an EHR that is occasionally hopped a month later, with a permanent name signing in.
Once a new EHR is registered with the new name, all medical information of the previous few months gets disconnected. This has a challenging impact on the entire care protocol. The critical notch here is incoherent vaccination and immunization information of the growing baby. Not only does it lead to seemingly real care gaps, but also ripples out to erroneous procedures and increased health costs.
Machine Learning is transforming the way
services are delivered globally. Detecting the minutest of factors in an
outcome, and cascading the learning over huge data, it can provide us with
crucial considerations which are evidently present but still go unnoticed by
us. ML is helping to deliver accurate algorithms for all domains. Applying ML
to pediatric care is sure to transform the current scenario of care delivery
for the younger population.
What
are the major challenges pediatric organizations are facing?
We need strict adherence and care, not only to
ensure healthy children but also to ensure optimized care procedures for them
in the future. However, there are a lot of shortcomings in understanding and
implementation of the medical requirements of the population aged 0 to 18.
The major challenges in this regard are:
Most pediatric organizations today do not have precise and distinct health measures to evaluate the younger population. We need measures that can efficiently assess the patients on their growth-specific checkers, respectively.
Patient records at different stages are difficult to merge, with inadequate data-merging proficiency.
Data hop in EHRs during record matching or establishment. This is of critical concern for babies and toddlers who need consistent care episodes.
Lack of customized reach to parents for time-sensitive immunization and vaccinations. This leads to missed appointments, which leads to complications and increased costs over time.
Care plans including uncertainties to manage intelligent adherence. This will enable strong network functionality and improved care.
Flexible and optimized timeline for care delivery.
Currently, about 50 percent of children under five years of age attend out of home care. Throughout childhood, children receive care at daycares, check-ups at community places, have physician visits at different pediatric facilities, among others.
It becomes essential to compile entire patient data at a single place to avoid redundant and erroneous procedures. According to the American Health Information Management Association, an average hospital has about a 10 percent duplication rate of patient records. A study by Smart Card Alliance in 2014 projected that about 195,000 deaths occur yearly in the US because of medical error, with 58 percent of them being associated with “incorrect patient” errors.
Does
Machine Learning truly have the answer?
An article in the AAP News and Journals Gateway mentions that only 71.6 percent of young children in the United States have completed their primary immunization series. Moreover, evidence suggests that 10 percent to 20 percent of young children receive more than one unnecessary and extra immunization. Evidently, scattered records lead to a lack of timely, accurate and complete immunization. This can have serious repercussions on the health and care protocol of the patient, in addition to increased medical costs.
Machine Learning can nourish the split needs
and resolve the errors of pediatric healthcare in different domains:
Automatic Triggering for Episodes and Immunization: ML algorithms can be developed to track and prompt parents for necessary episodes and immunization. This will ensure timely care episodes.
EMPI Matching: Enterprise Master Patient Index is a database of medical data across departments and healthcare organizations. Machines trained in pediatric EHRs can develop a robust algorithm to match patient records across hospitals and unify them.
Streamlining Vaccinations: ML algorithms can regularize time-sensitive vaccination arrays for different pediatric categories as decided by the World Health Organization.
Scanning Data Hops: ML algorithms can detect data gaps in procedures, and point out critical consequences enforcing timely merging of EHRs.
Predicting Episodes and Costs: ML algorithms trained with localized pediatric data can detect underlying factors for an episode and predict the average costs for unforeseen episodes.
The
road ahead
The pediatric population is foundational to a
healthy nation and demands our attention to reform its split functionalities.
Machine Learning can bring about unimaginable amendments in our current
pediatric care management and delivery. Data, which is foundational to all
ventures in the healthcare industry, can be merged with ML to close all care
gaps and invest in a healthy tomorrow.
It’s no secret that a career in healthcare is a secure and lucrative option for many people. If you have a desire to enter healthcare to help people, you have plenty of options available that pay well. Healthcare is an industry that’s projected to grow a whopping 18 percent between 2016 and 2026.
But the cost of becoming a licensed physician has never been higher. “The median cost of medical school is around $300,000 without factoring in the years of lost income from residency programs,” according to medical license attorney Robert Weinberg. “This can put doctors a half million dollars behind other career choices by the time they hit their early 30s.”
What if you don’t have an MBA or a medical degree? Believe it or not, there are a number of options if you don’t have a lot of formal education to put on your resume. Creating a medical resume from scratch can be challenging. For this reason, you can use healthcare resume examples to give you an idea of how a medical resume should look like and what is necessary to include.
Find out what the top high paying medical jobs with little schooling are in the healthcare field.
1. Surgeon Tech
As a surgical technician, you are in charge of getting the operating room ready prior to surgical procedures. You also get the patients ready for surgery. During procedures, you may assist doctors by handing them surgical tools (like you see on TV).
It is a high-stress, and high-paying job, averaging about $50,000 a year.
2. Health Services Administrator
In this role, you work on the business side of healthcare rather than working directly with patients. You are an operational manager where you create systems, policies, and procedures to make sure hospitals and doctor’s offices run efficiently.
You should know a little bit about technology and how IT infrastructures work. The more healthcare relies on technology, the more important this will become in your job.
A career as a health services administrator requires an associate or bachelor’s degree. You can take it as far as a doctoral degree, but it’s not necessary to get your foot in the door.
3. Medical Coder
In any doctor’s office, there’s always the issue of billing insurance companies to make sure the practice has enough cash flow to survive.
A huge part of that billing process is making sure that insurance invoices have the proper codes on them. If they don’t, it can delay insurance payments. That’s why the job of a medical coder is so important.
A medical coder takes the doctor’s notes from a patient chart and interprets those notes into a code that is sent to insurance companies for billing purposes. Learn more about the salary of medical coders here.
4. Physician Assistant
You always wanted to be a doctor, but just couldn’t invest the time or energy in getting an advanced degree. An alternative is to be a physician assistant.
You don’t perform surgeries, but you do just about everything else a regular doctor would. You create treatment plans for patients, diagnose them, and treat injuries.
You will need an undergraduate degree and additional training as a physician assistant. The pay averages about $100,000 a year, which definitely qualifies as one of the top high paying medical jobs with little schooling.
5. Dental Hygienist
A career in the dental industry is a great way to stay in healthcare without having to work at a hospital. The great thing about being a dental hygienist is that you only have to go to school for about two years and you can make about $75,000 a year.
Your responsibilities will vary widely depending on where you work. In some dental clinics, your primary job is education. You teach patients the best practices of brushing, flossing, and overall dental care.
Other possibilities in your day-to-day work could involve taking x-rays, cleaning, and polishing teeth. You may be the dentist’s right-hand person and they may lean on you a lot more in a busy office.
6. Nutritionist
As the population grows and gets busier, it’s getting fatter. Almost 40% of Americans are obese. In the rush of everyday life, Americans have forgotten how to eat well.
They eat whatever is fast and convenient, forgetting about nutritional value. They’re also calorie dense foods served in huge portions.
Preventive healthcare starts with what people consume and you can have a huge impact on that when you pursue a career as a nutritionist. You work with clients to develop meal plans to help them make better choices and lose weight.
You can leverage your work as a nutritionist into a lucrative career as a writer, speaker, and by working with clients.
7. Physical Therapist Assistant
Injuries and aches and pains happen all of the time. Think of all of the people who sit in offices all day and have low back pain.
That’s due to muscular imbalances that a physical therapist usually works to correct. As a physical therapist assistant, you work with the rehabilitation team at your client to help patients recover and heal from their injuries.
This can give your patients a much higher quality of life or in a high-performance environment, get them back on the field as quickly as possible.
8. Medical Transcriber
This is a great position for people who want to work in healthcare but are more on the introverted side and don’t want to work with patients.
Medical transcribers listen to notes from doctors and healthcare specialists and type those notes up. The transcriptions are usually for patients’ files or for insurance companies.
There are Plenty of High Paying Medical Jobs with Little Schooling
If you truly want to help people live healthier and high-quality lives, the healthcare field is the perfect place to do that. You may be put off by thinking you need to go to school for years to be a nurse, physician, or hospital administrator.
There are a surprising amount of high paying medical jobs with little schooling available in the industry. You do need to know what your strengths are, and which job will be the best fit for you. Once you have that, then get the skills and experience required. In some cases, you’ll be workforce ready in one to two years.
That’s minimal compared to getting a Ph.D. degree (and less to carry in student loans, too).
Any business, including medical businesses, is subject to competition. As a result, strategic planning is needed to implement the services and make the dream a reality. At Template.net you can find all kinds of medical templates, including medical plans, medical certificates, medical applications, etc., in all kinds of formats.
Do you want to know more about healthcare technology? Visit this blog regularly for more articles and tips that show you how technology is changing the healthcare industry.
The
most complicated proof of human intelligence can be found between our ears. And
because it’s a highly complex topic, there are a lot of myths and
misinformation surrounding the brain that people simply dismiss as “facts.”
It may sound alarming at first,
but this is somewhat understandable. After all, neurology or the study of the
human brain is considered one of the least explored areas of science. In fact,
even neurology doctors in St. George and
other places might agree that the knowledge we now have about the brain and how
it functions is only a fraction of the wonders this organ truly possesses.
However, there has been a
tremendous improvement regarding the study of the human brain that most of the
things we have learned about the brain were only discovered in the past 15
years. So, it’s safe to say that the real brain facts haven’t
always been mainstream knowledge after all. For improved awareness, here are
some of those facts:
The brain
can’t feel pain
You’ve probably seen it in movies
and TV shows, so have you ever wondered how surgeons are capable of performing
brain surgeries on patients even when they’re fully awake? Experts explain that
while the brain is known to contain multiple layers of coverings, as well as
blood vessels with pain receptors, the brain on its own contains none. So, when
a person experiences a headache, it’s a common misconception that the pain is
caused by the brain. That is entirely false. The muscles and the skin that
surrounds the brain is capable of feeling pain, though.
The brain
can’t multitask
Our hectic everyday schedule, with
the help of technology, has allowed many of us to become expert multitaskers.
But the truth is, the brain is not capable of acquiring new knowledge or
focusing on two things simultaneously. What it does is switch back and forth
between multiple tasks at a fast speed. Doing this, however, affects your
attention span, short-term memory, learning ability, and overall brain
performance.
The use of
technology causes us to lose skills
It has been discovered that
relying on GPS ruins your innate sense of direction. This is unfortunate,
considering how our ancestors spent thousands of years honing and developing
this particular skill. Once the areas of the brain that are responsible for
navigation are no longer active, those neural connections gradually lose their
functionalities through the process called synaptic pruning.
There are
moments when the brain can’t form memories
As people age, our ability to
remember new things slowly degrades. According to research conducted in the
U.S., this is because the brain is incapable of filtering and getting rid of
old memories, which is the reason it can’t absorb new information. Here’s
another example that’s definitely familiar to many: If you’ve been drinking alcohol
and have no recollection of what you did the previous night, it’s not because
you’ve forgotten about them. It’s because when a person is intoxicated, the
brain is unable to form memories.
These are just some of the brain
facts everyone should be aware of. It’s time to forget about the myths
and start believing the truth about our wonderful brains.
Telehealth has been in practice now for over 40 years, yet in the last 5 years it is seeing considerable growth in all sectors. There are a number of reasons for this, primarily, as the use of the internet and various new technologies are becoming more and more advanced and widespread, this has meant that the cost of using this technology for such purposes has decreased significantly.
Also,
a greater understanding of how best to make use of and implement telehealth has
improved overtime, with new uses for it continually being developed. The
increase of reliance on telehealth has sparked debate between physicians
regarding the pros and cons of its usage, with particular consideration of the
role it plays in medical malpractice.
The benefits of telehealth
One
of the most obvious benefits of telehealth is the newfound ability to provide
healthcare to patients in remote areas who otherwise may struggle to get
access, while also being advantageous for elderly or disabled patients with
mobility or logistical issues.
It
has the potential also to improve patient coverage given a shortage of
physicians in relation to the number of patients in some cases. It also
provides the opportunity for patients with rare conditions to get much needed
medical advice from long distance specialists.
From
a healthcare systems perspective, telehealth has the potential to both decrease costs and improve outcomes, however
this needs to be weighed up against the potential risks involved.
It’s drawbacks
Telehealth
represents a paradigm shift in medical care, changing the way that doctors operate
and deal with their patients, it could be harder for more experienced doctors
to adapt to these new ways of working as they were not trained that way, and
many want to and are used to seeing the patient in their office.
This
technology removes the physician’s ability to see and interact with the patient
face to face. It is natural that physicians will fear their ability to do their
job will be reduced at such a distance plus any technological change also
changes medical malpractice thresholds. It will be down to malpractice expects
such as JJS
Justice, and law courts to determine how telehealth and other new
technologies relate to the acceptable healthcare provision threshold for
patients. Doctors will need to adapt and learn to implement these technologies
within these limits.
Other
issues involve the quality of service that is being provided using this
technology, can patients trust in this? Will they receive a quality of care equivalent
to that of a face to face consultation? It also remains to be determined how
exactly physicians will be reimbursed for their work done through this method.
The potential for medical malpractice
in telehealth
There
is still work to be done to ensure that telemedicine is controlled and
regulated effectively, to maximise its efficacy and minimise the risk of
medical malpractice. The main concerns around the potential for medical
malpractice in telehealth include issues around online prescribing, informed
consent and state licensure.
With
regard to online prescribing, in some cases it may be insufficient to prescribe
medication on the basis of an over the phone consultation or upon review
of a patient questionnaire submitted online. It Is therefore important that
there are crystal clear guidelines and expectations set around when a physical
examination is required.
Laws
around informed consent are different between states, physicians should
therefore be au fait with the requirements on this front for the states where
they are licensed to prescribe medication to patients.
Finally,
physicians should not operate beyond their jurisdiction, a doctor needs to be
licensed in the patient’s home state in order to prescribe them medication. In
fact, most malpractice issues in relation to telemedicine involve unlicensed
activity.
To avoid
malpractice litigations, it is essential that physicians are licenced, have
full knowledge of their duties and responsibilities, receive adequate
training and that they have taken a full and extensive medical history of all
the patients that they prescribe for.
Even though all of us would love to remain fit and healthy, we are bound to fall sick some time or the other. Luckily, modern medicine has advanced significantly and has improved the levels of public health. Whenever you visit a doctor, he or she uses modern methods and technologies to diagnose the problem.
These new methods and technologies have
greatly improved the efficiency and accuracy of the diagnosis made by the
doctors. MRI or Magnetic Resonance Imaging is one such modern technology that
is used for diagnosis. The MRI uses strong magnetic and radio waves to produce
clear and accurate images of the internal organs of the body. These images
which are generated by the MRI can be used to diagnose ailments that are
present in the inner tissues.
What
results can you expect from the MRI test?
Here are a few of the numerous advantages of
Magnetic Resonance Imaging or MRI:
1. Important diagnostic tool
MRI has become an important diagnostic tool in
modern times, and a lot of doctors have started using this technology. MRI
‘doesn’t help in the treatment of an ailment but helps doctors in identifying
it. It is relatively safe to use, and hence, many doctors recommend MRIs
whenever some have pain or discomfort in their tissues. MRI can provide images
of all internal organs and can consequently be used to diagnose a host of
diseases.
2. Non-invasive
One of the reasons why doctors readily
prescribe MRI tests is that it’s completely non-invasive. Since no cuts or incisions
need to be made, the patient is fit to resume a healthy life immediately after
the test. It is an entirely painless procedure. It allows doctors to observe
the deep tissues in patients which cannot be reached easily through invasive
techniques. The use of radio and magnetic waves eliminate the need for the
invasive examination.
3. Cross-sectional images
Before MRI scans, X-ray scans and CT scans
were accessible amongst patients and doctors alike. This technology, however,
was outdated and lacked several aspects which necessitated the entry of MRI
into this field. None of the earlier technologies could produce 3-D
cross-sectional images of the internal organs of the body. MRI scans produce
3-d cross-sectional pictures of the body with high accuracy. This advantage of
MRI quickly allowed it to take over the healthcare market and become a popular
diagnostic tool.
4. Painless
One of the biggest benefits of MRI is that it
is a completely painless procedure, and this has made this method popular amongst
patients. This method is not just effective and accurate but is also
patient-friendly. Since there is no invasion or poking required, the procedure
is painless. All a patient has to do is lie down inside the MRI machine, and
the tool does all the rest using radio and magnetic waves that it generates.
Even though the waves penetrate the body, the patient feels nothing and is free
to resume normal activity after the test.
5. Can diagnose a host of diseases
The strength of the MRI is in its versatility.
MRI is not something that is performed for a particular disease. It is
something that can be used to diagnose a host of diseases since all it does is
provide a clear image of the internal organs. MRIs can be used to diagnose
various heart and vascular diseases. It can also help in determining cases of
strokes. Bone and other tissue disorders are being actively diagnosed using
MRIs. MRIs can prove to be a vital tool incorrectly diagnosing an ailment
before beginning with the appropriate treatment.
6. Helps in diagnosing cancer
Cancer is a deadly disease with one of the
highest mortality rates in the world. Cancer can be difficult to diagnose since
it occurs deep within the soft tissue of humans. MRI comes to the rescue here
and is being used to diagnose several types of cancers actively.
MRIs have finally provided means to
non-invasively diagnose cancer, while the other method (biopsy) requires
invasion. The bright and sharp 3-D cross-sectional images allow doctors to
identify cancer growth and prescribe appropriate treatment visually.
MRI allows doctors to diagnose cancer even
when a biopsy is not possible. MRIs have helped in saving a lot of lives by
enabling doctors to diagnose the incidences of cancer correctly.
7. No manual labor required
MRI machines are large pieces of equipment
that are easy to operate. One does not have to manually do anything to the
patient apart from asking the patient to lie down. There is no surgical
expertise required to produce an MRI machine. MRI technicians are usually not
even doctors, and they can correctly use the computer. This lack of manual
labor makes the operation of MRI machines easier and has resulted in
propagating their spread across different geographies.
8. Computerized
Another significant advantage of MRI is that
the whole system is entirely automated. A patient has to lie down, and the
machine does everything and else. This has dramatically increased patient
compliance in terms of MRI scans.
After completing an MRI scan, the computer
generates a report almost instantly, which can be used by doctors in their
diagnosis. This level of automation in the case of MRIs has dramatically
reduced the scope of human error. Computerized results are quick and can be
relied upon to deliver a definitive diagnosis. This also allows ease of access
and ease of interpretation of the complex data that an MRI machine generates.
9. Can be done on almost anyone
The MRI machine is extremely patient-friendly,
and it can accommodate anyone. There are no restrictions in terms of age when
it comes to getting an MRI. Moreover, any allergies that a patient may have
become irrelevant when it comes to MRI. Thus, MRIs are safe and can be done to
anyone as long as the doctor prescribes it.
People with metallic implants or cardiac
pacemakers should avoid getting MRIs as the metal will react to the magnetic
waves that MRI machines produce. Thus, after a quick verbal confirmation
regarding the absence of implants, a patient is ready to go for an MRI scan.
Patient-friendly MRIs are done at places like Express MRI and many more such
establishments.
10. No radiation involved
The earlier method of X-rays leads to exposure
to harmful X-rays, which can cause permanent damage to the body. This radiation
exposure is dangerous and should be avoided, but unfortunately, there was no
way to do this until MRI came along.
Undergoing an MRI scan does not expose the
patient to any harmful radiation. The radio and magnetic waves used are quite
safe and have no permanently damaging effects. X-rays, on the other hand, can
cause permanent damage to the ‘patient’s body.
Final
thoughts
We hope that what you read above has taken
away any fear you had related to having an MRI. ‘Don’t be reluctant to get an
MRI if it has been prescribed and try to choose a reputed place to get the test
done.
If you found this kind of test an interesting
one to go through, we are afraid you cannot randomly have yourself checked
without a prescription.
