It’s important to choose a surgeon who can handle your particular surgery and will provide you with the care you deserve. You can find top neurosurgeons at NSPC.com, and they will work with you to ensure that you have the right surgeon for your particular needs.

Cutting-Edge Techniques Medical technology changes rapidly, and new technologies and procedures are safer than what was used in the past. Choose a team that keeps up with leading edge technologies so you can benefit from these new treatment options. The team at NSPC works in some of the best hospitals in Long Island, and they are all trained in the hottest technologies. Compassion and Competency When you are preparing for surgery, you do want the best of both worlds. You want a highly skilled doctor that will provide you with the surgery you need, but you also want someone who is compassionate and caring. The NSPC surgeons are all dedicated to providing world-class care with a commitment to their patients, a high level of compassion and the highest level of surgical care.

Call NSPC today to let them match you with the right surgeon. This is a difficult and even frightening time, but you don’t have to go through it alone. The right doctor will perform the surgery you need while also setting your mind at ease and treating you with respect. Let them help you find the right surgeon for your needs.

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A total of 70 patients, also known as the Visconti cohort of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, all began treatment between 35 days and 10 weeks of being infected – the baby girl was put on treatment within 30 hours of being born.

The participants were put on antiretroviral drugs for 3 years, at which point they all stopped. Medication can keep the virus under control, but typically, when the drugs are stopped the virus bounces back.

However, this hasn’t happened for 14 of the patients some of whom are still showing no signs of the virus reemerging 10 years later.

14 Patients Cured of HIV

It’s thought that the early administration of treatment is key in curing the virus, which in both cases is still present, and presumably transmissible, but manageable by the body.

Dr Asier Saez-Cirion, from the Institute Pasteur in Paris, noted that it only appeared to work for an estimated 5-15 percent of patients:

“Most individuals who follow the same treatment will not control the infection, but there are a few of them who will…

“They still have HIV, it is not eradication of HIV, it is a kind of remission of the infection.”

The experts aren’t sure if the effects will be permanent, or if it will only last a certain amount of time.
Another factor is that early diagnosis is rather uncommon, some patients maybe infected for years before finding out. However should a manageable cure become commercial, it could help raise awareness to the point where everyone has regular check ups.

Either way it’s certainly another monumental milestone in the battle against HIV.

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The new study, conducted by Dr. Jose Rodriguez, director of the Center for Joint Preservation and Reconstruction, and his colleagues at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, found that hip or total knee replacement surgery improved self-reported sexual function in 90 percent of patients.

The results showed that hip replacements showed a higher rate of improvement in sexual activity than knee replacements, and that more females reported improvement in sexual activity than males did.

Rodriguez decided to create the survey to learn more about how sexual experience was affected by getting a new joint. He said that many patients fear they’ll damage the new joint if they have sex, and are too shy to ask any questions about it.

Now he’s proud to make a point of telling people, after their operations, that: “most of what you want to do — physical and intimate — you can do.”

Joint Replacement Surgery Improves Sex

The participants were complied from two arthroplasty surgeons, who received 147 responses form patients. At total of 116 returned the six-month survey and 65 also sent back the one-year survey. The mean age of patients was around 58 years; there were 69 males and 78 females in the initial group.

Before the surgery, 67 percent of respondents reported having physical problems with sexual activity that included pain and stiffness – 49 percent had reduced sex drive and 14 percent had an inability to attain the necessary position. 91 percent of participants also reported psychological issues such as a lack of well-being and low self-image (53 percent).

After surgery, nearly half of the patients reported an improvement sex; 35 percent said they had increased duration of intercourse; 41 percent reported more frequent sex; 84 percent said they had improved well-being; and 55 percent reported having an improved self-image.
Getting total hip or knee replacement is known to improve overall well-being and self-esteem, which itself can be a turn-on, explained Rodriguez:

“Anything that causes pain and affects how you move is going to influence sexuality,”

Rodrigues did note a few limitations of the study. The findings were based soley on self-report, which could lead to more skewed results. There number of people analyzed was still to few to draw a conclusion.

However, other experts agree that the results would appear to make logic sense. Dr. Giles Scuderi, vice president of orthopedics at North Shore-LIJ Healthcare System in Great Neck, N.Y., said:

“The most important message here is overall performance and self-image are improved. Patients’ lifestyles are definitely better after these surgeries.”

The study was presented Tuesday 19th March at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons annual meeting in Chicago.

And a second study is scheduled to be presented by Swiss researchers. This research showed that patients who recently underwent total hip replacements surgery are more active than were patients who got the procedure a decade ago. This study also found that most of them return to their previous recreational activities, including biking, hiking, swimming and golfing.

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Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a psychiatric disorder that can sometimes occur after experiencing, or witnessing, a life-threatening event.

Researchers at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center interviewed over 1,100 breast cancer patients over the age of 20 and found that 23 percent of them developed PTSD symptoms during the first two to three months of diagnosis.

The results also showed that younger women were more likely than older women to have PTSD symptoms, and that Asian and black women had more than a 50 percent higher risk than white women. The study did, however, show the symptoms declined over the following three months.

1 In 4 Breast Cancer Patients Develop PTSD

Lead author Dr. Alfred Neugut, a professor of cancer research and a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and Mailman School of Public Health, said in a Columbia University Medical Center news release:

“This study is one of the first to evaluate the course of PTSD after a diagnosis of breast cancer.”

Neugut, who is also an oncologist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia, added:

“The ultimate outcome of this research is to find ways to improve the quality of patients’ lives.

“If we can identify potential risk factors for PTSD, when women are diagnosed with breast cancer, we could provide early prevention and intervention to minimize PTSD symptoms. This approach might also have an indirect impact on the observed racial disparity in breast cancer survival.”

The researchers think the study findings may also apply to patients with other types of cancer. They noted that PTSD symptoms have been reported in many patients diagnosed with prostate cancer and lymphoma.
The findings were released online Feb. 28, and will be published in the upcoming print issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

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Drinking water is the elixir of life, without it us weak humans simply couldn’t survive. In order to supply the vast quantities of water we drink, many countries rely on reverse osmosis or desalinization plants.

Both methods utilize a semipermeable membrane through which water flows and molecules are separated. For desalinization, the process typically employs a sheet of thin-film composite (TFC) membrane, made from a layer of polyimide stacked on a porous layer of polysulfone, but these membranes are thick and require large amounts of energy and pressure to blast water through them.

Lockheed Martins new technique uses a material called Perforene – made from single atom-thick sheets of graphene. Because these sheets are so thin, water is able to flow through them with ease, and with holes measuring around 100 nm in diameter, dissolved salt molecules are caught while the water passes on by.

New Graphene Material Perforene Desalinizes Saltwater

Under a microscope Perforene looks like chicken wire, but is actually 1000 times stronger than steel. The inventor of the material, John Stetson said:

“It’s 500 times thinner than the best filter on the market today and a thousand times stronger. The energy that’s required and the pressure that’s required to filter salt is approximately 100 times less.” [Reuters]

Unfortunately there’s no word when this technology might be commercially available, however the promise of low cost and efficiency to bring healthy drinking water to many areas of the world where people are still cut off from a regular supply.

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The study, conducted by a UK website UndercoverLovers.com, asked 3,000 of it’s philandering members how much weight (if any) they had lost since being the affair.

Of the 1,500 female respondents 62 percent reported some weight loss, dropping an average of 10lbs. Of the male respondents, 53 reported weightless, dropping an average of 6lbs.

The website’s spokesperson, Emily Pope, explained in a press release:

“It’s well known that we eat more, and less healthily, when we’re unhappy. Many UndercoverLovers.com members have endured years, and in some cases decades, of marital unhappiness before embarking on their affair. The instant joy and boost to self-esteem that many experience by having a new lover and the desire to look their best for them, can provide the perfect incentive to lose weight.”

Why Cheating Aids Weight Loss

Pope added that increase sexual activity might also contribute to the extra calories burned.

But some experts are quick to dispute the study’s findings. Psychologist and HuffPost Divorce blogger, Dr. Jeff Gardere, noted that the added stress from keeping an affair secret could also be behind the weight loss. He said:

“No matter how much fun you may be having during these one night stands and adulterous affairs, the stress that is caused by sneaking around and not getting caught, and lying to your spouse is tremendous,”

“Feeling guilt after the sex act and the affair also brings on additional stress too. So yes, you are losing weight during your illicit physical/sexual activity and even losing additional weight from the aforementioned stress, but this stress is also placing you at risk for all sorts of physiological illnesses.”

Others experts such as nutritionist and Huff Post Divorce blogger Barbara Mendez explained the effects of having an affair slowly wear off, at which point the weight is likely to return.

The dopamine rush of an affair is like the rush you get when you fall in love which in turn suppresses appetite. So you eat less and that added to the calories burned would indeed help you lose weight. But it is short lived. As soon as the affair goes sour, the weight will likely come back.”

Nevertheless, while the study is far from conclusive, it would seem that the extra hide and play involved with cheating on your partner does indeed help some people drop off the weight.

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The 37-year-old linebacker tore his right triceps in October, and decided to seek help to from Sports With Alternatives To Steroids (SWATS) – a company that sells various types of performance enhancing drugs – to aid his recovery.

According to SWATS owner Mitch Ross, Lewis and others was said to have ordered the spray along with deer antler pills and other products made the company.

SWATS says the product is natural, like a food, but the substance is banned by the NCAA and every major pro league. The IGF-1 hormones is harvested from deer in New Zealand, co-founder Christopher Key explained:

“Their antlers are the fastest-growing substance on planet Earth . . . because of the high concentration of IGF-1. We’ve been able to freeze dry that out, extract it, put it in a sublingual spray that you shake for 20 seconds and then spray three [times] under your tongue. . . . This stuff has been around for almost 1,000 years, this is stuff from the Chinese,”

Dr. Spyros Mezitis, an endocrinologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, told CBSNews.com that IGF-1 is an insulin-like growth factor, a hormone that naturally occurs in the body and circulates in the blood. The body’s endocrine system contains a pituitary gland that produces this growth hormone, that helps children grown into adults by making bones stronger and helping their body to mature.

Ray Lewis Accused of Taking IGF-1 Human Growth Hormone

In normal ranges, IGF-1 in the body aids growth and boosts muscle strength, said. The hormone also increases the metabolism of carbohydrates, which brings more sugars to the cells to help them grow.

According to Mezitis, some people with medical conditions in which they have low growth hormone, such as dwarfism, can be treated with injections of IGF-1.

However, “We do not prescribe [IGF-1 ] on a basis for muscle building,” Mezitis, who does not treat athletes, said. He added that he was aware of a spray, but notes it is not as potent as the injection. If IGF-1 is abused, he said, people might experience more muscle strength and issues with aggressiveness.

Athletes who take growth hormone in the form of HGH — another substance banned by the league, but not currently measured in NFL drug tests — may also experience more muscle growth.

IGF-1 is “just like giving someone human growth hormone,” Don Catlin, the former head of UCLA’s Olympic Analytical Lab, told The New York Times. “It goes to the same kinds of receptors and turns them on.”

However, some reports say that the spray may not even be effective in humans.

Dr. Roberto Salvatori, who studies growth hormone at Johns Hopkins University, told the Baltimore Sun that there’s no evidence of a successful way to deliver IGF-1 in pill or spray form.

“If there were, a lot of people would be happy that they don’t need to get shots anymore,” he told the paper.”

When questioned about the used of the banned substance during the recent Super Bowl media day, Lewis deflected the question by saying there was no need to comment on a 2 year story, referring to a Yahoo news article in 2011 which claimed that Jackson was told sever ties with SWATS because the company promoted performance enhancing drugs.

The team also downplayed the report, and Ray denies taking anything and has always passed tests, said the team spokesman Kevin Bryne.

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Stephanie’s father had received treatment there 10 years earlier, and she and her family credited the doctors and nurses at MD Anderson with extending his life by at least eight years.

But Recchi was in for long expensive ride, all whilst his health was on the line.

Unfortunately they had only been able to afford a $469 a month medial plan, which allowed them up to $2,000 per day off any hospital costs. However upon arrival at the hospital they were told that it wouldn’t accept discount from health care packages such as theirs.

Instead they were made to pay a bill of $48,000 in advance to cover the treatment required. But the bills didn’t stop there, around a week later, Recchi’s condition worsened and another visit to the hospital resulted in another $35,000 bill for treatment the doctors had decided was urgent.

Whilst waiting for the treatment Recchi began experiencing cold sweats, chills and pains, and was once again rushed back to the hospital. However since the staff could not confirm if the more recent $35,000 check had cleared, they left him sitting in the reception area for over 90 minutes. He was then only allowed to see the doctor after advancing another $7500 from his credit card.

The total cost of Recchi’s chemotherapy was $83,900 – a price that may seem fair to save a life, but upon closer inspection was inflated with overpriced drugs and treatment.

The receipt showed the hospital had charged $1.50 for each Acetaminophe tablet. But the pills he received were simply generic version of the drug, which can be bought from Amazon by the 100 for the same price.

Expensive Medical bills and Health

Other midpriced items were marked up in a similar fashion. A routine chest X-ray for which Medicare pay just $20.44, was priced at $283.00. Each blood test was market $36.00, accompanied by charges of $23 to $78 for each up to a dozen or more lab analyses performed on the blood sample.

Altogether, the blood samples and lab analysis alone cost him $15,000. Had Recchi been a few years older and eligible for Medicare, he would have paid just a few hundred dollars for all those tests.

Recchi was also charged $13,702 for an injection of 660 mg cancer drug called Rituxan, which costs the hospitals just $4,000 to buy.

When questioned about the highly inflated prices of treatment, MD Anderson said:

“The issues related to health care finance are complex for patients, health care providers, payers and government entities alike … MD Anderson’s clinical billing and collection practices are similar to those of other major hospitals and academic medical centers.”

Although it is officially a nonprofit unit of the University of Texas, MD Anderson has revenue that exceeds the cost of the world-class care it provides by so much that its operating profit for the fiscal year 2010 was $531 million.

Last year the president of MD Anderson Ronald DePinho’s earned over $1,845,000, and that’s not including outside earnings derived from a waiver he received from the university that, allows him to maintain unspecified “financial ties with his three principal pharmaceutical companies.”

And he’s not the only one benefiting from such a business. Of Houston’s top 10 employers, five are hospitals, including MD Anderson which has 19,000 employees, the other three are energy companies such as ExxonMobil.

With medicine clearly becoming such a huge money generating business, many people are now being to ask where all that money is going, and why it’s not being used for better, more affordable treatment for the people who really need it?

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One of the main problems is that many concussions go undetected, which is where Impakt Protective’s Shockbox with g-force offers its services. The g-force sensors accurately measures the impact sustained by the player and gauges whether medial attention is needed.

When the sensor detects a heavy blow, it sends a color-coded alert – orange over 50G and red over 90G – to yours, or your coach’s mobile phone via Bluetooth. Up to 128 shockbox sensors can be paired to one phone, so coaches can keep track of their whole team.

Impakt Protective Shockbox Helmet Sensor Detects Concussions

The flexible rubber device, which works with Android, iOS and Blackberry, can fit inside any helmet with space between the padding the exterior, and can be used with other contact sports such as hockey, lacrosse, skiing, snowboarding mountain biking and other extreme sports.

The latest Shockbox sensor measures around 5 inches long and resembles a wristwatch. It as well as the sensor, it contains a Bluetooth transmitter, micro USB, rechargeable li-ion battery, and an on/off button.

Costing just $149, and being able to fit inside any helmet, the Shockbox has already risen above its competition – the Shockometer, the Head Impact Telemetry System (HITS), and a skullcap from Reebok and startup MC10 – which typically cost more than $1000 and must be bought as a full unit.

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Rex was created for the a TV documentary series called “How to Build a Bionic Man,” which was aired on the UK’s Channel 4.

Rex was constructed by a team of roboticists, called Shadow, and was made from various individual body parts built in labs all over the world to demonstrate what current artificial organs and medical devices can do. The total cost of the robot was a whopping $1 million.

The team, along with most experts, envisions a future where patients will be able to fix a failing organ without having a transplant.

Rex’s appearance however, was not thought up in the lab. The bionic man was actually modeled on a real man, Bertolt Meyer, who himself has a prosthetic hand.

Meyer, a social psychologist at the University of Zurich, said:

“One of my personal favorites is the artificial blood that runs through these tubings, because this is made of nanoparticles that are able to bind oxygen and give them off, just like real blood can do, but this isn’t real blood, this is nanoparticles,”

“Also the fact that they are very close to an implantable artificial kidney that will actually be able to replace a failing kidney without the necessity of a kidney transplant. So think of the great benefits technology like that would bring. I knew fairly much about prosthetic limbs apparently, but what we are close to accomplishing in terms of artificial organs — I find that absolutely mind boggling.”

Rex is on display as part of a free exhibition called “How Much of You Can Be Rebuilt?”. The exhibit, at the Science Museum in London, runs until March 11.

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