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Intrathecal Pump
An intrathecal pump is a medical device used to deliver (via an intrathecal catheter) medications directly into the space between the spinal cord and the protective sheath surrounding the spinal cord. Medications such as baclofen, bupivacaine, clonidine, morphine, hydromorphone, fentanyl or ziconotide may be delivered in this manner to minimize the side effects often associated with the higher doses used in oral or intravenous delivery of these drugs. Medical uses * Some cancer patients with opioid resistant pain or serious side effects may benefit from intrathecal pain management. * Probably, only some benign patients with opioid resistant pain or serious side effects are suitable for intrathecal treatment. Application People with spastic diplegia or other forms of spasticity, or people in intolerable pain, who cannot tolerate side effects of the higher-dose oral medications of the same medication type, are potential candidates for that medication being administered via an intr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Medical Device
A medical device is any device intended to be used for medical purposes. Significant potential for hazards are inherent when using a device for medical purposes and thus medical devices must be proved safe and effective with reasonable assurance before regulating governments allow marketing of the device in their country. As a general rule, as the associated risk of the device increases the amount of testing required to establish safety and efficacy also increases. Further, as associated risk increases the potential benefit to the patient must also increase. Discovery of what would be considered a medical device by modern standards dates as far back as c. 7000 BC in Baluchistan where Neolithic dentists used flint-tipped drills and bowstrings. Study of archeology and Roman medical literature also indicate that many types of medical devices were in widespread use during the time of ancient Rome. In the United States it wasn't until the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spasticity
Spasticity () is a feature of altered skeletal muscle performance with a combination of paralysis, increased tendon reflex activity, and hypertonia. It is also colloquially referred to as an unusual "tightness", stiffness, or "pull" of muscles. Clinically, spasticity results from the loss of inhibition of motor neurons, causing excessive velocity-dependent muscle contraction. This ultimately leads to hyperreflexia, an exaggerated deep tendon reflex. Spasticity is often treated with the drug baclofen, which acts as an agonist at GABA receptors, which are inhibitory. Spastic cerebral palsy is the most common form of cerebral palsy, which is a group of permanent movement problems that do not get worse over time. GABA's inhibitory actions contribute to baclofen's efficacy as an anti-spasticity agent. Cause Spasticity mostly occurs in disorders of the central nervous system (CNS) affecting the upper motor neurons in the form of a lesion, such as spastic diplegia, or upper motor neu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Medical Pumps
Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness. Contemporary medicine applies biomedical sciences, biomedical research, genetics, and medical technology to diagnose, treat, and prevent injury and disease, typically through pharmaceuticals or surgery, but also through therapies as diverse as psychotherapy, external splints and traction, medical devices, biologics, and ionizing radiation, amongst others. Medicine has been practiced since prehistoric times, and for most of this time it was an art (an area of skill and knowledge), frequently having connections to the religious and philosophical beliefs of local culture. For example, a medicine man would apply herbs and say prayers for healing, or an anci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intrathecal Administration
Intrathecal administration is a route of administration for drugs via an injection into the spinal canal, or into the subarachnoid space so that it reaches the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and is useful in spinal anesthesia, chemotherapy, or pain management applications. This route is also used to introduce drugs that fight certain infections, particularly post-neurosurgical. The drug needs to be given this way to avoid being stopped by the blood–brain barrier. The same drug given orally must enter the blood stream and may not be able to pass out and into the brain. Drugs given by the intrathecal route often have to be compounded specially by a pharmacist or technician because they cannot contain any preservative or other potentially harmful inactive ingredients that are sometimes found in standard injectable drug preparations. The route of administration is sometimes simply referred to as "intrathecal"; however, the term is also an adjective that refers to something occurring in or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Infusion Pump
An infusion pump Intravenous infusion, infuses fluids, medication or nutrients into a patient, patient's circulatory system. It is generally used intravenously, although Subcutaneous injection, subcutaneous, artery, arterial and epidural infusions are occasionally used. Infusion pumps can administer fluids in ways that would be impractically expensive or unreliable if performed manually by nursing staff. For example, they can administer as little as 0.1 mL per hour injections (too small for a drip), injections every minute, injections with repeated Bolus (medicine), boluses requested by the patient, up to maximum number per hour (e.g. in patient-controlled analgesia), or fluids whose volumes vary by the time of day. Because they can also produce quite high but controlled pressures, they can inject controlled amounts of fluids subcutaneously (beneath the skin), or epidurally (just within the surface of the central nervous system – a very popular local spinal anesthesia for chi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Surgeon
In modern medicine, a surgeon is a medical professional who performs surgery. Although there are different traditions in different times and places, a modern surgeon usually is also a licensed physician or received the same medical training as physicians before specializing in surgery. There are also surgeons in podiatry, dentistry, and veterinary medicine. It is estimated that surgeons perform over 300 million surgical procedures globally each year. History The first person to document a surgery was the 6th century BC Indian physician-surgeon, Sushruta. He specialized in cosmetic plastic surgery and even documented an open rhinoplasty procedure.Ira D. Papel, John Frodel, ''Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery'' His magnum opus ''Suśruta-saṃhitā'' is one of the most important surviving ancient treatises on medicine and is considered a foundational text of both Ayurveda and surgery. The treatise addresses all aspects of general medicine, but the translator G. D. Si ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subcutaneous Injection
Subcutaneous administration is the insertion of medications beneath the skin either by injection or infusion. A subcutaneous injection is administered as a bolus into the subcutis, the layer of skin directly below the dermis and epidermis, collectively referred to as the cutis. The instruments are usually a hypodermic needle and a syringe. Subcutaneous injections are highly effective in administering medications such as insulin, morphine, diacetylmorphine and goserelin. Subcutaneous administration may be abbreviated as SC, SQ, subcu, sub-Q, SubQ, or subcut. Subcut is the preferred abbreviation to reduce the risk of misunderstanding and potential errors. Subcutaneous tissue has few blood vessels and so drugs injected here are for slow, sustained rates of absorption, often with some amount of depot effect. Compared with other routes of administration, it is slower than intramuscular injections but still faster than intradermal injections. Subcutaneous infusion (as opposed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pump
A pump is a device that moves fluids (liquids or gases), or sometimes slurries, by mechanical action, typically converted from electrical energy into hydraulic energy. Pumps can be classified into three major groups according to the method they use to move the fluid: ''direct lift'', ''displacement'', and ''gravity'' pumps. Mechanical pumps serve in a wide range of applications such as pumping water from wells, aquarium filtering, pond filtering and aeration, in the car industry for water-cooling and fuel injection, in the energy industry for pumping oil and natural gas or for operating cooling towers and other components of heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. In the medical industry, pumps are used for biochemical processes in developing and manufacturing medicine, and as artificial replacements for body parts, in particular the artificial heart and penile prosthesis. When a casing contains only one revolving impeller, it is called a single-stage pump. Whe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pain
Pain is a distressing feeling often caused by intense or damaging stimuli. The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage." In medical diagnosis, pain is regarded as a symptom of an underlying condition. Pain motivates the individual to withdraw from damaging situations, to protect a damaged body part while it heals, and to avoid similar experiences in the future. Most pain resolves once the noxious stimulus is removed and the body has healed, but it may persist despite removal of the stimulus and apparent healing of the body. Sometimes pain arises in the absence of any detectable stimulus, damage or disease. Pain is the most common reason for physician consultation in most developed countries. It is a major symptom in many medical conditions, and can interfere with a person's quality of life and general functioning. Simple ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spastic Diplegia
Spastic diplegia is a form of cerebral palsy (CP) that is a chronic neuromuscular condition of hypertonia and spasticity—manifested as an especially high and constant "tightness" or "stiffness"—in the muscles of the lower extremities of the human body, usually those of the legs, hips and pelvis. Doctor William John Little's first recorded encounter with cerebral palsy is reported to have been among children who displayed signs of spastic diplegia. Spastic diplegia accounts for about 22% of all diagnoses of cerebral palsy, and together with spastic quadriplegia and spastic triplegia make up the broad classification spastic cerebral palsy, which accounts for 70% of all cerebral palsy diagnoses. Presentation Individuals with spastic diplegia are very tight and stiff and must work very hard to successfully resist and "push through" the extra tightness they perpetually experience. Other than this, however, these individuals are almost always normal in every significant clinical s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catheter
In medicine, a catheter (/ˈkæθətər/) is a thin tube made from medical grade materials serving a broad range of functions. Catheters are medical devices that can be inserted in the body to treat diseases or perform a surgical procedure. Catheters are manufactured for specific applications, such as cardiovascular, urological, gastrointestinal, neurovascular and ophthalmic procedures. The process of inserting a catheter is ''catheterization''. In most uses, a catheter is a thin, flexible tube (''soft'' catheter) though catheters are available in varying levels of stiffness depending on the application. A catheter left inside the body, either temporarily or permanently, may be referred to as an "indwelling catheter" (for example, a peripherally inserted central catheter). A permanently inserted catheter may be referred to as a "permcath" (originally a trademark). Catheters can be inserted into a body cavity, duct, or vessel, brain, skin or adipose tissue. Functionally, they all ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ziconotide
Ziconotide (SNX–111; Prialt), also called intrathecal ziconotide (ITZ) because of its administration route, is an atypical analgesic agent for the amelioration of severe and chronic pain. Derived from ''Conus magus'', a cone snail, it is the synthetic form of an ω-conotoxin peptide. It is 1,000 times as powerful as morphine. In December 2004 the Food and Drug Administration approved ziconotide when delivered as an infusion into the cerebrospinal fluid using an intrathecal pump system. Discovery Ziconotide is derived from the toxin of the cone snail species ''Conus magus''. Scientists have been intrigued by the effects of the thousands of chemicals in marine snail toxins since the initial investigations in the late 1960s by Baldomero Olivera. Olivera, now a professor of biology in the University of Utah, was inspired by accounts of the deadly effects of these toxins from his childhood in the Philippines. Ziconotide was discovered in the early 1980s by University of Utah re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
