BeeHealthy
Timely Hints for a Healthy Lifestyle
Life Line Screening Radiology offers tests

Residents living in and around the Orchard Park and Buffalo communities can be screened to reduce their risk of having a stroke.

Beginning at 9 a.m. Tuesday, July 3, Life Line Screening Radiology will be at the Orchard Glen Retirement Community, 6055 Armor Road in Orchard Park.

The group will also provide screenings at 9 a.m. Friday, July 6 at the Evangelical Assembly of God, 1800 Maple Road in Amherst.

A stroke, known as a "brain attack," is ranked as the third leading killer in the world and the second among women. Through preventive screenings, the risk of having a stroke can be greatly reduced.

The screenings are fast and painless. They involve the use of ultrasound technology and scan for potential health problems related to blocked arteries, which can lead to a stroke; aortic aneurysms that can lead to a ruptured aorta; and hardening of the arteries in the legs.

Also offered for men and women is a bone density screening to assess the risk of osteoporosis.

"About half of the persons with significant carotid stenosis do not show any symptoms before they have a major stroke," said Dr. J. Crayton Pruitt of Life Line. "The stroke itself is the first symptom. We cannot wait for symptoms to occur before we diagnose and treat."

All four screenings take less than an hour to complete. A complete wellness package, including the stroke/carotid artery, abdominal aortic aneurysm, ankle brachial index and osteoporosis screenings, is $129.

For more information regarding the screenings or to schedule an appointment, call 1-877-237-1344. Tips on getting

surgery

Each month, medical errors kill five times as many people in the United States as died in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Of the many categories medical errors fall into, equipment failure is in the top five. Within this group, a routine surgery called laparoscopy, performed over 4.5 million times per year, poses a rare but serious risk.

Laparoscopies are widely used in outpatient surgeries for everything from the removal of ovarian cysts, to gallbladder removal, to hernia repair.

These surgeries require small, minimally invasive incisions to be made in the abdominal region, through which wand-like electrosurgical equipment is placed in order to perform the operation.

The surgeon then views an enlarged image of the procedure on a video monitor while using energy in excess of 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit to cut and coagulate tissue inside the patient's abdomen.

Laparoscopies, however, have the unfortunate ability to backfire. In rare instances, insulation failure in the electrosurgical equipment allows stray energy to escape inside the patient and burn untargeted tissues outside the surgeon's view.

These unseen internal burns can result in peritonitis, sepsis and even death. The most feared of these complications is fecal peritonitis, with a mortality rate of 25 percent.

Trudy Hamilton, a former operating room nurse, was a healthy and active mother of two when she went in to have a routine gynecological procedure in 1991.

Suffering a severely burned bowel as a result of a stray energy burn during her laparoscopy, Hamilton was hospitalized five times for bowel obstructions stemming from the complications of her surgery.

She lost four months of work, during which she endured excruciating pain that made it "hard to walk without it absolutely hurting."

When asked how surgeons can avoid accidental burns from equipment malfunction during surgery, Dr. Gerald Kirshenbaum said he prefers a safety mechanism called active electrode monitoring, a system that shuts the instrument down the instant any stray energy is detected, preventing a possible tissue burn injury to the patient. "I will refuse to use electrical current unless I have AEM."

Approximately 300 hospitals nationwide currently use AEM technology to help prevent unseen stray energy burns during laparoscopic surgery.

Patients who are scheduled for laparoscopic surgery can contact Alan Schwartz at Encision Inc., 1-800-998-0986 - the company that makes the AEM monitoring system - to find out if a hospital near you uses AEM.