Firstmed Blog

Surgical hair replacement:
Surgical transplantation should be considered if you are experiencing thinning hair or baldness, hair transplantation is considered a permanent form of hair replacement. Anyone who has permanent hair loss may be a candidate for hair transplantation, including:

* Men with male pattern baldness
* Some women with thinning hair
* Individuals who have lost hair as a result of burns or other scarring injuries to the scalp, eyebrows, or eyelashes

Types of hair replacement surgery:
There are a number of techniques used in hair replacement surgery. Sometimes two or more techniques are used to achieve the best results.

* punch grafts - usually contain about 10-15 hairs
* mini-grafts - contain about 2 to 4 hairs
* micro-grafts - contain 1 to 2 hairs
* slit grafts - contain about 4 to10 hairs each
* strip grafts - contain 30-40 hairs

Complications of hair replacement surgery:
Individuals vary greatly in their healing abilities, and outcome is never completely predictable. Complications such as the following may occur:

* Infection
* Excessive bleeding
* Wide scars, called stretch-back scars
* Bumps that form at the transplant sites
* Unnatural, patchy look may result
* Additional surgery may be required

Surgical hair replacement procedures:
Treatment may be performed at an outpatient surgery centre, or, rarely, a hospital as an outpatient or an inpatient.
Hair replacement surgery is usually performed using a local anaesthesia along with sedation to make the patient relaxed, although general anaesthesia may be used for more complex cases involving tissue expansion or flaps.

Which are the symptoms of a heart attack?

The symptoms of a heart attack may be quite gentle that’s why many people take too long to recognize they need help.
The most common symptoms are a feeling of heavy pressure or deficiency, crushing pain or unusual discomfort in the centre of the chest or a feeling like indigestion. Pain or tightness may extend to the shoulders, neck or arms, or it may affect the jaws or throat, making the person feel like they’re choking. Some people don’t get chest discomfort, and only get symptoms in their arms or throat. Others don’t get pains in their arms, but their arms feel heavy or useless.

The symptoms would usually last about more than 15 minutes. They may stop, or diminish and then return. The person may sweat, feel sick, faint or be short of breath.

Many people having a heart attack won’t admit they are in trouble, or they think it’s not serious.

What should you do?
Make sure the person is resting quietly, sitting or lying down. Get them to take half an aspirin immediately (be aware they are not allergic to it). If breathless, get them to sit up. If they feel faint, get them to lie flat. Call an ambulance. If, for some reason, an ambulance can’t get there quickly enough, drive the person to hospital right away.

If you feel these symptoms yourself, or see the first signs of someone else suffering from them, don’t wait. Medical help is most important in the first few hours. Prompt medical attention can help reduce the amount of heart muscle damage and can help improve the person’s chances of survival.

Cardiac arrest
How do you know if someone has had a cardiac arrest?
The person is unconscious. Their heart has stopped beating. Their skin turns pale or blue. You feel no pulse. What should you do?
Act as fast as possible: get someone to call for skilled help. A person who has had a cardiac arrest won’t survive unless the blood starts pumping and the body gets a supply of oxygen very quickly.

Start CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation). CPR involves mouth-to-mouth breathing and external heart massage through the chest.
Call an ambulance: tell the emergency services that someone has had a cardiac arrest.

Normal hair growth:
About 90 percent of hair on the scalp grows constantly. The other 10 percent of scalp hair lies in a resting state that lasts two to three months. At the end of the resting stage, this hair is eventually shed.
But don’t worry shedding is normal; we shed 50 to 100 hairs a day. When a hair is shed, a new hair from the same follicle replaces it and the growing cycle starts again. Scalp hair grows about one-half inch a month.
However ageing results in the slowing of the rate of hair growth.

What causes excessive hair loss?
Most shedding of hair is due to the normal growth-rest cycle, and losing 50 to 100 hairs a day is normal. If you are concerned about excessive loss of hair or dramatic thinning, you should consult a dermatologist. Excess loss of hair may be due to many different causes, including:

* A high fever, severe infection
* Thyroid disease
* Inadequate protein in diet
* Certain medications
* Cancer treatments
* Low serum iron
* Major surgery/chronic illness
* alopecia areata
* Hereditary thinning or balding
* A fungus infection (i.e., ringworm) of the scalp
* Improper hair cosmetic use/improper hair care

Can hair loss be prevented?
Hair loss due to certain causes will regrow naturally. And a dermatologist may treat other causes successfully. There are several causes of hair loss for which there is no successful treatment at present.
Hair can also be replaced by non-surgical methods, such as with medication.

Viagra (sildenafil) started off as a rather disappointing treatment for angina but doctors began to notice that patients were very reluctant to stop taking it, even after surgery had dealt with any angina problems. One by one the Viagra users confessed that a wonderful thing had happened after Viagra: their sex life had dramatically improved. Following this unexpected side effect Viagra was launched by Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in mid April 1998 in the US as a treatment for impotence and different degrees of erectile dysfunction. Within 14 days despite the high Viagra price, doctors were writing more than 110,000 Viagra scripts a week. In 14 weeks 2 million Viagra scripts had been written in the US alone and Viagra had become established as a new recreational drug in club culture world-wide. Substitute viagra, free viagra, herbal viagra, cheap viagra, viagra sale online, natural viagra, viagra alternative - Viagra sales leapt and so did sales of every kind of aphrodisiac on the impotence market, all promising more for less.

After five years with 96% of the erectile dysfunction (ED) market to itself, Pfizer’s Viagra isn’t the only game in town for ED sufferers any more and is facing some stiff competition from cheap generics available online and from Levitra and Cialis treatments lauched in 2003 by Bayer & GlaxoSmithKline and Lilly & Icos respectively. Today the Viagra stampede has settled down, with a black market firmly established and accelerated by the Internet, allowing more than 70 million web surfers to purchase Viagra relatively easily and cheaply on the open market despite being classified as a prescription drug. In addition a large number of online pharmacies have sprung up offering Viagra without a medical consultation, at heavily discounted prices. And then there is fake Viagra, containing little or no real Viagra.

So does all this competition mean that Viagra will become cheaper. Many patients feel that they are being over charged for these pills and ask when and where cheaper treatments will come from?

While Pfizer is currently the only legal producer of the original branded Viagra, there are literally over a hundred companies making generic versions, such the popular Indian variety ‘Kamagra’. However many people are quite rightfully reluctant to purchase generics which are illegally produced. As the only producers of the guaranteed branded product, Pfizer can maintain their high prices. This is all set to change in 2010 when Pfizer’s patent on Viagra expires and the market becomes a free for all. Other drug manufacturers will be allowed to produce sildenafil and be subject to the same regulations as Pfizer are. These are often cheaper than the original brand, and may be sold under the generic name or new brand names. A generic medicine is typically 20% to 80% less expensive than the brand-name original. The availability of lower-priced generic medicines brings down the price of originator drugs through market competition, producing even further savings to patients.

Effective competition between generic medicines and patent-expired original brands guarantees that customers can look forward to a lowering in price of branded pharmaceuticals.

Erectile dysfunction, formerly called “impotence,” means that a man often can’t have an erection firm enough for sexual activity. Men with diabetes get ED (erectile dysfunction) three times as often as other men. If you think you may have ED, see your health care helper. Most cases can be treated or even cured. For example, a medical problem (such as high blood pressure) may be the cause and can be treated. Sometimes, drugs cause ED, in this case, you may be able to switch to some other drug.

ED Pills
Pills are the most common treatment for ED. Sildenafil (Viagra), vardenafil (Levitra), and tadalafil (Cialis) work by making muscles of the penis relax. Then more blood flows in. ED pills do not cause erections by themselves. A man must also be sexually excited. The erection-helping effects of ED pills last about 4 hours with sildenafil and vardenafil and 36 hours with tadalafil. You should not borrow these drugs from friends or buy them in internet. They should only be taken with your health care provider’s knowledge and oversight.

Some men should never take ED pills. These include men who should not have sex for medical reasons and men who take certain drugs or have certain medical problems. ED pills also have side effects. The most common are headache, flushing, upset stomach, vision changes, and erections that last longer than 4 hours.

Other ED Drugs
Alprostadil is an ED drug that comes in two forms. One form (Caverject, Caverject Impulse, or Edex) is injected into the side of the penis to increase blood flow and cause an erection within 5 to 20 minutes. Its effects last 1 hour or less. The most common side effect is pain. Other side effects include bruising, redness, numbness, bleeding, and irritation.

Alprostadil also comes as a pellet that is placed within the penis. An erection then starts within 8 to 10 minutes. It lasts 30 to 60 minutes. Side effects can include pain, aching, burning, minor bleeding, and redness. When a man has low levels of male hormones, a doctor may prescribe testosterone patches. These are worn every day. Too few studies have been done to know whether these patches work for ED. Injections of testosterone are also given for ED. The need for these can be determined with a blood test.

Other ED Treatments
Counseling. Stress, relationship problems, and other mental factors can cause ED. Also, a man with ED may become anxious about sex, making ED worse. So counseling may help even when ED has a physical cause. Vacuum device. This device is placed over the penis. Then air in the device is pumped out. Blood flows into the penis and causes an erection. An elastic ring then slides onto the penis to keep the erection going after the device is removed.

Surgery. Blood vessel surgery helps some men, such as those with penis injuries. This surgery cannot help most men with diabetes. In another type of surgery, implants are placed in the penis. Some implants are rods that make the penis always stiff. Other implants can be inflated to cause an erection when desired.

Don’t Lose Hope
In the past, many men just lived with ED. Today’s treatments mean that most men with ED can get their sex lives back. The most important step is the first one: seek help by talking to your health care provider.

It emerged last week that Pfizer, the manufacturers of super drug Viagra have been sending vast quantities of spam email over the past six months. Pfizer is a pretty big drug manufacturer is it not? Then why have they been hawking Viagra and fake Rolex watches through their email network?

Well apparently they didn’t know about it.

At least 138 of Pfizer’s IP addresses were infected by Malware, which instructed them to send out spam on behalf a very ingenious hacker that had penetrated their systems. Aside from Viagra, the spam advertises penis-enlargement drugs, fake Rolexes and shares. According to botnet-tracking company Support Intelligence, those IP addresses have now been blacklisted by anti-spam companies. Support Intelligence has saved 600 sample spam emails over the past six months, and contacted Pfizer about the problem.

There have been implications in the press that Pfizer haven’t done anything about it because the spamming campaign is of benefit to them. I disagree. Spam is an annoyance. It takes longer and longer to sift through the stuff to see if there’s something trapped that shouldn’t be. Or, reviewing what’s in your inbox for something there that should have been trapped. Spam costs hundreds of pounds per year per employee in lost productivity and higher computing bills. While home computer users are at risk from emails that ask them to reveal their bank details, a practice known as phishing. Spam represents for most people, one of the principal instruments of dodgy business practices and of illegal communication in the modern age. Why would a large multi-national company want any association with it?

Police in New Jersey in the United States have arrested several people in a crackdown on the illegal trading of prescription drugs, including the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra

The arrests, in Perth Amboy, took place following a tip off by a local doctor who claimed drug sales were occurring in a number of stores which did not have permits to operate as pharmacies, NJ.com reports.

Undercover police officers managed to purchase Viagra in seven shops in the area and they arrested ten individuals including store owners and employees.

Perth Amboy Police chief Michael Kohut highlighted the dangers associated with the illegal sale of drugs like Viagra. He told NJ.com: “There’s a need for qualified doctors to prescribe these drugs to make sure people are getting the right stuff.”

Meanwhile a medicine company in New Hampshire has pleaded guilty to conspiring to traffic counterfeit Cialis tablets, which are subscribed to men suffering with impotence.

Fake erectile dysfunction drugs often have no clinical effects at all but some can contain substances which can be harmful to health.

Pfizer, the company behind the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, has announced that it is close its manufacturing plant in Sandwich, Kent.

The company claims that the decision has been taken to consolidate its global manufacturing operations in order to “efficiently” meet demand for its products.

Tony Maddaluna, vice president of Pfizer Global Manufacturing, said it is with “regret” that the company has chosen to close operations in the region after more than 50 years.

“This is the latest in a number of global manufacturing changes, to ensure we are operating as efficiently and effectively as possible and able to respond to the challengers of today’s business environment,” he explained.

According to the Independent, Viagra was first tested as a medicine for people suffering angina by scientists in Wales.

Having discovered that it could have potential benefits for men experiencing erectile dysfunction, Pfizer applied for marketing approval for the drug, which has now been used by over 30 million men worldwide.

A lot of people have heard of Viagra, but they are still not quite sure what to expect when they actually take it. The timescale can vary slightly from person to person and be influenced by external factors like food and alcohol. But generally speaking here is a run down of what happens from the time you pop that ‘little blue pill’.

AFTER FIVE MINUTES: You won’t feel the effect straight away. Wait for the drug to be absorbed into your bloodstream.

You may feel warmth and flushing of the face. This is because Viagra affects your blood flow and not just because you are excited about what is going on down there.

30 MINUTES: As the active ingredient in Viagra – sildenafil citrate – is absorbed, it disables an enzyme in the penis called PDE5. This frees up a chemical called cGMP, which is crucial for hot bedroom action.

30-60 MINUTES: Once the PDE enzymes have been disabled, levels of calcium within the penis muscle cells rise. This relaxes the muscle and increases blood flow.

And the better the blood flow, the better the erection. But only if the spirit is willing – Viagra can’t do all the hard work for you. It won’t work if there isn’t any stimulation.

ONE TO THREE HOURS: Your body will be primed for an erection for about three hours so within that time, and with the right stimulation, an erection can be achieved.

But we are not talking about three-hour long erections. You will orgasm as normal, but may recover more quickly and, while your body is still primed, you can become aroused again.

Lung cancer is the second most common cancer in the UK after breast cancer, with more than 37,000 new cases reported a year. The incidence of lung cancer is rising. Lung cancer is responsible for more cancer deaths than colorectal cancer, breast cancer, and prostate cancer combined and makes up 25% of all UK cancer deaths. Lung cancer primarily strikes people age 45 and over and unfortunately by the time an individual develops symptoms, spread has usually occurred. As a consequence the 1 year survival rate is less than 5% and surgical resection is the only cure.

Lung cancer is directly related to smoking with 85% of cases in smokers, 5% in passive smokers and only 10% in non-smokers. In 1950 the British Medical Journal published evidence suggesting a link between smoking and lung cancer, followed by the announcement in 1964 by US Surgeon General Luther Terry that smoking causes lung cancer. More than 50 potential carcinogens have been identified in cigarette smoke which can lead to mutations in genes that predispose to the development of cancer.

A number of different factors are related to the development of lung cancer. Firstly, the more cigarettes smoked, the greater the chance is that you will develop lung cancer however it is the length of time that you have been smoking which is the key determinant.

For example if you were to smoke 20 cigarettes a day for 40 years you are at a greater risk of developing lung cancer than if you smoke 40 cigarettes a day for 20 years. However, when you stop smoking, immediately your risk of lung cancer begins to decrease although it takes on average a further 15 years until your risk of developing lung cancer is equal to that of a non-smoker of the same age. 40% of newly diagnosed lung cancers still occurs in ex-smokers illustrating trhe long interval between quitting smoking and a significant reduction in lung cancer risk.

There has been a change in consumption of cigarettes from unfiltered high tar cigarettes to filtered low tar cigarettes which possibly lead to a slight reduction in lung cancer risk however, this is cancelled out in most smokers who aware of this knowledge take more, deeper puffs or smoke more cigarettes. This change also mirrors the change in incidence seen in different types of lung cancer, from squamous cell carcinomas that metastasise very early on to adenocarcinomas.

The risk in passive smokers (those who don’t smoke but are continuously exposed to second-hand smoke) is very difficult to calculate although it has been estimated that a partner of a smoker has a 25% increased chance of developing lung cancer when compared to a non-smoker.

Furthermore, while cigarette smoking is the main risk factor for developing lung cancer, both cigars and pipe smoking carry an increased risk alongside an increased risk of cancer of the mouth or lips.

Finally, lung cancer always used to be a disease more commonly seen in men due to the smoking patterns of the past however, with an increasing prevalence of women smokers, it is now almost as common in women as in men.