10
This is a good and pragmatic question.
Just to give some insight, the benefits of aspirin in high risk patients (with acute or previous vascular disease or some other predisposing condition) are explicitly shown. I recommend reading the freely available meta-analysis published in BMJ in 2002.
Naturally, the patients without any disease or predisposing ...
9
I had the same concern and asked my family doctor. He showed me the recommendations from the American College of Chest Physicians.
Below you can find an extract:
VTE = Venous Thromboembolism (includes Pulmonary Embolism, Deep Vein Thrombosis)
GCS = Graduated compression stockings
6.0 Persons Traveling Long-Distance
6.1.1. For long-distance ...
7
The "common cold" is a syndrome that is characterized by signs and symptoms of upper respiratory infection: sneezing, itchy or watery eyes, rhinorrhea, cough, and sinus congestion. Malaise (the feeling of "feeling sick") is reported, but is generally more mild than with the flu. Fever is uncommon with colds. Myalgias and arthralgias (muscle and joint ...
7
There is no brace position because you will not have warning of a car crash. Think about it. If there was warning, why would there be a crash? The driver would use the warning to avoid the crash. Unlike a pilot who must land the plane eventually regardless of conditions, a car driver can simply stop the car and get out.
If, under some hard-to-imagine ...
7
If you are overall healthy, I don't think it would be wise to go so far as to use an antithrombotic drug; as that will also thin your blood and may cause other issues.
There are a variety of dietary supplements that claim to aid in circulation; however, I can't prove that they will - or won't - work.
So, my best advice would be to obviously, get up and ...
7
I think you are looking for the the risk score assessment tool based on the Framingham Heart Study.
It predicts a person’s risk of having a heart attack in the next 10 years.
It takes into account your age, gender, total cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, systolic blood pressure and smoking status. So you will need information concerning your lipid profile.
...
7
Yes (ish), this meta-analysis proved a strong correlation between exposure to pesticides and likelihood of developing Parkinson's. Note, there is no direct X level of exposure leads to Y likelihood, just a strong correlation.
"Although the risk of PD increased with increased duration of exposure
to pesticides, no significant dose-response relation was ...
7
TL;DR: please WEAR A MASK!
(unless your nearby hospitals are out of it, in which case give your masks to them and stay at home)
The link you mentioned provides the reason that the CDC likely has in mind (though I agree it doesn't identify it clearly as the reason):
The worldwide supply of masks is limited. It's critical that we use them appropriately. [...
7
Are betadine mouthwashes really effective against COVID-19?
In vitro (test tubes/culture plates) studies do show that providone iodine does kill viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 after sufficient exposure (just as bleach and ethyl/isopropyl alcohol do.)
The answer in vivo (in humans or animals) is unknown. (N.B.: That's, unknown, as in, you should probably ...
6
Generally, Diabetes Mellitus is categorized into Type 1, Type 2 and Gestational diabetes.The type that you are concerned with is type 2 in which genetic factor plays a major role.
Type 2 diabetes is a disease that is fundamentally caused by a mismatch between our genetic makeup and our lifestyle choices, namely diet and physical activity. Numerous genes ...
6
Dog bites are the most common type of animal bites. Only 5% of dog bites lead to local infection.
No, echinococcus can't be transmitted through dog bites. Pathogens which can be transmitted by the saliva of the dog are rabies, pasteurella, capnocytophaga and brucella.
Echinococcus could be transmitted by dogs but through fecal transmission. Dogs are the ...
6
I can offer a UK perspective on this, using guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE): Cardiovascular disease: risk assessment and reduction, including lipid modification. There is also a useful summary here.
You mention the case of secondary prevention in cardiovascular disease (CVD), when statins are used in people ...
6
Screening tests such as "blood tests and imaging" have two costs and one benefit:
the cost (dollars and possible health problems) of the actual screening, which can in some cases be free
the cost (dollars and possible health problems) of the followups required when the screening is positive
the benefit of less people dying or their treatment being less ...
6
Great answer above. This is to add on to it:
Making a decision on whether to recommend screening tests for the entire population is different from deciding whether to screen an individual patient. The USPSTF uses panels of experts who employ extensive epidemiology and biostatistics and literature reviews to make those recommendations.
At the population ...
5
Yes, you should be looking into getting help.
Nausea during chemotherapy is very common, and should be treated. But nausea in the morning 9 years after chemotherapy? That is not at all normal.
There are a great many medical problems that can cause nausea, including, unfortunately, a possible recurrence of her cancer. These should be ruled out by her doctor(...
5
Many of the active ingredients in flea and tick powders are harmful to humans, or suspected of being carcinogenic, or have effects on the nervous system.
The Humane Society has a page on OTC flea and tick products, one of the sections details a couple of these effects:
Besides pyrethroid-based products, ingredients to be wary of are organophosphate ...
5
Motion sickness is a complicated process, and as you've noticed, different people are affected to different degrees.
People can and do become habituated to vertigo-inducing motion, but it takes a long time. Similarly, the potential benefit you might gain from any exercises you do (they would be similar to those one does when experiencing benign paroxysmal ...
5
Usually, protein supplements (e.g., whey protein) are used by athletes and body-builders.
Because isometric exercise like body-building increases the diastolic blood pressure in short-term 1, it is recommended to check for serum creatinine and Urea before supplementation (because it may accelerate renal function decline in people with mild renal ...
5
This is an early paper on the efficiency of different fabrics for virus filtration. (Lots of testing as gone on since then.) However, it nicely illustrates breathability, the other factor to consider when making a mask:
They summarize nicely here:
Although the dish towel and the vacuum bag captured the most particles, they were also the hardest to breath ...
4
The best place to find this answer is the US Preventive Services Task Force. They are an "independent, volunteer panel of national experts in prevention and evidence-based medicine" who make recommendations for what kinds of routine care are worth doing (in other words, do more good than harm) for what sorts of people (e.g. which age, sex, etc.). They give ...
4
If the purpose is to prevent tendon injuries, then stretching is not really an effective solution.
This article took a look at nearly 2000 articles in Embase and PubMed, and distilled down to 10 representative studies, none of which found that stretching was an effective method for preventing injuries. (On a side note, I have done previous searches on ...
4
Yes, rabies is most definitely contagious.
The most common route of infection is from the bite of an infected animal, which introduces virus-laden saliva to the victim. It's also possible, though much less likely, to be exposed to infective saliva in the eyes, nose and mouth.
The CDC claims that a person-to-person transmission of the virus via bite is ...
4
I have found following peer-reviewed paper which provides a review of the nonpharmaceutic conservative interventions for the prevention of seizures:
Wolf P. The role of nonpharmaceutic conservative interventions in the treatment and secondary prevention of epilepsy. Epilepsia. 2002;43 Suppl 9:2-5. 1
It says (I have kept the essential parts):
The first ...
4
Short answer? Most likely none.
Better answer? What you are asking is what we health professionals call "Screening tests", which are by definition highly sensitive but relatively non-specific routine tests that are cost-effective to conduct routinely in HEALTHY population at risk for a particular disease.
Things like Prostate Antigen or Occult Blood in ...
3
If the mobility of the tooth is due to trauma, the prognosis is incertain in permanent teeth. This paper, is very well detailed as to different levels of trauma. Mobility usually occurs after the extrusion of the tooth:
Extrusion
Definition: partial displacement of the tooth axially from
the socket; partial avulsion. The periodontal ligament usually
...
3
First you have to consider how diseases are transmitted. STDs are usually skin to skin or warm body fluid to an open sore. Diseases like influenza, ebola, etc can't go through your skin. They require you to touch your eyes, mouth, or an open sore. Even getting a few drops of urine on your legs probably won't get you sick unless you move some of it to a wound,...
3
Edit: COVID and your laundry
In April, a Texas biomedical scientist published an article about COVID and clothing. She suggested that, during the COVID pandemic, it's usually fine to just do laundry in the ordinary way. But, if you're washing the laundry of a likely COVID patient, it's wise to take extra precautions. Please see the CDC's recommendations, ...
3
Currently, about 20% of people die of cancer. As our ability to cure things that aren't cancer gets better, that number will only go up.
If you compute the probabilities, it turns out that for ever five houses where the previous four occupants died while living there, one of those houses will have had two or more occupants die of cancer (exact odds: 18.08%)...
3
I believe the term you're looking for is cardiac sympathetic denervation (CSD). This is a fairly non-technical explanation of the procedure. It can be left side only (LCSD), right side only (RCSD), or bilateral (BCSD). In short, it's a procedure of last resort to control ventricular arrhythmias when drugs and endocardial ablation procedures have failed.
3
Several combinations between analgesics and other compounds could be interesting for medical treatment and used in pain treatments, however, the logic isn't only effectiveness. For a medication to be approved by regulatory authorities, such as FDA, as over the counter or under prescription, pharmaceutical companies look first on the ROI (return of investment)...
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