Diabetes is a serious condition that is not curable, it’s important that you learn as much as you can about the disease and work with your diabetes management team to manage the disease and get the support you need to stay strong.
You can live an active, full life with diabetes, but you must be motivated and willing to manage it diligently and correctly. Failure to manage your diabetes can lead to disease-related complications such as problems with your eyes, kidneys or nerves, or heart attacks, strokes and amputations. These complications are permanent and irreversible, but with proper diabetes management, you may be able to limit these complications or prevent them altogether. The video below offers important points about insulin, diet and exercise and life management. http://www.southnassau.org/news/diabetes.cfm Video Rating: / 5
Hello future nurses. This video will discuss Diabetes diagnosis, hallmark manifestations, and patient education. Stay tuned for “Diabetes Complications”. This video is for educational purposes only. If you have a question about a medical condition, please consult a qualified healthcare professional. The content in this video strives for accuracy but errors may occur. Always verify accuracy of educational content according to scientific evidence, policies, and procedures.
Conjunctivitis, commonly referred to as pinkeye, is a common condition affecting one or both eyes. It is characterized by inflammation of the conjunctiva, the mucous membrane covering the white of the eyes and the inner surface of the eyelids. Conjunctivitis may resolve on its own but sometimes requires treatment. It does not cause any permanent eye or vision changes.
Causes.
Conjunctivitis most often results from a viral infection. Other causes include bacteria, allergy to dust or pollen, exposure to irritants such as smoke, dirt or certain shampoos, as well as prolonged use of contact lenses. Infectious conjunctivitis is highly contagious so precautions should be taken to avoid spreading the condition to others.
Signs and Symptoms.
Common symptoms of conjunctivitis include redness of the eyes and pain with swelling of the eyelids. There may also be excessive tear flow and thick yellow-colored discharge from the eyes. The eyelids may become sticky with crust formation noticed especially on arising from sleep. You may also experience itchiness, blurry vision and increased sensitivity to light.
Diagnosis.
Your doctor will diagnose conjunctivitis based on your symptoms and a physical examination of the eyes. Fluid discharge may be obtained with a swab of the conjunctiva and sent to the laboratory for analysis. This helps your doctor find out the type of infection to decide on the appropriate treatment.
Treatment.
The treatment for conjunctivitis depends on its cause.
Viral conjunctivitis does not usually require treatment and symptoms should fade in about 2-3 weeks as the infection resolves. Antiviral medications may be prescribed.
In cases of bacterial infection, your doctor will prescribe antibiotic medications in the form of eye-drops or ointment.
Warm compresses applied over the eye may help soothe your symptoms if you have viral or bacterial conjunctivitis.
Allergic conjunctivitis responds to anti-allergic medicines such as antihistamines, steroids, ant-inflammatory drugs and decongestants. Cool compresses may also be helpful. Avoiding the substance that causes your allergic symptoms whenever possible is often the best solution to preventing allergic conjunctivitis.
Prevention.
Maintaining good hygiene helps prevent the spread of conjunctivitis. Wash your hands often and do not touch or rub your eyes. Avoid sharing towels or eye cosmetics. Change the pillow covers and bed linens frequently. If you use contact lenses, handle them carefully and follow a proper cleaning regimen. Video Rating: / 5
Diabetes and You explains the basics of
diabetes care and education
and insulin preparation for those who are
newly diagnosed with Type 1 or Type 2
diabetes
Health care is undergoing significant transformation, and digital health data is at the center of this change. According to the Centers for Disease Control, nearly 80 percent of the nation’s health care institutions have converted to an electronic medical record (EMR) system from the old paper-based system. New technologies like smartphone applications are also creating new stockpiles of digital data. Genetic data is growing as well; scientists can sequence a person’s entire DNA within 24 hours and for less than ,000. Collectively, the amount of digital health data is expected to grow from 500,000 to 25 million terabytes over the next five years.
Why do we care that our health information is now in a digital format? How does it benefit all of us?
People who work in health care—and every industry for that matter—are smart, well trained, and do their best to stay up-to-date with the latest research, methodologies and trends. However, it is not rational to assume individuals have the depth of knowledge or data access to deal with every situation they encounter. Furthermore, the health care field is already understaffed, and this issue will only get worse as the looming mass retirement of baby boomers from the health care workforce creates an unprecedented supply-and-demand crisis.
Digitized health data has the potential to help mitigate this troubling situation. Predictive medicine uses computing power and statistical methods to analyze EMR and other health-related data to predict clinical outcomes for individual patients. Beyond health outcome forecasting, predictive medicine also can uncover surprising and often unanticipated clinical associations.
Oklahoma State University’s Center for Health Systems Innovation (CHSI), through its Institute for Predictive Medicine (IPM), is a leader in the exploding field of predictive medicine thanks to the unprecedented donation by Cerner Corporation of its HIPAA-compliant clinical health database, one of the largest available in the United States. Specifically, this dataset represents clinical information from over 63 million patients and includes admission, discharge, clinical events, pharmacy, and laboratory data spanning more than 16 years.
Over 20 full-time CHSI employees and nearly two dozen graduate students are working to execute the CHSI mission to transform rural and Native American health through data analytics. Further, CHSI has a number of ongoing partnerships with academia, health systems and corporations to extract value from digitized health data.
One example of CHSI’s numerous predictive medicine projects is an effort to help physicians determine whether the performance of particular cardiovascular drugs varies by gender or race, or both. Conversely, this study will help indicate which drugs perform poorly or even cause complications in these populations. Other CHSI studies are designed to give physicians insight into whether patients with a particular disease are likely to develop or already have an associated disease, which will aid in co-managing these conditions and lead to better health care. Another project is designed to help hospitals use data on patient demographic characteristics, comorbidities, discharge setting, and other medical information contained in comprehensive EMR systems to determine if patients are at high risk for being readmitted for disease-associated complications. If patients are considered high risk, they can get the care and support necessary to prevent frequent cycling through the health care system.
Predictive medicine can also lead to the creation and implementation of tools for managing larger patient loads, which can aid health care providers in dealing with supply-and-demand problems. For instance, CHSI has developed a clinical decision support system that can detect diabetic retinopathy with a high degree of accuracy using lab and comorbidity data available through primary care visits. This algorithm addresses the very real challenge of low patient compliance, particularly among rural and underserved populations, with annual ophthalmic eye exams, which are the gold standard for retinopathy detection and preventing vision impairment or total vision loss. CHSI is extending this work to other common diabetes-related microvascular complications with the goal of developing a comprehensive suite of tools that can help increase prevention and management of these complications among the nation’s growing diabetic population.
