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What is Mitra Valve Prolapse and what are the Symptoms ?

2011-06-20T12:15:00.000-07:00

I recently had a relative call me regarding her daughter. It seems that the young lady was prone to anxiety attacks, trembling, constant fatigue, and a general feeling that something wasn't right. These symptoms had been present for years and had caused a degradation in the child's quality of life.

After a chance conversation with a friend regarding the problem and the symptoms, something shocking emerged. It seems that the person with whom she discussed these symptoms had gone through the same thing, with added symptoms of clinical depression, severe anxiety attacks, odd phobias, and a constant feeling of nervousness with no cause. What emerged was the possibility that the child might have a condition called Mitra Valve Prolapse, the same condition with which the acquaintance described and had been diagnosed to have.

So what is Mitra Valve Prolapse? The following description is taken from the web site of the Autonomic Disease and Mitra Valve Prolapse Center located in Birmingham, Alabama.

Located between the upper left chamber and lower left chamber of the heart, the mitral valve is made of two flaps of tissue that normally open and close in a rhythmic way to allow blood to flow in one direction--from the atrium (upper chamber) to the ventricle (lower champer). The left ventricle is responsible for much of the heart's pumping and propels oxygen-rich blood into the arteries. The arteries then carry the blood throughout the body. When the mitral valve doesn't open and close properly, the flaps may "billow" backward slightly into the upper chamber during the heart's contraction. This is called mitral valve prolapse (MVP). As a result of MVP, a clicking sound can often be heard by the doctor listening to the heart sounds with a stethoscope.
In MVP, sometimes small amounts of blood may leak backward into the upper chamber of the heart because the valve does not close normally. This causes a "heart murmur," although the heart itself is working normally. The heart has an adequate blood supply, even with the MVP. Prolapsing mitral valves do not usually get worse over time.
Mitral valve prolapse is the most common cardiac problem and may affect five to twenty percent of the population. The condition is most common in women, although men are also affected. With MVP, symptoms do not begin before the early teenage years (approximately age 14 in girls and 15 in boys), but adults of any age may be affected. MVP tends to run in families, so those with blood relatives with MVP have a greater chance of also having the condition. The mitral valve prolapse syndrome is sometimes called dysautonomia.

The great news is that after a visit to the Doctors at the Mitral Valve Prolapse Center in Birmingham, Alabama the condition was diagnosed and a treatment of special medications began. The symptoms were relieved and the young lady is now free to live a much happier life. In just two weeks her life was changed and she is now feeling better than she has since before the onset of the symptoms.

The major symptoms of MVP are listed below:

MAJOR SYMPTOMS

Fatigue: One of the most common symptoms In MVPS/D.
Chest pain: A frightening symptom. Along with panic attacks and heart palpitations, chest pain is one of the main reasons people rush to the emergency room.

Palpitations or irregular heart beat: When you have heart palpitations, they can make you feel as though your heart is not beating properly. Note that whether you describe the palpitations as "flutters", "flip flops," or skipped heartbeats," they all fall into the category of palpitations.

Migraine headaches: Research undertaken by the University of California at San Diego found that men and women with MVPS/D have a greater tendency to suffer from headaches than the normal population (Ford and Ford, 1996).

Anxiety: Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is the name for feeling much more anxiety than the amount, or degree, of anxiety that most people experience in their daily lives. When you suffer from this disorder, you are almost always anticipating disaster.

Depression: This should not be confused with the occasional feelings of unhappiness that everyone experiences now and then. With this sadness the moods lift, and people continue being able to function. Clinical depression does not get better for months, sometimes years, if you do not receive medical help.

Panic attacks: For some time it has been well documented that there is an association between MVPS/D and panic attacks. The MVP Center in Birmingham, Alabama, found the incidence of panic attacks to be present in 60 percent of their patients who had been diagnosed with MVPS/D.
(Lyn Frederickson, 1992).

Shortness of breath: People with MVPS/D are often out of shape because of their low energy levels. This is very much a vicious cycle, because the poorer your condition, the lower your tolerance for any kind of activity. You may notice your heart rate increases greatly with minimal exertions, and you become short of breath. Exercising regularly will alleviate this symptom.

Minor symptoms

Neck aches or pains

Feeling hot and cold; not related to external temperature

Arm and leg aches

Shakiness

Swelling of arms, hands, legs, or feet

Difficulty sleeping

Backaches

Intestinal or stomach trouble

Difficulty with urination

Numbness in any part of the body

Aches or pains in hands or feet

Fainting spells

Excessive perspiration or inability to perspire

Trouble with eyes or visual disturbances

Skin trouble or rashes

Muscle fatigue or weakness

Dizzy spells

Twitching muscles

Poor health in general

Excessive gas

Bowel trouble (constipation or loose bowels)

Hay fever or other allergies

Trouble concentrating or memory problems

There is also a greater incidence of the following in patients with MVPS/D:

Scoliosis, curvature of the spine

PMS

Fibrocystic breast disorder

Endometriosis

Thyroid disease: Dr. Phillip C. Watkins, director of The MVP Center n Birmingham, Alabama, states that they see about a half a dozen MVPS/D patients every day that also have a thyroid disorder.

Fibromyalgia

Pectus excavatum; also known as sunken breastbone

TMJ, also known as temporomandibular joint dysfunction
I have researched throughout my sphere of friends and I was surprised to find out how common this condition is - particularly among women. If you are exhibiting one or many symptoms please get yourself checked for this condition. In many cases the diagnosis can be made just from a questionnaire and then confirmed with testing. If you are diagnosed with MVP there is a good chance that you can be returned to normal health and symptom free in a very short time.

Study Indicates That Those Over 50 With Diabetes At Risk To Die 6 Years Sooner

2011-03-03T11:45:00.000-08:00

Diabetes patients who are 50 and older are more likely to die six years sooner than someone not suffering from the disease, a new study shows.

Research from a large international effort suggests the deaths of diabetics are not only from heart attacks and strokes, but from a variety of other ailments, including breast cancer and pneumonia.

"It's quite a wide sweep of conditions," said Dr. John Danesh of Cambridge University in Britain, who led the team of researchers. While most people think of heart problems, diabetes surprisingly "appears to be associated with a much broader range of health implications than previously suspected."

Putting the six years lost in context, he said, long-term smoking shortens life by 10 years.
The analysis used pooled medical information for 820,900 people from nearly 100 studies done mostly in Europe and North America. The results are published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

Diabetes, the seventh leading cause of death in the U.S., affects about 26 million Americans, or 8 percent, including 7 million who haven't been diagnosed. Most in the study were thought to have the most common kind — Type 2 — which occurs when the body makes too little insulin or cannot use what it does make to regulate blood sugar.

High blood sugar can damage nerves and blood vessels, and is a major cause of heart disease.

The new research didn't include those who had heart disease when they were first enrolled.

Participants were followed on average for 13 1/2 years, and there more than 123,000 deaths. Overall, death rates from various causes were higher for those with diabetes than those without. The researchers took into account other risk factors that could influence the results: age, gender, smoking and weight. Type 2 diabetes is tied to obesity. They found that those with diabetes had double the risk of dying from a heart attack or stroke, compared to those without the disorder. But they also found that diabetics had a 25 percent higher risk of dying from cancer and were more likely to die from a variety of illnesses including infections, lung and kidney disease as well as falls.

Exactly how diabetes raises those risks isn't clear, but in the case of infections, it could be that diabetes weakens the immune system, the researchers said. Diabetes can cause vision problems and loss of feeling in the legs, which may be the reason for falls, they said.

Danesh said one intriguing finding was a higher risk of suicide in those with diabetes. Other research has linked diabetes with depression, he noted.

The results are "another reason to try to normalize blood glucose in people who have diabetes," through diet, exercise and medication, said Dr. Alvin Powers, a diabetes specialist at Vanderbilt University. "There have been smaller studies that hinted at this but nothing where a study of this size looked at so many different outcomes."

Danesh and his colleagues also estimated diabetes' effect on life expectancy. They calculated that a 50-year-old diabetic without heart disease dies about six years earlier than someone without the disease, with 40 percent of the difference due to cancer and conditions other than heart disease. "It underscores the need to prevent diabetes," Danesh said.

Previous studies have shown a possible link between diabetes and cancer. The new paper tied some, but not all, cancers; the increased risk ranged from 25 percent for breast cancer to double for liver cancer. Danesh said people with diabetes should get age-appropriate cancer screenings.

Last year, a joint report from the American Diabetes Association and the American Cancer Society looked at the issue and said that it wasn't clear whether any connection was direct, indirect or perhaps because the two disorders share common risk factors, like obesity.

The new research squares with that report's conclusion that "there's a lot more we need to understand about diabetes and the link to cancer," said one of the authors, Dr. Richard Bergenstal of the International Diabetes Center at Park Nicollet in Minneapolis. He is a former president of the diabetes group. While adding to the evidence, the study doesn't answer the question of why, he said. "Diabetes is a serious condition. We often don't quite think about it quite that way," Bergenstal said.

5 new medical technologies to get excited about.

2011-03-02T06:36:00.000-08:00

Since the advent of computer technology, medical equipment technology has been making leaps every day. Technology that we once thought would come many years into the future is being developed and implemented now. Here are 5 recent and important developments in medical technology.

Ultrasound Imaging on Your Phone
Ultrasound machines are still relatively clunky and heavy. But with the help of a $100,000 grant from Microsoft, researchers at Washington University have created the first ever portable ultrasound machine that fits in the palm of your hand by combining the Microsoft smartphone with USB-based ultrasound probe technology. With the device patient data from remote locations can be sent to specialists via phone instantly, and they can in turn study the data and send back a diagnosis.

New Prostate Treatment: Cavitation
Treatment of prostate growths is traditionally invasive, painful and not always effective. At the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, however, urologists have developed a new method of treating prostate growths by using highly focused microwave pulses. When these pulses reach the growth, they create bubbles of dissolved gas from prostate tissue. When these microscopic bubbles explode, they create a shockwave, which dissolves the growth. This shockwave effect is called cavitation, and not many thought that it could ever be controlled with such precision.

Microwaving Tumors
Liver cancer treatment involves either surgery or transplant. But a third option is now available at the UC San Diego Medical Center. It’s called microwave ablation and it involves inserting a thin needle into the cancerous tumor and then emitting hot microwaves into it, causing it to die after about 10 minutes. The potential to use microwave ablation to treat other types of cancer is being studied.

Gamma Cameras
High-res gamma cameras have become one of the most useful tools for the diagnosis of breast cancer. Other imaging techniques did not provide sufficient detail to fully detect cancer in some instances. Brest-specific gamma imaging (BSGI) is helping doctors detect cancer cases that would have otherwise remained overlooked.

Doctor-free Surgeries
Engineers at Duke University are working to bring about the advent of robot surgeries, unassisted by human hands. By using a rudimentary tabletop robot and 3D ultrasound imaging along with an artificial intelligence program, they built a robot that can perform basic surgical tasks on its own. Though far from practical yet, their robot marks one of the first steps towards this space age dream of someday having robots that perform all kinds of medical procedures, especially in places not immediately accessible to humans.
As new medical equipment emerges, why not find a great deal and buy used ekg machines? Check out http://www.akwmedical.com/catalog/ekg-machines to find out more.

Fish Oil And Omega-3s, Helping Chemo Patients Gain Weight

2011-03-02T05:34:00.000-08:00

Cancer patients are finding ways to gain weight with Omega-3s and fish oil rich foods and supplements. Follow the link to the Medical News Today site.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/217846.php

Flu Shot Reminder and Medicare Information

2011-02-25T05:57:00.000-08:00

February Flu Shot Reminder

It’s Not too Late to Give and Get the Flu Vaccine. Take advantage of each office visit and continue to protect your patients against the seasonal flu. Medicare will continue to pay for the seasonal flu vaccine and its administration for all Medicare beneficiaries through the entire flu season. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that patients, health care workers and caregivers be vaccinated against the seasonal flu. Protect your patients. Protect your family. Protect yourself. Get Your Flu Vaccine - Not the Flu.

Remember – Influenza vaccine plus its administration are covered Part B benefits. Note that influenza vaccine is NOT a Part D covered drug. For information about Medicare’s coverage of the influenza vaccine and its administration, as well as related educational resources for health care professionals and their staff.

Please visit the following CMS websites: http://www.cms.gov/MLNProducts/Downloads/Flu_Products.pdf and http://www.cms.gov/AdultImmunizations.

Welcome to the Jett Medical Company Daily Blog

2011-02-24T08:57:00.000-08:00

Look for our daily updates on the advancements in Medical Equipment, Supplies, Daily Living Aides, and interesting articles on healthy living, exercise, and healthy dietary practices. We will bring you original information that should be helpful in helping you maintain a healthy lifestyle and improve overall wellness.