im 28 male and had testicle pain went to doctor got ct scan and seen resolving epididymitiis he never gave me antibiotic. now i have enlarged prostate/prostatitis and finally gave me antibiotic. this is very bothersome only symptom i got now is rectum pressure and feeling of sitting on golfball at times it comes and goes. put me on aleve regimen and zpack(Azithroymicin) any help on what to do or expect?

I think you have get the bacteria infection , so that your epididymitis lead you to have enlarged prostate or prostatitis , taking in so much antibiotics is very bad for your health and body , the Diuretic and anti-inflammatory pill is a very good med that you can have a try , my dad's prostate related pro are solved by this magic med , and you can also contact Doc Lee-herbalistlee@yahoo.com , he is a very good doc who can help you online .

I have random, sharp, sudden pains in my lower abdomen & it has slightly swollen recently which i haven't experienced before, nausia, re-occuring headaches and sometimes heartburn.
The abdominal swelling has never happened before & although its unnoticable to others, im worried
what do you reckon is wrong with me?

lower abdomen is you colon, do you go to the loo regularly? 1's and 2's? if not you may need a laxative to get you more regularly would only suggest a small dose of over the counter remedies you should really see a doctor

You need more evaluation of your condition by sonar .blood and urine tests CT scan etc .
So it is hard to tell exactly your case without these investigations

you're gonna die…

you will have a baby in about seven months time good luck

I been feeling pain on my left upper abdominal , also pain on my back . Yellow stools floating . I had blood work , urine test , ultrasound , ct scan and all came up normal , but i still have the same symptoms. I am going to have a endoscop done on me this wedsday if that comes up normal too should i stop worring about my pancreas ? or have more test done on me? . all these test done on me have left me broke dont have insurance . if any one been through this or having the same symptoms plz email me at

I had the same issues for about 5 months, was misdiagnosed many, many times. Finally got gall bladder checked, and hit the jackpot. the gall bladder and pancreas are amazingly connected. Also, the gall bladder is very tricky about where it actually causes pain. it can mask the pain almost anywhere in the abdomen. I learned a lot while we went through all the tests. So, have that checked, then an easy surgery later, you will feel awesome, I do!

The doctors went from kidney stones to broken rib and many other maladies before we got there, so be careful, especially with no insurance.

Good Luck!!

Recently found on CT scan, have also had CT with contrast and nuclear scans – waiting for more tests and possible biopsy. Yet experiencing extreme lower back pain that is at times debilitating.

Liver lesions are often painless. Pain usually comes from infection or swelling and usually is felt below the ribs in the front on the right side. I would talk to your doctor about the low back pain, but would doubt it is from liver lesions.

The CT or CAT scan is an acronym for computerised axial tomography scan, and it?s now a tool regularly used in diagnosis.

THERE have been exponential advances in medicine in the last five decades, both in diagnostics and therapeutics. This has been made possible through technological discoveries or improvements in other fields of human activity. The CT or CAT scan is one such example.

CT or CAT scan is an acronym for computerised axial tomography scan. The images in a CT scan are created through x-rays and a computer system. Anyone who has seen the images of a CT scan, whether in film or digital form, cannot but marvel at its detail and comprehensiveness.

The CT scan is a large ring-shaped medical device which produces a series of x-ray beams as it rotates around the body in small movements. Images are built up of the various parts of the body scanned during this process. These images, which are called tomograms, are of greater detail than that of ordinary x-rays, which uses a single x-ray beam only. The CT scan can produce images of various body parts like the organs in the chest and abdomen, blood vessels and bones.

Full disclosure: Anyone who has seen the images of a CT scan, whether in film or digital form, cannot but marvel at its detail and comprehensiveness.

A more sophisticated CT scan is the spiral or helical scan, which is faster than the standard CT scan. The x-ray beam in this scan rotates around the body part being scanned in a spiral fashion and produces continuous images.

CT scans are used in the diagnosis and evaluation of many conditions as well as the monitoring of treatment. The procedure is painless and the time taken varies, depending on the body part that is scanned and whether a standard or spiral scan is used.

Standard scans usually take between 10 to 30 minutes. Spiral scans take a shorter time.

Preparations

There is a standard operating procedure whenever a CT scan is ordered. The patient will be asked about his or her medical condition, consumption of medicines, history of allergies, and the possibility of pregnancy in women in the reproductive age group.

In general, CT scans are not done in pregnant women unless there are medical or surgical conditions that require evaluation and/or treatment. This is because of the slight possibility that x-rays may harm the developing foetus. Children are more susceptible to radiation risks than adults. as such, CT scans are only done if the child has a serious condition which is of greater risk than the CT scan.

Any jewellery or metal on the body has to be removed because they interfere with the scanning process. Hair clips, dentures, contact lenses and hearing aids will also have to be removed, particularly if the head is to be scanned.

The patient will be asked to change into a hospital gown.

Some people have a fear of being closed in without means of escape (claustrophobia, which is derived from the Latin word claustrum, which means ?the shut in place?, and Greek word phobos, which means ?fear?). having a CT scan can be claustrophobic. If one has this problem or an anxiety about the scan, one should inform the staff when making the appointment. This is usually addressed by advice and information or the prescription of a sedative to be taken prior to the scan. It is advisable to arrange for a relative or friend to drive if one is going to take a sedative.

The scan

A patient having a CT scan will be asked to lie on a bed that automatically moves in and out of the hollow part of the CT scanner, which is shaped like a large ring. Images will only be taken of the body part that is inside the ring.

After adjusting the position of the bed to ensure that the exact part of the body is in the ring of the CT scanner, the radiographer or radiologist will leave the examination room. he or she will carry out the scanning from a control room, which has a window with full view of the patient. The reason is to reduce the radiation exposure to staff carrying out x-rays daily. Communication with the staff in the control room during the scan will be through an intercom.

The patient will be requested to be still and breathe normally to prevent any blurring of the images taken. one may be asked to breathe in, breathe out or to hold the breath at certain stage(s) of the procedure.

The x-ray in the ring of the CT scan rotates around the patient, taking images as it does so. with the completion of each rotation, the bed on which the patient is lying is moved forward a little bit and the cycle continues until the examination of the body part required is completed.

Sometimes, a contrast medium may be given to a patient who has a CT scan. The medium contains a dye which enhances the quality of the x-ray images of certain body parts. It may be injected into a blood vessel, swallowed as a drink or inserted into the rectum, depending on the body part that is being scanned.

Some patients experience a warm sensation with the injection of contrast medium. This is not abnormal and will resolve by itself rapidly. The contrast media used in CT scans are usually harmless and are excreted from the body in the urine. however, some patients may develop an allergic reaction to the contrast medium, causing complication; hence the importance of informing the radiologist or radiographer of any previous allergies.

The many x-ray images taken will be stored in a computer system. The radiologist will study and analyse the images taken on a monitor screen from various angles and then write a report for the doctor who ordered the CT scan.

With the completion of the CT scan, one can leave the hospital. It is advisable to ask the staff when to expect the results and to confirm one?s appointment with the doctor who ordered the scan.

Uses

CT scans provide information about various conditions, both in its diagnosis and evaluation as well as the monitoring of treatment. Sometimes, they may help in the diagnosis of an unsuspected condition.

The uses of CT scans are myriad and include:

> Head scans after a stroke and for suspected bleeding, swelling of arteries and tumours;

> Chest scans to assess lung and heart conditions;

> Abdominal scans in conditions affecting the liver, gall bladder, spleen, pancreas, intestines;

> Pelvic scans in conditions affecting the female reproductive tract and intestines;

> Blood vessel scans to assess blood flow in various parts of the body;

> Bone scans in conditions affecting bone;

> Guide for biopsies;

> Planning for radiotherapy; and

> Monitoring effects of treatment.

Risks

The exposure to radiation during a CT scan is generally at levels that are safe and insufficient to cause harm to a patient.

A report from the Clinical Advisory Committee on Diagnostic Imaging of the United Kingdom estimated that a typical CT scan of the abdomen or pelvis of everyone in the population would lead to a theoretical lifetime risk of radiation induced fatal cancer of about one in 2,000 (0.05%). This compares with the normal spontaneous risk of fatal cancer of about one in four (25%).

As with all things in medicine, one has to always consider the benefits and the risks of any intervention. If a CT scan is used in the diagnosis of a medical or surgical condition or to monitor treatment, the benefits will outweigh the potential risk.

However, if one has no symptoms, the risk of a CT scan increases because it may lead to additional tests which are unnecessary. as CT scans are not 100% accurate, there is also the possibility of undue alarm or false reassurance.

The benefits and risks must always be considered before having a CT scan. Doctors recommend that CT scans are done for medical reasons only and not for screening purposes.

Dr Milton Lum is a member of the board of Medical Defence Malaysia. This article is not intended to replace, dictate or define evaluation by a qualified doctor. The views expressed do not represent that of any organisation the writer is associated with.

Abraham Verghese, the Stanford physician and writer, has a beautiful piece in the New York Times that’s worth unpacking a bit.

He starts off by marveling about the performance of IBM’s Watson supercomputer on Jeopardy, and thinking about how such a machine could change medicine:

THE other day as I walked through a wing of my hospital, it occurred to me that Watson, I.B.M.’s supercomputer, would be more at home here than he was on “Jeopardy!” Perhaps it’s good, I thought, that his next challenge, with the aid of the Columbia University Medical Center and the University of Maryland School of Medicine, will be to learn to diagnose illnesses and treat patients.

via Treat the Patient, not the CT Scan – NYTimes.com.

Verghese doesn’t shortchange the potential power of the computer one iota, envisioning a world where Watson-like machine might pick up side effects in ways that human doctors would not.

For example, Watson might recognize that the kidney failure in our patient is linked to kidney failure in a patient in Buffalo and another in San Antonio; all three patients, he might inform me, were taking a “natural” weight loss supplement that contained a Chinese herb, aristolochia, that has been associated with more than 100 cases of kidney failure.

via Treat the Patient, not the CT Scan – NYTimes.com.

But he also describes doctors being glued to their computers “like piglets at a sow’s teats,” and worries that this is both causing misdiagnosis and damaging the doctor-patient relationship. the “iPatient,” he writes, is replacing the real one.

Verghese first complaint is that being overly dependent on machines leads patients to get too much radiation from CT scans and also leads physicians to miss things they should have notice. One example is a woman who had been to doctors several times. the physicians missed tumors that were large enough to feel in a physical exam.

But his second worry is that, by not going through the ritual of a physical examination, doctors are depriving patients and their families of something that makes them feel better.

After introducing myself to the patient and to her daughter, I did a thorough but quick neurologic exam. I put the patient through her paces: mental status, cranial nerves, motor and sensory function, used my reflex hammer and pointed out interesting things along the way to my interns and students. I then said to the daughter that her mother seemed back to normal. to our surprise, the daughter seemed comforted, and now had no objection to her mother’s return to the nursing home.

via Treat the Patient, not the CT Scan – NYTimes.com.

This is one of the great quandaries, it seems to me, in medicine. a lot of doctoring could probably be improved by better use of computers, or of algorithms and checklists. Applying better techn0logy and evidence is important.

These kinds of improvements also have the benefit of improving the worst care. a lot of the best doctors are probably already combining the kinds of things computers do well with a very human capacity for creative thinking.

But there’s another part of medical care that seems detached from this kind of evidence collection and deduction. It has to do with how the doctor uses his senses, and how he interacts with a patient on an emotional level. For some ailments, such as pain, stomach problems, or depression, every word choice, intonation, and body movement might be a potential treatment. they are not treatments whose effectiveness anyone knows how to measure.

The closest I’ve seen anyone come has been the research into the placebo effect done by Ted Kaptchuk at Harvard University. He studied traditional Chinese medicine and has worked at figuring out how the way doctors interact with patients helps them feel better. my favorite of his experiments compared waiting, fake acupuncture, and fake acupuncture with warm, caring talk from the physician as treatments for irritable bowel syndrome.

In a trial of 262 patients with severe IBS, 62% of those who received the fake treatment got better, according to results published in the British Medical Journal. by comparison, only 28% of a control group of patients put on a waiting list saw their symptoms improve markedly. a third group who got the fake acupuncture, but without any warm talk, showed in-between results: 44% improved.

The result, says Kaptchuk, shows just how much the expectation of a cure–and the rituals associated with medical treatment–can improve real-world symptoms. “our own will, imagination and belief can modulate the course of illness,”

via The Nothing Cure – Forbes.com.

Orac, a physician-blogger I usually admire, dismissed Kaptchuk’s most recent study, which showed patients benefiting from a sugar pill when they knew it was fake, as not showing high quality evidence and deceiving patients. (See: More dubious statements about placebo effects.) I think he missed Kaptchuk’s cleverest idea — that the placebo effect might be a way to capture the effect of ritual in medicine.

Kaptchuk’s studies still suffer from many failings, most importantly that they are all being done by one researcher. It’s always hard to know how to trust a result when it hasn’t really been independently verified.

Still, I wonder if there are rigorous ways to establish the power of medical rituals, and to figure out how to teach doctors how to best perform them. One of my favorite medical stories is of the effort to improve how quickly patients who have had heart attacks have their arteries cleared with the angioplasty devices made by Johnson & Johnson, Boston Scientific, and Medtronic. the key was not just establishing that there was a problem, but figuring out what the best doctors did differently, and teaching that  difference to doctors. I wonder if there’s some way to do something similar with the ritual of the medical exam.

Neurofibromatosis is the name for a disorder that affects the skin and nervous system. this disorder is divided into two groups: Neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF-1, also known as von Recklinghausen’s disease) and Neurofibromatosis Type 2 (NF-2). Type 1 is the most common. this disorder is occurs in approximately 1 in 40,000 people. some experts suspect that it is an inherited disorder which can affect both males and females alike. Mutations of the affected gene can cause the disorder even when no one else in the family has it. only one copy of the affected gene needs to be passed on in order for it to develop. The child of an affected parent has a 50% chance of developing this condition. To diagnose this disease the medical doctor will take a family medical history and do a physical exam. Testing will be done on hearing as well as an EEG. X-rays of the bones and a CT scan or MRI scan of the head may also be done. Neurofibromatosis symptoms usually show up by the age of 10.

Neurofibromatosis symptoms for Type 1 are usually limited to the skin and eyes, nervous system and may present joint and bone manifestations. The common symptoms include markings on the skin called Café au lait (“coffee with milk”). it is common to find 5 or more of these tan patches on the skin. These spots usually develop within the first few years of life. They are commonly found on the scalp, palms of the hands and soles of the feet but they can also occur on other parts of the body. during puberty the spots multiply and darken when exposed to the sun. Such spots can look like freckles only they appear where the sun does not reach, like the arm pits or groin. this freckling is not dangerous but may cause the skin to itch.

Lisch nodules, pigmented bumps found within the iris of the eyes, are associated with Type 1 Neurofibromatosis. The lisch nodules usually do not cause vision problems for most people and usually do not occur until late childhood. These nodules are one of the major signs of neurofibromatosis. The skin can also develop small, rubbery skin lesions called neurofibromas. These tumors consist of an intense co-mingling of nerve cells and fibrous tissue. Bone defects and visual disorders may also be symptoms of this disease. Type 1 can also be complicated by masses on the brain or spinal column.

Neurofiromatosis Type 2 is the rarer form of this disease and is diagnosed in only about 10% of the cases. Symptoms of Neurofibromatosis Type 2 include bilateral acoustic neuromas. These neuromas are tumors on the eight cranial nerves in the brain. Hearing loss, headache, facial weakness and loss of balance are all symptoms of Type 2. Other symptoms can include brain tumors and abnormalities in the eye lenses. Café-au-lait spots are not as common in Type 2 Neurofibromatosis. Skin tumors are not as common in this type either but may also be present. People who are diagnosed with Nerurofibromotosis Type 1 have a better prognosis then those who are diagnosed with Type 2.

There are no treatments for Neurofibromatosis symptoms other than removal of the tumors if they are causing vision loss or other complications. The neurofibromas are small pea-sized nodules that develop along the nerves in the body. They are slow growing and not cancerous. some people with this condition can be afflicted all over their body with these tumors. others may only have a few. People who are diagnosed with this condition are given genetic counseling and made known of their chances for passing this condition to their offspring.

My little boy keeps getting these bad headaches and the doctor said after a ct scan that there was "a little" something going on in the sinus area and he was treated with antibiotics, and was headache free for 2 weeks and now it is back. he has no other symptoms other than the headache. I thought sinus infections would at least have a runny nose with it, or being stuffy.

Your little boy might have other symptoms that you are not aware of. I deal with sinus problems all the time and this time of the year is the worst. Is he complaining of any other discomfort like ears popping or itching, eyes burning or itching? are his eyes red? Does he feel tired or achy? he might be allergic to all the pollen that is out there right now. You did not say where you live but I can tell you if you live in the Atlanta area he is suffering like a lot of us right now. Call his doctors office and ask them what you should do. good luck.

My mother always tells me that everything is linked to the bowels and only about 10% of us have a clean colon.

have you tried a plugin vapouriser they really work well..karvol do one i have one and i wouldnt be without it..

Poor little fella…it sounds like allergies. This time of year and in the fall is the worst for allergens. My daughter has them and we start in Feb. with the nose sprays and Claritin. she is 9 now and we haven't been to the regular doctor for ear/sinus for 2 years now. been so much easier on her and us. the shot situation at the Ear/Nose/Throat was not fun, but that little bit of pain was worth finding out what she was allergic to. she is so much healthier and she knows if she doesn't do her nose sprays she will feel bad because of the allergens. good luck, I would ask your Pediatrician to refer you on to specialist.

cancer experts
i want to know about small cell lung cancer i've read that usualy cancer is dormant for years before it start to grow.
my question is how long usualy takes for the cancer while is growing to show symptoms does it happen realy fast or does it take less than a year les than six month less than three months or does it just take weeks. thanks

That really all depends on when a person decided to get checked. Many times the only symptoms are fatigue or shoulder pain, or shortness of breath.. or all of the above three. most of these symptoms are put down to over work, stress and perhaps an injury so are left untreated. In my case, I thought it was overwork and was just real tired, I developed what I thought was a bronchial attack so went for a routine xray.. the xray looked suspicious, a CT scan was set up.. within a month of tests I was diagnosed with stage iv inoperable, terminal cancer. I know one lady who fell down, hurt her shoulder so went to have it xrayed, her stage four cancer was found. She had no other symptoms… so it really depends on the person. all I can really say is you have to know your body and when something doesn't feel right…. go and have a check up. Its just too difficult to put a time frame of when symptoms will appear.

When lung cancer starts exhibiting symptoms, it is in an advanced stage (III or IV). Early stage (I and II) are often found by accident during an X-ray performed for other reasons, as early stage does not exhibit any symptoms.

The length of time for grow depends on the cancer type. Squamous cell is a slow growing cancer, whereas small cell is a fast growing.

My husband 58 has been diagnosed with Diabetes and Neuropathy but he has all the symptoms of Pancreatic Cancer plus lost over 50 lbs and counting down, and the Dr wants a CT Scan done but who can afford that ? 3,000–6,000 dollars worth of test !! Where can I go and what can I do to get him the help that he needs he is laying in bed in pain and suffering and that is very hard to deal with day in and day out help if you know something PLEASE!!!!!!! we have filed for SSDI and DHS says NO HELP with Medicaid or Medicare until he gets approved by SS