Saturday, September 15, 2007

Botox and Incontinence Treatment

It really is a novel treatment for patients who suffer from overactive bladder for whatever reason and mostly due to spinal injury and multiple sclerosis.

This condition, which is involuntary bladder contraction, results in urinary incontinence . It is a very frustrating situation for patients and hugely affects the quality of life. Most of them confine themselves and do not socialize only because of urge incontinence.

Botox injection in bladder muscles reduces its contraction and increases bladder capacity, therefore patients need to urinate less frequently and have more control. Moreover It is a durable treatment and usually lasts 12 months and patients can repeat injections after that period. Also this is a non-invasive and reversible procedure.


Patients who are interested to take part in the study for this treatment can get more information from following link. http://www.bcm.edu/urology/?pmid=4997

Saturday, September 8, 2007

Parkinson Disease, Botox Injection & Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS)

Parkinson disease or PD usually does not affect patients' life expectancy but it has a huge impact on patients' quality of life. Therefore controlling symptoms will translate to an acceptable normal daily life for patients.

Recently Botox injection has turned out to another possibility for patients not responding reasonably to mainstream drug treatments.
Botox injection relieves symptoms related to dystonia. Dystonia is involuntary muscle spasm which can cause uncontrollable twisting, repetitive movement, abnormal posture and can affect any part of body even eyelid and vocal cord. It could be very debilitating and affect vision and speech, walking, writing and any kind of movement.
Botox injections block the communication between nerve and muscle and reduce abnormal movements. It is a local injection and a non-invasive procedure.The injection location can be face, eyelid, arm, leg, etc. and it depends on the affected muscles. The results usually last 4-6 months.


Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is a surgical procedure to treat PD disabling neurological symptoms such as tremor, stiffness, rigidity, slowed movement and walking problems.
During this procedure surgeon implant a battery operated wire-size neurostimulator in deep brain (Thalamus or surrounded area ). This device stimulated the targeted area and blocks abnormal nerve signals which cause debilitating symptoms.

Before the procedure surgeon uses MRI, CT or microelctrode recording to identify the precise brain target to implant the device. The procedure does not damage other healthy brain tissue and is adjustable and reversible.

This method reduces patients' symptoms and improves his quality of life considerably. Most of the patients after surgery can reduce their medications. For some patients it works like a miracle.
There are ongoing clinical trials accepting patients for DBS and also there are very professional clinics performing this procedure.



Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Obesity & Non Surgical Treatments

As I mentioned before the only effective and proven treatment for morbid obesity is surgery. Since so many patients consider surgical treatment as the very last option, I am going to cite two other non –surgical available options.

The first one is Balloon weight loss procedure or Bioentrics Intragastric Balloon (BIB). Through the mouth a silicon expandable balloon is introduce into the stomach and is filled with sterile saline. The balloon is too large to move freely in the stomach or goes to the intestine. It increases your fullness feeling and should be accompanied with a supervised diet and behavioral adjustment. This technique needs a mild sedative and takes 15 to 20 minutes. Depends on the result the balloon will be removed or replaced after 6 months.

The next and newer technique is inserting an endobarrier into the stomach and 2 feet of intestine. Food goes into the barrier and without mixing with digestive enzyme passes into the intestine. This method works like gastric bypass surgery and by reducing food absorption helps patients to shed pounds. The average weight loss is about 25 pounds in 3 months period. This non surgical method can be done through an endoscopic instrument and usually takes 30 minutes.