Tag: Face

POTS rose after covid. Patients face delays in diagnosis and treatment.

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POTS rose after covid. Patients face delays in diagnosis and treatment.

Covid is causing a sharp rise in cases of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, a disorder of the autonomic nervous system that causes rapid heart rate, fainting and dizziness

February 27, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EST

Angelica Baez uses a motorized chair to get around a park in Sacramento on Feb. 3. Baez developed postural tachycardia syndrome, called POTS, after getting covid in 2020. She quickly becomes fatigued by walking. (Max Whittaker for The Washington Post)

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A life-changing condition called POTS, which can cause fainting, irregular heartbeats and dizziness, particularly among young women, appears to be on the rise as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

But the condition isn’t well understood, and doctors dismiss many patients as having anxiety, delaying diagnosis. Once diagnosed, many patients face waiting lists as long as two years to get treatment from specialists.

POTS stands for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, a disorder of the autonomic nervous system, which regulates involuntary functions like heart rate, blood pressure and digestion.

“When the autonomic nervous system is not functioning properly, any or all of those things can go a little haywire,” said David R. Fries, a cardiologist and POTS specialist at Rochester Regional Health.

POTS patients typically experience a marked rise in heart rate when standing and a complex combination of symptoms, including dizziness, brain fog, fainting, headache and fatigue, among many others.

There is no known cure for POTS, but physical therapy, medications and diet changes related to salt intake can sometimes help.

Experts say there is a dire shortage of medical professionals who know how to care for patients with POTS. Lauren Stiles, president and chief executive of Dysautonomia International, a nonprofit advocacy group, estimates that the number of people with POTS has at least doubled since the start of the pandemic, while the number of specialists has remained the same and waiting lists are getting longer.

“They were overwhelmed and flooded long before covid,” Stiles said “We need to increase the amount of experts in this because it wasn’t enough before covid, and it’s certainly not enough now.”

POTS symptoms are often diagnosed as anxiety

Symptoms can vary widely, and in some cases, can be debilitating.

Angelica Baez, 25, of Sacramento, got sick with covid in March 2020. Soon after, she developed unusual symptoms, including tingling hands, frequent diarrhea and either feeling extremely cold or extremely hot. But the most debilitating symptom was that she almost constantly felt dizzy. She often felt like she might pass out and had trouble walking long distances.

“My heart started going insane. I could feel it pounding in my chest,” she recalled. “I literally felt like I was going to die.”

Just standing up or walking across the kitchen caused her heart rate to spike to 160 beats per minute, and she frequently rushed to the E.R., worried that she was having a heart attack. She tried consulting various doctors but was dismissed because nothing seemed wrong with her heart or overall health.

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Doctors fighting racial health disparities face threats, harassment

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Doctors fighting racial health disparities face threats, harassment

Dr. Aletha Maybank joined the American Medical Association as its first chief health equity officer in 2019, determined to fight racial disparities in medicine. 

That work grew more urgent in 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic exposed deadly inequities in health care, and as George Floyd’s murder turned the country’s attention to the pervasiveness of systemic racism. The AMA issued a statement decrying racism as an urgent threat to public health, and Maybank focused on the organization’s efforts to “dismantle racist and discriminatory policies and practices across all of health care.” That included supporting training for medical workers on implicit bias, as well as advocating for solutions to problems that had not traditionally been a focus for the organization, such as housing inequities and police violence.  

But by the fall of 2021, these equity initiatives were facing growing pushback from pundits, think-tank researchers and doctors — both liberal and conservative — who contended that the medical organization had overstepped its mission of supporting health care professionals and was now embracing a “woke” ideology. And out of public view, that backlash was turning vicious — particularly for Maybank. 

Image: Dr. Aletha Maybank in 2019.
Dr. Aletha Maybank faced threats after speaking about racism in medicine.Courtesy of the American Medical Association

After the AMA issued a communication guide last October describing words and phrases that doctors should avoid so as not to offend certain groups of patients, messages directed at Maybank, who is Black, escalated from trolling on social media to threats of violence. Maybank said she arrived home to discover someone had spray-painted a vulgar death threat on her front door in New York. The AMA hired a security detail for her and scrubbed her online presence in an attempt to restore her privacy.

“When it comes that close, it’s really scary,” Maybank, a physician who is also an AMA senior vice president, said of the harassment. “But I think it’s just really important that people do know about it — I’m not the only one.” 

Over the past two years, the medical establishment has placed an unprecedented focus on addressing the barriers to medical care, and the poor health outcomes that people of color frequently face, according to Maybank and a dozen other doctors and academics who are doing this work. But these medical professionals, researchers and advocates have also experienced unprecedented pushback, ranging from lawsuits and attacks on cable news to harassment and death threats.

The barrage of criticism is the latest extension of the national furor over the teaching of racial history and the role of racism in American society, sometimes simplistically summed up as “critical race theory,” which has forced educators out of their jobs and overwhelmed school boards with legal claims. It’s also an extension of the harassment and threats public health officials have faced over pandemic mitigation policies. 

Doctors and academics working on anti-racist initiatives say they’re exhausted and on edge — particularly after an extremist group protested outside Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in January. The demonstrators

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Highly Inbred, French Bulldogs Face Increased Odds for 20 Health and fitness Problems | Wellness Information

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Highly Inbred, French Bulldogs Face Increased Odds for 20 Health and fitness Problems | Wellness Information

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

(HealthDay)

MONDAY, Dec. 20, 2021 (HealthDay Information) — French Bulldogs are very adorable, sporting cute snub snouts, big round heads, vibrant broad eyes and huge bat ears.

Unfortunately, the actual physical traits that make them 1 of the most well known breeds in the United States and United Kingdom also saddle them with a host of well being difficulties, a new examine demonstrates.

Frenchies have drastically greater odds than other puppy breeds of currently being identified with 20 widespread canine conditions and illnesses, researchers described Dec. 16 in the journal Canine Drugs and Genetics.

French Bulldogs are 42 times extra likely to have narrowed nostrils, 30 situations more most likely to undergo from obstructed airways, 14 periods extra very likely to have ear discharge, 11 instances more most likely to undergo from skinfold dermatitis and 9 instances extra possible to put up with a tricky birth due to the fact of the shape of their pelvis than other breeds, the scientists located.

These canine are also three moments extra possible to have respiratory tract or spinal twine problems, additional than twice as most likely to have brain or skin issues, and just about 2 times as very likely to have ear or reproductive diseases, the effects showed.

The most troubling wellbeing challenges “are similar to the severe body shape of the French Bulldog,” reported guide researcher Dan O’Neill. He is a senior lecturer in companion animal epidemiology at the Royal Veterinary College in the United Kingdom. “These contain respiratory complications, skinfold bacterial infections, issue giving delivery, eye ulcers, dermatitis and slipping kneecap.”

The French Bulldog has been close to for centuries, and was identified as a breed by the American Kennel Club in 1898.

But in the latest several years they’ve been through an astonishing rise in attractiveness, with a 20-fold enhance in U.K. Kennel Club registrations among 2009 and 2019, building it the next most typical breed in Britain, the scientists explained in track record notes.

The difficulty is that this sort of major breeding has triggered the genetic problems inherent in the breed to come to be even more pronounced, mentioned Helio de Morias, healthcare facility director of Oregon Condition University’s Lois Bates Acheson Veterinary Teaching Medical center, in Corvallis.

“We are actively picking out for an physical appearance that is interfering with the welfare of the animal,” specifically the flat face that tends to make breathing challenging, de Morias explained. “That, to me, is a trouble. I believe we need to reverse that pattern.”

Worse off for nearly 50 % of challenges researched

To get a manage on how lousy off the breed has become, O’Neill and his colleagues when compared wellbeing records for practically 2,800 French Bulldogs against much more than 21,800 canines from other breeds.

The investigators compared diagnoses for 43 distinct conditions and identified that Frenchies have been much worse off for approximately 50 % of the wellbeing challenges tracked.

The challenges instantly relate to the actual physical

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