Revista medica de Panama最新文献

Biotechnology has been important for the management of the critical ill patients. Today the treatment is expensive and even more with complications, this work has the purpose to find out about mortality and survival and the associated factors that could promote alterations in the outcome. The authors studied 247 admissions in a six months period, their mortality and survival. We investigated the relationship between the inflammatory systemic response syndrome, the multi systemic organ failure and sepsis, with mortality and survival. We concluded that there is a high mortality related to the septic syndrome. Prevention to avoid the septic syndrome, is the best way to lower the high cost in the intensive care units.

This article resumes the modern management of acute myocardial infarction. It analyzes the complementary benefits of two different types of treatment: thrombolytic therapy and percutaneous transluminal angioplasty.

Trichomonas sp. was found in a patient with empyema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. This is a uncommon finding. A wet mount of pleural fluid is recommended to be observed by light microscopy.

We present the experience accumulated during 3 years of having performed 10 workshops related to the topics of Sexuality and Affection, offered to 175 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 19 years, from public schools within the Panamá, City Metropolitan Area and who correspond to different socioeconomical strata. Analytical information provided from the results of two questionnaires related to knowledge about the two topics, applied prior to and after the workshops is also offered.

Dystonia is a neurologic disease characterized by involuntary repetitive muscular contractions which frequently causes torsion, spasmodic movements or abnormal postures. Pharmacologic and surgical treatment had been unsatisfactory in the majority of the cases. Intramuscular botulinic toxin application in focal dystonia disorders, achieve relief in approximately 90% of the cases by quimiodenervation. We included 35 patients with focal dystonia treated between November 1994 through June 1996: 14 facial hemispasm, nine blepharospasm, five cervical dystonia, two writer's cramps, one oromandibular dystonia and four patients with mixed focal dystonia. Improvement between 50-90% was observed in 32/34 (94%) of the patients; one case (2.8%) with therapeutic failure and one case (2.8%) never returned to quantify the response. Actually, botulinic toxin is the first choice treatment of focal dystonia and other diseases related to involuntary muscle spasm.

The dengue surveillance system in Panama during the 1994 and 1995 epidemics shows the following results: In 1994 we registered 793 dengue cases and a year after 3,083 dengue cases, with three dengue haemorrhagic cases (one death). To estimate the accumulated incidence rates in 1994-1995 period, we consolidated the cases. The highest risk of dengue and the highest dengue haemorrhagic propension were observed in: West Panama (709.49 per 100,000 persons), Los Santos (405.74 per 100,000 persons), Herrera (337.62 per 100,000), Metropolitana (126.98 per 100,000) and San Miguelito (125.10 per 100,000 persons).

Partial nephrectomy combined with chemotherapy has been the most effective treatment in bilateral Wilms tumors. We present two cases. The bilateral synchronous tumor are present in 4.2% and the metachronous tumor in 1.6%, in the world statistics. The synchronous bilateral Wilms tumor, Stage V, have an excellent prognosis: over 87% survival, compared to 40% of the metachronous bilateral Wilms tumors.

We have reviewed the signs and symptoms of a herniated lumbar disc and the indications for medical an/or surgical treatment. We have also considered the different surgical options. The author presents his own statistics: 182 patients operated (210 surgical Interventions); in 167 patients (91.8%) the herniated disc was in the L4-5, L5-S1 space or in both, in eight (4.4%) in L3-4, in seven (3.8%) in L2-3 and L3-4.