The Importance of Incorporating Technological Advancements into the Prosthetic Eye Development: A Perspective Commentary

Application of technology into healthcare has typically been targeted to high demand illnesses and treatments. However, with an increasing need to meet patient’s expectations combined with increased accessibility and reduced costs, smaller healthcare fields are starting to investigate its function and usability.

Services have historically been led by skills and expertise, and recent developments are being seen by ocularists in the field of prosthetic eyes who acknowledge the potential benefit from technological advancement.

Utilising the technologies recently investigated in maxillofacial prosthesis can start the evolutionary process where products are continually re-designed and re-developed to achieve excellent patient outcome and satisfaction levels.

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Gene Expression Monitoring in Pediatric Heart Transplant Recipients

AlloMap® gene expression testing is a non-invasive screening tool approved for use in heart transplant recipients age 15 and older. Experience with AlloMap® in pediatric heart transplant recipients is limited.

We sought to describe the variations in AlloMap® scores seen in pediatric heart transplant recipients. This is a retrospective study of all pediatric heart transplant recipients with AlloMap® scoring at a single institution between 2013 and 2014. All possible scores were recorded.

Other variables recorded at the time of each AlloMap® score included immunosuppressive regimen, patient demographics and endomyocardial biopsy (EMB) results.

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Effect of Selective Laser Trabeculoplasty in Glaucoma Patients with High or Low Central Corneal Thickness

In 1997, Latina et al. launched selective laser trabeculoplasty (SLT) as a new treatment to lowerintraocular pressure (IOP). Since then, SLT has proven to be efficient and its use has become widespread.

Glaucoma 

Several studies have been performed to investigate which factors influence the outcome of SLT. Up to now, only higher pre-laser IOP seems to be correlated to higher IOP lowering effect of the SLT ; other factors like race 6, trabecular meshwork pigmentation, number and type of previously used anti-glaucoma medications, previous laser and phakic or pseudophakic eyes showed no impact on SLT efficiency. Shazly et al. examined whether central corneal thickness had influence on SLT outcome and suggested that thinner corneas gave better IOP reduction after SLT. CCT is known to have an effect on IOP measurement but some studies suggest that CCT may also give information about tissue properties of the eye that are otherwise difficult to measure. Read more>>>>>>>

Dietary Factors in Fasting Blood Glucose Levels and Weight Gain in Female Sprague Dawley Rats

The amount of food consumed is a major determinant of postprandial hyperglycemia, and the conceptof Glycemic Load (GL) takes account of the Glycemic Index (GI) of a food and the amount eaten (Venn and Green, 2007).

Sprague Dawley Rat

GI was originally designed for people with diabetes as a guide to food selection, advice being given to select foods with a low GI. Lower GI foods were considered to confer benefit as a result of the relatively low glycemic response following ingestion compared with high GI foods. GI is defined as the blood glucose response measured as Area Under the Curve (AUC) in response to a test food consumed by an individual under standard conditions expressed as a percentage of the AUC following consumption of a reference food consumed by the same person on a different day. GI cannot be predicted from the fiber content of a carbohydrate containing food or from the terms whole meal and wholegrain for which there are no universally accepted definitions. Read more>>>>>>

Retina and Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a complex chronic mental disorder, which affects 24 million people worldwide and is responsible for significant functional impairment. Several studies have tried to understand this disease and the involvement of the central nervoussystem.

Neuro-imaging studies have shown structural brain changes in schizophrenia, already evident in the first psychotic episode. It is essential to realize how the neurodevelopment and the neurodegenerative domains influence this disease. In our manuscript, entitled "Evaluation of Structural Changes in the Retina of Patients with Schizophrenia", we try to understand how a non-invasive exam, as Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), can also be useful in schizophrenia, to evaluate the thickness of the retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) and macular volume and thickness. In the second part of this study, we try to realize the correlation of these data with cognitive functioning in schizophrenic patients, abstract previously published (entitled “Correlation between macular OCT and cognitive function in patients with schizophrenia”).

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Treat Diabetes without Medicine

Diabetes is a disease of the most popular and feared among Malaysians, especially the Malays and Indians. According to the International Diabetes Federation, 3.2 million Malaysians are certified having diabetes in 2014.

If we examine the health of the back platform of our ancestors; will we understand that diabetes does not exist in the past? If it does not exist does it mean sugar content in the body of our ancestors is all stable and normal?

Not! Maybe some of those with high sugar content, but the high sugar content in the body is not known as a disease of the past. Native traditional medicine does not consider the excess sugar in the body as the disease, modern medicine only consider health disorders.

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