Military medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial
The effectiveness of technology-enhanced relaxation techniques for military medical warriors.
Combat zones can be very stressful for those in the area. Even in the battlefield, military medical personnel are expected to save others, while also staying alive. In this study, half of a sample of deployed military medical warriors (total n = 60) participated in technology-assisted relaxation training. Learning relaxation skills with a video clip of virtual reality relaxing scenes showed a statistically significant impact on the anxiety levels of the Experimental Group.
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Trans-scaphoid perilunate fracture dislocations (TSPLD) are uncommon injuries and constitute about 3% of all carpal injuries. Up to 25% of these high energy trauma cases go undiagnosed. Presented are 43 (3 female, 40 male) consecutive patients treated for dorsal TSPLD, all were closed fractures. ⋯ Mean followup period was 29 months (range 20-38). The average Mayo wrist score for all 43 patients is 87 (good) (range 65-99). All patients returned to their previous employment.
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To review the principles of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and to describe the recent advancements in ECMO technology that permit use of this rescue therapy for severe lung injury in combat casualties. ⋯ Advances in ECMO technology now enable the stabilization and aeromedical evacuation of even the most critically ill combat casualties with severe lung injury.
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Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI) are common injuries among returning combat veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although these combat injuries have been associated with increased sleep disruption, little is known about the nature and specificity of sleep problems within these common injury categories. ⋯ Among recently redeployed combat veterans, clinically significant sleep disturbances and problems with sleep-disordered breathing are common but nonspecific findings across primary diagnoses of PTSD, TBI, major depression, and anxiety disorder, whereas more subtle differences in sleep architecture and arousals as measured by overnight PSG recordings were modestly, but significantly, effective at distinguishing among the diagnostic groups.
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Brugada syndrome (BS) is a cardiac rhythm disturbance that predisposes patients to sudden cardiac death. Brugada is classically described with specific electrocardiographic (EKG) findings of ST elevation and right bundle branch block in precordial leads and is an often unrecognized contributor to sudden cardiac death. ⋯ His classic findings of Brugada pattern on EKG demonstrated reversibility with clinical defervescence. In patients with a suggestive history, a normal EKG cannot definitively rule out BS as the Brugada pattern can be unmasked by stress, which in this case was represented by a pneumonia-induced fever.