Saturday News

Contents of This Week:

• Headline - Telemedicine
• Comics   - For Better Or For Worse, Dilbert, Mayes, Doonesbury
• Eclectic - Many articles from many guest bloggers
• TEDTalks -  Technology, Entertainment and Design
• TadpoleUpdate -  Spokes Fighting Strokes
• RickMercerReport - Intelligence, humorous, politics, ...

Index of Eclectic Stuff This Week

1. What Happens This Fall to Stroke Survivors Tattler...
2. It's Global: Telemedicine Can Make a Difference
3. Sunday Stroke Survival ~ Yes, You Can Be a Television Star Too!
4. Telestroke is Cost-Effective for Hospitals, Mayo Clinic Researchers Show
5. The Superman Of Stroke First Responders
6. Ernest Madu: Bringing World-Class Health Care to the Poorest
7. Have You or Your Spouse had a Stroke?
8. Philippines Beautiful People, Beautiful Country 2014
9. Need a Laugh?
10. Guest Post on Swallowing Difficulties
11. Exercising the Brain after Stroke
12. Magic Green Hat!
13. Why Women Give Better Gifts
14. Stroke After Stroke: A Rower's Pilgrimage
15. Do We Know the Locked in Syndrome Prognosis in the 1st Weeks Weeks After the Illness?
16. Tadpole Update - Spokes Fighting Strokes - Oct/04/2014
17. RMR: Rick and the War of 1812

Definition: Telemedicine

Telemedicine From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Telemedicine is the use of telecommunication and information technologies in order to provide clinical health care at a distance. It helps eliminate distance barriers and can improve access to medical services that would often not be consistently available in distant rural communities. It is also used to save lives in critical care and emergency situations.

Although there were distant precursors to telemedicine, it is essentially a product of 20th century telecommunication and information technologies. These technologies permit communications between patient and medical staff with both convenience and fidelity, as well as the transmission of medical, imaging and health informatics data from one site to another.

Early forms of telemedicine achieved with telephone and radio have been supplemented with videotelephony, advanced diagnostic methods supported by distributed client/server applications, and additionally with telemedical devices to support in-home care.

Disambiguation

Video: Telemedicine

SSTattler: A couple of articles of “concussion” and various device, e.g. “tablet”,  but they are important about “stroke and telemedicine”...

Stroke Telemedicine -- Mayo Clinic

Uploaded on Aug 7, 2008

When it comes to stroke, time is brain. That's because you have only a three-hour window after symptoms begin to receive a medication that's known to help. But people living in small towns may not have access to this medication, because their hospitals may not have staff trained to administer it. Mayo Clinic is hoping to change that. They're studying telemedicine to help stroke victims in rural hospitals get the treatment they need.

For more information on stroke, click here: http://www.mayoclinic.org/stroke/

Standard YouTube License @ Mayo Clinic

What Happens This Fall to Stroke Survivors Tattler...

Dr. Beagle C. Cranium
Stroke Survivors Tattler

What Happens This Fall to...

We have three new Guest Bloggers:

1. Dan Zimmerman (aka - DanTrikeMan) - He will travel by Tadpole (trike) from Seattle WA to Key West FL. Look at his site Spokes Fighting Strokes.
2. Susan Ehler - She comes from Dartmouth (near Halifax, Nova Scotia). She is a Physiotherapy for many years and she will offer on her site Stroke Class with Susan.
3. Ramon Florendo - Born in the Philippines and he came to Edmonton AB, Canada for about 25 years ago.  Take a look at his site Life after a “STROKE".

Guest Blogger - Dan Zimmerman

Dan Zimmerman
Spokes Fighting Strokes

• Dan Zimmerman had HHT (Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia), a disease in which the lungs fail to filter clots efficiently.
• Dan had the first of periodic surgeries to treat his HHT and graduated from Sussex Hamilton High School in 1982.
• His woodworking equipment to start his own cabinet and furniture-making business in 1985 in Fountain Hills AZ. 
• In 2005, at age 41, Dan suffered a stroke that paralyzed his right arm and leg and damaged the left side of his brain. He decided to shut down his woodworking business and concentrate on recovery.
• Dan first tricycles were too heavy but offered him the "freedom, plain and simple". He bought a lightweight recumbent trike in 2009 and began riding with the "Bent Riders of Arizona" on weekly rides and weekend tours. 
• Cycling, Dan says, has improved his health and more importantly, given him a purpose in life and he wants to raise awareness of HHT. He also wants to raise awareness of stroke prevention and inspire other stroke survivors to fight back against the disease.
• See DanTrikeMan -- Spokes Fighting Strokes.

Guest Blogger - Susan Ehler

• 

  Susan Ehler
  Stroke Class with Susan

   Susan Ehler is a Physiotherapist with over 25 years experience working with individuals with neurological disorders with a special interest in stroke survivors. Susan started a community-based exercise program over 20 years ago.
• This program has grown over the years and has been able to meet the needs of many different levels of stroke survivors. One of the main goals of the program has been to strive to increase class accessibility to as many people as possible.
• She is a guest lecturer at Dalhousie University and the Nova Scotia Community College.
• “Research shows that exercise is an important part of stroke recovery, so StrokeClass.com is merely a tool to help as many people as possible live a full life after a stroke”
• See Susan Ehler -- Stroke Class with Susan.
 

Guest Blogger - Ramon Florendo

Ramon Florendo
Life after a “STROKE"

• Born in the Philippines.
• Migrated to Canada in November 1987.
• Experienced mostly in sales and small business.
• 37 years married to a beautiful wife Norma.
• 4 children (2 boys, 2 girls) / 5 grand kids and coming…
• Suffered two strokes in November 2007 and  August 2012.
• Advocacy – To inspire and motivate stroke survivors and other individuals suffering from some other chronic or debilitating sickness.
• Look at my website: Life after a “STROKE".

Daily Comics

For Better and For Worse
Lynn Johnston

Canada Family Events

Dilbert
Scott Adams

Dilbert Office Events

Edmonton Journal
Malcolm Mayes

Politics Views from Canada

Doonesbury
Garry Trudeau

Politics Views from USA

  

** I tried to get low or free price at the people http://www.UniversalUclick.com/ for the images for the cartoons. It was too high for Stroke Survivors Tattler i.e. we are not a regular newspaper and our budget is very, very low. Fortunately, you will have to do only 1-click more to see the cartoon image, it is legit and it is free using GoComics.com, Dilbert.com and EdmontonJournal.com.

Eclectic Stuff

Definition: Eclectic(noun) a person who derives ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources.

It's Global: Telemedicine Can Make a Difference

Jeff Porter
Stroke of Faith

Tuesday, September 02, 2014

Telemedicine is important in rural America. I've been through lots of small towns with few or no specialists who can make the difference between proper treatment and permanent disability or death

Now, a study in Germany shows the impact telemedicine in that country:

▷ During the same interval, the proportion of patients receiving thrombolytic therapy rose from 2.6% to 15.5%. 

▷ "The main findings of 10-year experience of TEMPiS showed that this type of telemedical stroke unit network is sustaining, offers state-of-the-art acute stroke care by increasing access to stroke units and improving thrombolysis service, and is associated with long-term improvement in terms of quality indicators of acute hospital care," Muller-Barna and colleagues wrote.

▷ Telemedicine -- the use of modern teleconferencing technology to evaluate patients remotely and to recommend treatment strategies -- has increasingly been adopted in developed countries as a way to bring specialist care to rural areas where it is otherwise scarce or unavailable. 

▷ In the stroke setting, it involves putting stroke neurologists located mainly in urban tertiary care centers on call to evaluate patients brought into community hospitals in distant towns.

Time, as mentioned in this blog before, is key in stroke response. Using the combination of technology and medicine can decrease that time and improve outcomes.

See the original article:

It's Global: Telemedicine Can Make a Difference

in

Stroke of Faith

Sunday Stroke Survival ~ Yes, You Can Be a Television Star Too!

Sunday, September 28, 2014

Jo Murphey
The Murphey Saga

You: "Huh? What? I'm nobody. How can I be a star?"
Me: "With telemedicine, my dear."
You: "What's that?"

It's a thing out of old, science fiction novels or World Expos. The wave of the future but in our time. It's now the new buzz in medicine. A way of seeing a specialist in another town or even state to get appropriate treatments and diagnoses all via a television screen. Actually, it's more like a computer monitor. But hey, look at all those YouTube stars. Some have even gone on to real movies and star in their own movies, right?

I first saw the commercial for this system about two years ago. Where I live, there are a ton of blink-your-eyes-and-you've-missed-them towns. They are serviced by clinics from various hospitals and doc-in-a-box type emergency centers. Just after my stroke of a woman in Waycross being diagnosed with a stroke, via this technology, by a Savannah (the nearest "metropolitan" town) physician. That's over 200 miles away.

Telestroke is Cost-Effective for Hospitals, Mayo Clinic Researchers Show

Dean Reinke
Deans’ Stroke Musing

Thursday, December 6, 2012

This is a major problem, medical persons not recognizing when a newer process/procedure needs to be implemented. They were  way too focused on getting tPA to work and missed possibly better ways to tell the difference between hemorrhage and ischemic. See 11 possibilities here; Damn don't people ever think at all. Telestroke is Cost-Effective for Hospitals...

In telestroke care, the use of a telestroke robot allows a patient with stroke to be examined in real time by a neurology specialist elsewhere who consults via computer with an emergency room physician in the rural site.

"Previous studies have demonstrated that a hub-and-spoke telestroke network is cost-effective from the societal perspective — we can assess medical services, like telemedicine, in terms of the net costs to society for each year of life gained," says neurologist Bart Demaerschalk, M.D., director of Mayo Clinic Telestroke Program, and co-author of the telestroke cost effectiveness study. "However, to date the costs and benefits from the perspectives of network hospitals have not been formally estimated."

The Superman Of Stroke First Responders

Gary Gray
PEI Stroke Recovery

April 23, 2014

The battle with stroke goes mobile with improved communication and CT Scanner Technology... Specialized Stroke Ambulance Features CereTom Portable CT Scanner to Reduce Time to Treatment.

NeuroLogica and MEYTEC from Germany have developed a specialized stroke ambulance, called VIMED STEMO, that carries a portable CT scanner and a point-of-care laboratory for nearly-instant diagnosis and initiation of treatment in stroke patients. It employs MEYTEC’s telemedicine solutions and NeuroLogica’s portable CT scanner, CereTom.

The VIMED STEMO integrates a fully-functioning pre-clinical stroke care suite, comparable to those found in specialized stroke hospitals. The onboard CereTom is a 8-slice CT scanner that allows for multimodal imaging with CT angiography and CT perfusion in combination with a rapid scan time. Imaging and other data can be transmitted over encrypted 3G, 4G and satellite connections to emergency rooms or trauma centers.

In addition to being well-equipped, the ambulance also carries the best medical team you could get delivered to your door when you might be suffering from a stroke, including a paramedic, a stroke physician and a neuroradiologist. All together, this enables hyper-acute stroke care, including thrombolytic treatment as soon as possible, well before arrival at a hospital. No word on how much this all costs per trip.

Ernest Madu: Bringing World-Class Health Care to the Poorest

Uploaded on Apr 21, 2008

SSTattler: I set to 8:15 minutes for Telemedicine. Great TED Talks -- go to the beginning to see all of the nice lecture. 

http://www.ted.com

Dr. Ernest Madu runs the Heart Institute of the Caribbean in Kingston, Jamaica, where he proves that -- with careful design, smart technical choices, and a true desire to serve -- it's possible to offer world-class healthcare in the developing world. Listen for some eye-opening statistics on heart disease, which is as ruthless a killer in poorer nations as in richer ones.

Standard YouTube License @ TED

Have You or Your Spouse had a Stroke?

Sharon D. Anderson
Stroke Survivors Tattler

September 27 / 2014

I am doing research to understand what happens to marriages after stroke. We know a lot about stroke, but much less about how couples manage life after stroke.

In other conditions like cancer or Parkinson’s, people who are married tend to experience much better outcomes.  If you and your spouse would be interested in participating in an interview, could you contact me either by email (sdanders@ualberta.ca or by phone (780-953-5541). I can tell you more about the research and we can arrange a time for the interview that will suit your schedule.

Thanks so much for considering this!

Sincerely, Sharon Anderson
sdanders@ualberta.ca
Cell Phone: 780-953-5541

Have You or Your Spouse had a Stroke?

Would you both like to discuss your experiences so we can understand, What Happens to Marriage after the Transition to Stroke?

Interviews will take about an hour and will take place in your home or an office near your home.

Information:
Graduate Student Investigator:
Sharon Anderson
780-953-5541 or email: sdanders@ualberta.ca

Study Supervisor:
Dr. Norah Keating
Phone: (780) 492-4191.
Email: norah.keating@ualberta.ca
Department of Human Ecology,
Faculty of Agricultural, Life, and Environmental Sciences

The plan for this study has been reviewed for its adherence to ethical guidelines and approved by the Health Research Ethics Board. For questions regarding participant rights and ethical conduct of research contact the Chair of the HERB at 780-492- 2615.

Philippines Beautiful People, Beautiful Country 2014

Ramon Florendo
Life after a “STROKE"

Published on May 27, 2014

A must watch for all Pinoys all over the Globe!

The Philippines featured at British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) documentary entitled, "Philippines Beautiful people, Beautiful Country".


Standard YouTube License @ La Consolacion College Tanauan

Need a Laugh?

Amy Shissler
My Cerebellar Stroke Recovery

Sep 22, 2014

Some absolutely absurd things happened to me last night of which I won’t go into detail, but ermahgerd absurd!  So this morning I need some laughs and thought you might too.  I’ve learned that there’s a reason I love this kind of humor.  Larry David was on The Tonight Show last week and all he does is bitch and complain about stuff and it was hilarious.  He makes it so funny, I guess that’s why I love Grumpy Cat!

See the original article:

Need a Laugh?

in

My Cerebellar Stroke Recovery

Guest Post on Swallowing Difficulties

Rebecca Dutton
Home After a Stroke

September 25, 2014

Research suggests that as many as 65% of stroke victims will suffer with swallowing difficulties on their road to recovery (see here). It can be quite a serious problem that requires a great deal of effort to overcome so how do stroke victims and their carers manage the problem of not being able to swallow food or medicines? The medical name for this condition is dysphagia.

Because swallowing is difficult, and in many instances painful too, it can be common to see patients lose their appetite. This is especially true of those who are bedridden and therefore get very little physical activity. If the patient can’t feed themselves and doesn’t want to eat it can be quite the challenge getting them to take on food. The recovery process is going to be that much longer if they don’t take on the much needed sustenance to keep their strength up in order to try and get back to better health.

Exercising the Brain after Stroke

Peter G. Levine
Stronger After Stroke

Monday, September 15, 2014

What drives stroke recovery? This question is both complicated and profoundly simple. It’s complicated because recovery involves rewiring the brain, and the brain is...complicated. It’s simple because the brain rewires in response to very simple instructions. In fact, these instructions have been known to athletes, musicians and other skilled workers for thousands of years.

In the rehab clinic, exercises are called "thera ex (short for therapeutic exercise). Therapists usually want to know which are the best thera ex for helping stroke survivors recover. Beyond exercising, the other big option used in clinics are collectively called handling techniques. Handling techniques are just like they sound, the therapist moves you. Handling techniques, if you believe the research, don't much help. (If they did, I'd pay someone to "handle me" into being a better skier!). Exercise, for its part, is great! Exercise makes the muscles that need strengthening, stronger. The problem is, exercise is only mildly effective at changing the brain-- and stroke is a brain injury. Let me put it this way: a muscle can be strong, but useless because it does not know what to do. "Muscle memory" does not exist. The brain controls while muscles can only do two things: contract and relax. It's the brain stupid.

Magic Green Hat!

Jackie Poff
Stroke Survivors Tattler

Jackies’ Tough Question: What color hat do we need in Canada???

This year while on vacation to escape the snow and cold, I passed through Florida on my way to the Caribbean cruise.  The day after returning from my cruise, I wasn’t feeling very well and decided that I really needed some medical assistance... And decided to visit the emergency room at the closest medical facility.

Realizing that it would likely be very crowded and not wanting to sit there waiting for 4-5 hours to be seen, I put on my MAGIC GREEN HAT.

As soon as I entered the E.R., I noticed that over 3/4 of the people got up and left. I guess they decided that they weren't really that sick after all.

I’m believing that MAGIC GREEN HAT cut at least 3 hours off my waiting time.

Here's a picture of my MAGIC GREEN HAT.

It also works at the Dept. Of Motor Vehicles.
It saved me 5 hours.

At the Laundromat, three minutes after entering, I had my choice of any machine, many of which were still running.

If you live in Texas, it might cut your wait time at the grocery store as well.

But . . . Don't try it at McDonald's. The whole crew ran out the back door and I never got my order!

Why Women Give Better Gifts

Bill (William) Yates, M.D.
Brain Post

September 24 / 2014

Consumer spending on gifts for birthdays and holidays is a multi-billion dollar big business.

Despite this large economic impact, little research examines factors associated with gift recipient satisfaction.

Selecting good gifts for others involves a complex social decision-making process related to judging the value hierarchy of others.

A study from the Netherlands recently published in the journal PLOS One featured three experiments on gift selection in a series of men and women.

The design of these experiments included:

Stroke After Stroke: A Rower's Pilgrimage

Barb Polan
Barb’s Recovery

September 23 / 2014

After 5 years of first-hand experience, 5 years of blogging, 1 year of writing and 9 months of editing, my book about my stroke recovery has been published. The Kindle edition is available here right now, while the print version will take another week or so – I’m waiting for the proof copy before setting it free.

Both are bargain-priced - $5 for the Kindle and $8 for the hard copy, so there’s no excuse not to purchase one for yourself. And one for your family to pass from person to person. I wrote the book in the hope that it will help friends and family understand a bit of what we’re going through. Plus to warn recent stroke survivors what may be in their future.

That is, I wrote the book I wanted to read when I first had a stroke.

I know that all stroke survivors will benefit from reading it, and so will their family and friends. Therapists may also find it useful, especially those with little experience with neurological injuries.

Please spread the word.

And please buy it here.

See the original article:

Stroke After Stroke: A Rower's Pilgrimage

in

Barb's Recovery

Do We Know the Locked in Syndrome Prognosis in the 1st Weeks Weeks After the Illness?

Kate Allatt
Stroke Recovery Tips

September 28, 2014

The brain stem controls all basic activities of the central nervous system: consciousness, blood pressure, and breathing. So after a brainstem stroke some patients will be formerly diagnosed with Locked In Syndrome. This doesn’t necessarily mean a death sentence for the individual which results in the fatal pneumonia, like the poor chap in depicted the film – The Diving Bell & Butterfly.

Over time, these symptoms could result in being mild to moderate and short to long term. I believe it is possible to positively influence the future patient outcome and prognosis, especially if therapeutic therapy is offered early in ITU (as opposed to only passive therapy), the health professionals remain open-minded about the improvement possibilities early on, the loved-ones are proactive and informed, but most importantly the patient is physically able to try to concentrate cognitively to work hard on improving.

If you don’t believe me why don’t you read this…

‘Hi Kate!

I’m approaching you on behalf of my boyfriend, or husband to be actually. Hope you have time to read my message!