The best way to prevent hepatitis A is through vaccination with the hepatitis A vaccine. Vaccination is recommended for all children age 12 months or older, for travelers to certain countries, and for people at high risk for infection with the virus. The hepatitis A vaccine is given as two shots, six months apart.

Prediabetes means that your blood sugar level is higher than normal but not yet high enough to be type 2 diabetes. Without lifestyle changes, people with prediabetes are very likely to progress to type 2 diabetes. If you have prediabetes, the long-term damage of diabetes — especially to your heart, blood vessels and kidneys — may already be starting. There's good news, however. Progression from prediabetes to type 2 diabetes isn't inevitable. Eating healthy foods, incorporating physical activity in your daily routine and maintaining a healthy weight can help bring your blood sugar level back to normal. Prediabetes affects adults and children. The same lifestyle changes that can help prevent progression to diabetes in adults might also help bring children's blood sugar levels back to normal.

Stem-cell therapy is the use of stem cells to treat or prevent a disease or condition. Bone marrow transplant is the most widely used stem-cell therapy, but some therapies derived from umbilical cord blood are also in use...

Tests. This test tracks electrical signals from the brain. There are a number of blood tests that may be recommended as part of your epilepsy diagnosis and treatment. A positron emission tomography (PET) scan may be used to locate the part of the brain that is causing seizures.

A man set to become the world’s first head transplant patient has scheduled the procedure for December 2017. Valery Spiridonov, 30, was diagnosed with a genetic muscle-wasting condition called Werdnig-Hoffmann disease, and volunteered for the procedure despite the risks involved, Central European News (CEN) reported. “When I realized that I could participate in something really big and important, I had no doubt left in my mind and started to work in this direction,” Spiridonov, a Russian computer scientist, told CEN. “The only thing I feel is the sense of pleasant impatience, like I have been preparing for something important all my life and it is starting to happen.”

Encourage your child to drink lots of fluids to prevent dehydration. Milk and water are both fine. However, if your child refuses solids, give your child just milk, rather than water. ... Keep giving your child table foods while he has diarrhea. Diarrhea is most often spread through fecally contaminated food, hands or surfaces touched by objects or hands put into the mouth (fecal-oral route).Water contaminated by human or animal feces (e.g., swimming pools) or trips to sites with animals (e.g., farms, pet stores, petting zoos) are also possible routes of ... The best foods for your child are easily digestible foods, such as rice cereal, pasta, breads, cooked beans, mashed potatoes, cooked carrots, applesauce, and bananas. Pretzels or salty crackers can help your child replace the salt lost from diarrhea. Foods containing large amounts of sugar or fat should be avoided.

A ventricular septal defect (VSD) is an opening or hole in the wall that separates the two lower chambers of the heart. This wall is called the ventricular septum. The hole causes oxygen-rich blood to leak from the left side of the heart to the right side. This causes extra work for the right side of the heart, since more blood than necessary is flowing through the right ventricle to the lungs. The hole is usually closed with surgery. However, in certain situations, your child's cardiologist and surgeon may think it is best to close the hole with a special device. This procedure is done in the heart catheterization lab.

The spleen, a spongy, soft organ about as big as a person’s fist, is located in the upper left part of the abdomen, just under the rib cage. The splenic artery brings blood to the spleen from the heart. Blood leaves the spleen through the splenic vein, which drains into a larger vein (the portal vein) that carries the blood to the liver. The spleen has a covering of fibrous tissue (the splenic capsule) that supports its blood vessels and lymphatic vessels. The spleen is made up of two basic types of tissue, each with different functions: White pulp Red pulp The white pulp is part of the infection-fighting (immune) system. It produces white blood cells called lymphocytes, which in turn produce antibodies (specialized proteins that protect against invasion by foreign substances). The red pulp filters the blood, removing unwanted material. The red pulp contains other white blood cells called phagocytes that ingest microorganisms, such as bacteria, fungi, and viruses. It also monitors red blood cells, destroying those that are abnormal or too old or damaged to function properly. In addition, the red pulp serves as a reservoir for different elements of the blood, especially white blood cells and platelets (cell-like particles involved in clotting). However, releasing these elements is a minor function of the red pulp.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a nondegenerative, noncongenital insult to the brain from an external mechanical force, possibly leading to permanent or temporary impairment of cognitive, physical, and psychosocial functions, with an associated diminished or altered state of consciousness.

6 987 24 MORE How Does Anesthesia Work? Credit: itsmejust | Shutterstock If you’ve ever had surgery, unless you are super tough, you’ve gone through it with the benefit of anesthetics. But, how do these body-numbing elixirs work? Prior to the invention of anesthesia in the mid-1800s, surgeons had to hack off limbs, sew up wounds and remove mysterious growths with nothing to dull the patient's pain but opium or booze. While these drugs may have numbed the patient, they didn’t always completely block the pain, or erase the memory of it. Since then, doctors have gotten much better at putting us out with drug combinations that ease pain, relax muscles and, in some cases, put us in a deep state of hypnosis that gives us temporary amnesia. Today, there are two primary types of anesthesia drugs: those that knockout the whole body (general) and those that only numb things up locally.

A pancreas transplant is a surgical procedure to place a healthy pancreas from a deceased donor into a person whose pancreas no longer functions properly. Your pancreas is an organ that lies behind the lower part of your stomach. One of its main functions is to make insulin, a hormone that regulates the absorption of sugar (glucose) into your cells. If your pancreas doesn't make enough insulin, blood sugar levels can rise to unhealthy levels, resulting in type 1 diabetes. Most pancreas transplants are done to treat type 1 diabetes. A pancreas transplant offers a potential cure for this condition. But it is typically reserved for those with serious diabetes complications, because the side effects of a pancreas transplant are significant. In some cases, pancreas transplants may also treat type 2 diabetes. Rarely, pancreas transplants may be used in the treatment of pancreatic, bile duct or other cancers. A pancreas transplant is often done in conjunction with a kidney transplant in people whose kidneys have been damaged by diabetes.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can be an important tool in the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS). MRI can also be used to monitor the progression of the disease in people living with MS. How does it work? MRI uses very strong magnets, radio signals, and computer software to take 3-dimensional pictures of the inside of the body. Will I need contrast material? Maybe. Contrast material is a substance that temporarily changes the way imaging tools interact with the body. They are often used to visualize certain types of MS disease activity on the MRI. If your doctor thinks your scan requires this contrast material, you may get an injection before you get in the MRI machine. How long will it take? The time may vary based on the type of MRI. Be sure to discuss with your doctor in advance so he or she can provide you with exact timing. But don’t worry, you won’t have to stay still the whole time. The technician will let you know when they’re starting a new image.

Adult-onset Still's disease (AOSD) is a rare systemic inflammatory disease characterized by the classic triad of persistent high spiking fevers, joint pain, and a distinctive salmon-colored bumpy rash. The disease is considered a diagnosis of exclusion.

Transposition of the great arteries is a serious but rare heart defect present at birth (congenital), in which the two main arteries leaving the heart are reversed (transposed). Transposition of the great arteries changes the way blood circulates through the body, leaving a shortage of oxygen in blood flowing from the heart to the rest of the body. Without an adequate supply of oxygen-rich blood, the body can't function properly and your child faces serious complications or death without treatment.

Trisomy 18, also called Edwards syndrome, is a chromosomal condition associated with abnormalities in many parts of the body. Individuals with trisomy 18 often have slow growth before birth (intrauterine growth retardation) and a low birth weight. Affected individuals may have heart defects and abnormalities of other organs that develop before birth. Other features of trisomy 18 include a small, abnormally shaped head; a small jaw and mouth; and clenched fists with overlapping fingers. Due to the presence of several life-threatening medical problems, many individuals with trisomy 18 die before birth or within their first month. Five to 10 percent of children with this condition live past their first year, and these children often have severe intellectual disability.

Digoxin is derived from the leaves of a digitalis plant. Digoxin helps make the heart beat stronger and with a more regular rhythm. Digoxin is also used to treat atrial fibrillation, a heart rhythm disorder of the atria (the upper chambers of the heart that allow blood to flow into the heart).

The pituitary gland is often portrayed as the "master gland" of the body. Such praise is justified in the sense that the anterior and posterior pituitary secrete a battery of hormones that collectively influence all cells and affect virtually all physiologic processes. The pituitary gland may be king, but the power behind the throne is clearly the hypothalamus. As alluded to in the last section, some of the neurons within the hypothalamus - neurosecretory neurons - secrete hormones that strictly control secretion of hormones from the anterior pituitary. The hypothalamic hormones are referred to as releasing hormones and inhibiting hormones, reflecting their influence on anterior pituitary hormones.

Primary aldosteronism, also known as primary hyperaldosteronism or Conn's syndrome, is excess production of the hormone aldosterone by the adrenal glands resulting in low renin levels. Often it produces few symptoms. Most people have high blood pressure which may cause poor vision or headaches.

If you look at someone’s back, you’ll see that the spine runs straight down the middle. When a person has scoliosis, their backbone curves to the side. The angle of the curve may be small, large or somewhere in between. But anything that measures more than 10 degrees is considered scoliosis. Doctors may use the letters “C” and “S” to describe the curve of the backbone. You probably don’t look directly at too many spines, but what you might notice about someone with scoliosis is the way they stand. They may lean a little or have shoulders or hips that look uneven. What Causes Scoliosis? In as many as 80% of cases, doctors don’t find the exact reason for a curved spine. Scoliosis without a known cause is what doctors call “idiopathic.” Some kinds of scoliosis do have clear causes. Doctors divide those curves into two types -- structural and nonstructural. In nonstructural scoliosis, the spine works normally, but looks curved. Why does this happen? There are a number of reasons, such as one leg’s being longer than the other, muscle spasms, and inflammations like appendicitis. When these problems are treated, this type of scoliosis often goes away.

-MEN1 syndrome is composed of hyperparathyroidism, gastrinoma (pancreatic tumor) and pituitary tum or(remember the 3 Ps). Hyperparathyroidism in MEN1 is caused by hyperplasia of the parathyroid glands. Removal of 3 1/2 glands or total parathyroidectomy with autotransplantation is necessary.