ThursdayIL: You can develop acalculous cholecystitis (inflammation of the gallbladder NOT due to stones) just from not eating. If your body is producing the same amount of bile to help digest food, but you aren't eating anything to stimulate its release, then the storage container of the gallbladder can get distended and irritated.
Percutaneous transhepatic cholecystostomy (PTC) is the placing of a tube into the common bile duct through the liver via the skin.
Hypotonic biliary dyskinesia (poor movement of the gallbladder due to low muscle tone), aka having a "lazy gallbladder," can cause all the symptoms of a gallbladder problem with none of the diagnostic findings. To diagnose it, have a HIDA scan done (test that injects dye into the bile duct to visualize the whole biliary tree) and then give CCK (hormone that stimulated gallbladder contraction). If the gallbladder's ejection fraction is less than 40%, you've found your problem. The solution, which is almost always the answer with gallbladders, is to cut it out.
TodayIL: There are pros and cons for reversing a vein versus leaving it in the same orientation but destroying the valves when using it as a graft for vascular bypass procedures. We were taught back in anatomy that when they use veins as arterial grafts, that they reverse the direction of the vein, because veins, unlike arteries, have valves that would stop the flow if the vein isn't turned upside down when fitted to the artery. However, there is a downside to this procedure; all vessels get smaller as you move away from the heart. That means that, when reversing a vein to act as a graft, the small end has to be attached to the big, higher flow end of the artery and the big part of the vein is wasted on the small end of the artery. Because of this problem, there is another option: you can break the valves. The downside to this is that the device that physically damages the valve structures might also damage the vein.
Read Wednesday's post here!
No comments:
Post a Comment