Dr. Chris Perzanowski Medical Advisory Board Cardiologist Atrial fibrillation is the most common cardiac arrhythmia worldwide. It is widely regarded as an important cause of embolic stroke, that is brain infarction (damage) resulting from thrombotic (clots) s howering the bloodstream as they break off from the heart. The state of ineffective atrial contractions (the two
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Joseph R. Anticaglia MD Medical Advisory Board Taste and smell are connected in more ways than we realize. Eighty percent of what we taste is related to the sense of smell. There is virtually no flavor to food or beverages without the sense of smell. This article emphasizes the actions of the Olfactory nerve, i.e.
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Joseph R. Anticaglia MD Medical Advisory Board Our ancestors understood that certain foods or odors were dangerous and must be avoided. Today we still use the sensations of taste and smell as warning signals to avoid problems. Think of the mother who returns from shopping with her four y/o daughter, opens the door to her
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Joseph R. Anticaglia MD Medical Advisory Board A baby girl screams in pain as the plane is landing, while the passengers around her watch in empathy. Another says, “My ears feel blocked as if cotton is stuck in them.” Ear fullness, ear pressure, and pain are common complaints of airline travellers. For the ears to
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Joseph R. Anticaglia MD Medical Advisory Board We’ve been there. Check in at the airport, pick up our boarding passes at the check-in-counter, board the plane, spot our assigned seat and place the carry-on-luggage in the overhead compartment. We sit down and fasten our seat belts. The flight attendant reviews the safety precautions with us,
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Joseph R. Anticaglia MDMedical Advisory Board IN 2015, the Zika virus outbreak in Recife, Brazil made international headlines. The Brazilian Health Ministry and the World Health Organization rang the alarm bell because pregnant woman infected with the Zika virus were suspected of giving birth to children with birth defects, most notably, microcephaly. (1, 2) However,
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Joseph R. Anticaglia, MD “A sudden, sharp increase in babies with ‘no foreheads and very strange heads’ was baffling doctors in Brazil. That set off a search for answers that led to a little-known pathogen, the ZIKA virus.” — NY Times, February 6. 2016. The Zika virus, ZIKV, belongs to a group of viruses related
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Joseph R. Anticaglia MDMedical Advisory Board Your voice is not healthy if it doesn’t sound right to you or others. The way the voice sounds is a clue, a symptom to an underlying problem which can be due to many causes; including vocal misuse, smoking, infection, cancer or neurologic (nerve) problems. Abnormal changes in the
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Joseph R. Anticaglia, MD We all want a pleasant voice. Hoarseness is an abnormal, unpleasant change in the quality of the voice. It‘s a symptom, not a disease. It can affect the clarity, loudness and/or vocal effort of the individual. It’s a signal of an underlying problem that makes it more difficult to communicate with
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Joseph R. Anticaglia MD Medical Advisory Board Sudden Hearing Loss (SHL) is an alarming medical emergency that is often a medical mystery. It’s devastating to patients and demoralizing for physicians. For decades ENT specialists and researchers have tried to untangle the problem of sudden sensorineural hearing loss (Sudden SNHL) with limited success. The cause of
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