Month: November 2018

Medical Treatments for Erectile Dysfunction

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The 1980s saw a progressive shift away from psychological treatments of sexual dysfunction to an emphasis on surgical and medical solutions for improving sexual health. Simultaneously, there was a progressive shift within the medical community and public at large, towards viewing the etiology of sexual dysfunction as organic, rather than the psychogenic understanding emphasized by sex therapists. Use of improved sophisticated diagnostic procedures, such as duplex sonography and cavernosograms (although not necessarily improving treatment) added credibility and imprimatur to the importance of organic pathogenesis. This was particularly true in the area of erectile dysfunction, where urologists established dominance, with the successful marketing and use of various intracavernosal and intraurethral systems. Although highly touted by urologists, the treatment efficacy of these products was offset by their intrusiveness into the patients bodies and reduction in spontaneity, their patterns of use required.

Initially, there were few oral treatments for erectile dysfunction, being used by urologists, such as yohimbine based products, trazodone, and bupropion. They had only modest proerectile capability. Pharmaceutical companies were inspired to pursue oral treatments with the promise of less intrusiveness and even greater profits. The first visible evidence of fulfilling that promise was the sildenafil launch. Subsequent to Pfizers success, multiple companies simultaneously pursued clinical trials of easy-to-use treatments for male sexual dysfunction. Among others, these included additional PDE-5 type compounds and other oral treatments, such as ixense (TAP Holdings, Deerfield, IL, USA), and topically applied compounds (MacroChem, Lexington, MA, USA). Additionally, PT-141 (Palatin Technology, Cranbury, NJ, USA) is a nasally administered peptide that is under development, which is presumed to work through a central nervous system mechanism.

Currently, there are three highly efficacious PDE-5, FDA-approved treatments for erectile dysfunction: sildenafil, vardenafil, and tadalafil. Reviews of long-term extension studies and published accounts of use in clinical practice show that sildenafils effectiveness was maintained with long-term treatment. “Significantly improved erectile function was demonstrated for sildenafil compared with placebo for all efficacy parameters analyzed (P , 0.02 to 0.0001), regardless of patient age, race, body mass index, erectile dysfunction etiology, erectile dysfunction severity, erectile dysfunction duration, or the presence of various co morbidities. Long-term effectiveness was assessed in three open-label extension studies.” Vardenafil (launched in 2003) “is a potent, selective PDE-5 inhibitor, which improved erectile function in a broad population of men with erectile dysfunction and in characteristically challenging-to-treat groups such as diabetic and post prostatectomy patients.” Tadalafil also launched in 2003, when taken, “as needed before sexual activity and without restrictions on food or alcohol intake, significantly improved erectile function. It allowed a substantial proportion of patients to achieve a normal IIEF erectile function domain score, exhibited a broad window of therapeutic responsiveness and was well tolerated in a representative population of patients with broadspectrum erectile dysfunction.”

Bringing Back Medical House Calls

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House Call Physician services provide extremely useful resource to residents who need house call doctor visits in their homes. Medical House Call patients will have the luxury of being seen at anytime of the day or night, in the comfort of their own home, office, or hotel. House Call Doctor Staff is comprised of well qualified board-certified house call physicians that will be happy to deliver expedient and effective care in a courteous and compassionate manner through virtue of a modern day medical house call in your home, office or hotel.

Patients can expect to receive excellent House call physician care in an unhurried atmosphere. Receive your evaluations with attention to detail, courteous and respectful attitudes. Develop a trustworthy relationship with your House call physician. These are all important aspects of the doctor-patient relationship that we value, and it is an important philosophy to deliver these qualities to patients when providing Medical House Call services.

In bringing Medical House Call service to patients, essentially the hands of time are turned back. We remember how medicine used to be practiced, before busy doctor’s offices, complicated insurance policies, long lines at clinics, rushed office visits, and crowded emergency rooms. We’ve noticed that somewhere along these channels of frustration, doctors began to lose sight of what mattered most… their patients. Remember when the doctor and patient were able to develop trustworthy relationships through Medical House Calls and had all the time necessary to discuss, examine, diagnose, and treat their condition?

The idea behind developing this type of practice model was to minimize the understandable frustrations that both patients and physicians have grown accustomed to in busy modern day medical practices. Medical House Call makes a doctor visit comfortable and relaxed in your own surroundings.

Medical House Call Staff are equipped with the clinical skills and medical supplies needed to care for you in the comfort of your own home or office. Medical House Call is able to treat any acute or chronic medical issues that you would normally see your primary care doctor for with a House call physician.

How Radiology Technology Helps To Ease The Medical Office Workload

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In decades past, many of the routine tasks associated with the running of a medical facility that offered radiology services had to be performed by hand, because that was the only option available at the time. Now, however, with inexpensive personal computer technology becoming widely available, there has been a shift to moving many of these radiology tasks to a digital environment for ease of use, increased productivity, and cost reductions.

One of the most sought-after pieces of radiology technology is the fully functional PACS system. For those working in a radiology or cardiology department, a Radiology PACS or Cardiology PACS can help with everything from viewing digital images to storing them or distributing them.

The amount of work to process even a single film x-ray is burdensome, and in medical facilities that’s multiplied by hundreds of times throughout the course of a work year. The images need expensive chemicals for developing, which takes time. You have to work with hard copies of film, which must then be handled by humans for filing and archiving, not to mention retrieval of images.

Using cardiology PACS in your cardio unit eliminates all of this extra work. By using the DICOM digital imaging format, images taken from a variety of modalities can all be read by the radiology PACS equipment, and it allows you to view your digital medical images within seconds after taking them, unlike film images.

PACS radiology technology also allows for the storage of DICOM digital images. The PACS appliance can be used as a server to store many terabytes of digital medical information saved in the DICOM format. When there is a need for handling a large volume of studies, the radiology PACS has also been successfully used as a router as well, automating what can be a very cumbersome job of making sure everyone on each patient’s medical team receives the proper information. The servers may be located at the site of your medical facility or offsite, which helps you to stay within HIPPA compliance concerning disaster recovery of medical records.

Using a PACS also make distributing medical records much easier. No longer must you rely on postal mail or couriers to deliver hard copies of patient film x-rays. Instead, you can simply send the proper DICOM digital images to consulting physicians on your local-area network, wide-area network or on a virtual-private network in seconds, greatly improving the productivity of the entire medical system in place, and enhancing patient care at the same time.