Word: development
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...likely to affect their behavior later in life. Pain unleashes a destructive cascade of stress hormones that can weaken the immune system and make the heart rate and blood pressure soar. Studies in the 1970s and '80s showed that babies deprived of anesthesia during surgery were more likely to develop infections, brain hemorrhages, muscle wasting and difficulties in healing...
...Berde's research interests is developing local anesthetics that will work for days or a week after surgery instead of for six hours, as existing drugs do. Prolonged pain after chest or abdominal surgery is not just unpleasant; it can be harmful as well, keeping a patient from taking deep breaths or coughing--things they need to do. Pain can also keep people bedridden, impeding their recovery. "Our major aim is to get people up quickly," Berde says. "They're less likely to develop pneumonia, lose muscle mass and have trouble sleeping." Ambulatory adults are also less prone to blood...
...also working with other researchers to develop long-acting local anesthetics from toxins found in some fish, shellfish and algae--the same toxins that cause poisoning victims to feel numb and weak all over. Berde is pursuing the toxins because they work for two or three days and seem free of the side effects of existing drugs, which occasionally cause convulsions or disturbances in heart rhythm...
Berde questions the widely held belief that doctors and nurses become inured to their patients' suffering. "You don't distance yourself," he says. "It's not realistic, the notion that you don't develop a connection. Do I get sad? Yes. It's sad when a kid dies. But feeling that I can do something for them helps. At times it's hard, but that doesn't make me not want to do it. Having my own kids makes me understand the impact of illness even more, and I admire the courage of these families even more...
...powerful eyeglasses; visual aids, such as machines that enlarge print; and, for a minority of cases--those that involve the invasive growth of blood vessels--laser therapy that sometimes slows down the disease, at least for a time. But only 10% of those in whom macular degeneration is diagnosed develop this more rapidly progressing, invasive form of the disease. For them, experts agree, intervention is needed earlier, before so much visual acuity is lost...