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Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Matthew McConaughey on set in New Orleans
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Can stapedectomy surgery reverse my hearing loss?
Posted May 25, 2013, 2:00 am 
I’ve been gradually losing my hearing. My doctor says he can restore my hearing with a procedure called stapedectomy. Can you tell me about it?
To answer your question, I need to explain how you hear. It is an amazing process. Sound travels in waves through the air into your ear canal. Inside the ear canal, the sound waves are amplified. The waves strike your eardrum. The eardrum is a thin membrane, similar to the wall of a balloon.
Right behind the eardrum is a group of tiny bones called ossicles. When the sound waves cause the eardrum to vibrate, the vibration is transmitted to the tiny bones. These bones then transmit the vibrations through fluid in a part of your inner ear called the cochlea. Inside the cochlea are tiny hairs. Vibrations in the fluid are transmitted to the hairs. When the hairs vibrate, signals are sent up the main nerve for hearing. Those signals then land in a part of the brain where the signal is received and interpreted.
Why is the way we hear so complicated? Don’t ask me, I didn’t design it. But I count myself lucky every day that I can hear.
Not surprisingly with such a complex process, many things can go wrong. For example, hearing loss can occur when something blocks sound waves from passing through the outer or middle ear. The source of the obstruction can be any number of things: earwax, fluid, inflammation, a cyst or other abnormal growth, or something accidentally lodged in the ear. Not unexpectedly, this happens more often in infants than in adults. But I once saw a man in his 50s who was having trouble hearing in his left ear. It turned out he had the cotton from the end of a Q-tip stuck inside his ear canal.
The obstruction can also be caused by otosclerosis, which is most likely the cause of your hearing loss. Otosclerosis is the abnormal growth of the tiny ossicle bones. It usually occurs on the stapes, the smallest ossicle in the middle ear. Hearing loss occurs because the stiffened stapes can no longer vibrate and pass sound waves from the ear canal to the inner ear.
Stapedectomy can correct otosclerosis. Working through the ear canal, the surgeon removes all or part of the stapes. He or she replaces it with an artificial stapes that can vibrate. (I’ve put an illustration of this procedure below.)
An abnormal bone growth, as shown in the top figure (A), sometimes prevents the stapes from vibrating and passing sound waves to the inner ear. To correct this condition, the surgeon removes the stapes bone and replaces it with a prosthesis (B). After surgery, sound waves pass through the eardrum, vibrating it. The vibrations pass to the malleus and then the incus, which is connected to the prosthesis. These vibrations cause the prosthesis to move, and the sound waves pass into the inner ear.
A major risk of stapedectomy is hearing loss, which can be total. Some doctors will not operate until the hearing loss is great enough to justify the risks of surgery.
With newer techniques and materials, the risks of this operation are not as great as they used to be. Still, it’s important to discuss the risks and benefits with your doctor. If you decide to go ahead with it, choose a surgeon who performs this operation frequently.
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FDA Approves New Drug to Fight Advanced Prostate Cancer
Xofigo was fast-tracked for approval and is meant for tumors that have spread to the bones
By EJ Mundell
HealthDay ReporterWEDNESDAY, May 15 (HealthDay News) -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday that it has approved a drug to help men with advanced prostate cancer whose disease has spread to the bones.
The drug, Xofigo, is targeted to patients with late-stage, metastatic disease that has spread to the bones but not to other organs, the FDA said in a news release. It is meant for patients who have already undergone surgery and/or drug therapies such as hormone-based treatments.
The FDA said Xofigo was approved more than three months ahead of the original August 2013 deadline the agency had set for a complete review. Instead, the drug was reviewed under the agency's "priority" review program, designated for medicines that appear safe and effective in a context where no good alternative therapy exists.
"Xofigo binds with minerals in the bone to deliver radiation directly to bone tumors, limiting the damage to the surrounding normal tissues," Dr. Richard Pazdur, director of the Office of Hematology and Oncology Products in the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, explained in the news release.
In a clinical trial involving more than 800 men with symptomatic prostate cancer that was resistant to hormonal therapy and had spread to the bones, men on Xofigo survived a median of 14 months compared to a little over 11 months for men taking a placebo. Side effects from Xofigo included nausea, diarrhea, vomiting and swelling of the legs and feet. Low levels of red and white blood cells, as well as platelets, were also reported among some patients taking Xofigo, the FDA said.
Pazdur noted that "Xofigo is the second prostate cancer drug approved by the FDA in the past year that demonstrates an ability to extend the survival of men with metastatic prostate cancer." The other drug, Xtandi, was approved by the FDA last August for men with hormone treatment-resistant prostate cancers that have spread or recurred, and who had previously been treated with the drug docetaxel.
According to the American Cancer Society, prostate cancer remains the leading cancer type among men outside of skin cancer, and about one man in every six will develop the illness during his lifetime. Caught early, it is often curable. About 239,000 new cases of prostate cancer are diagnosed among American men each year, and nearly 30,000 men die from the disease annually.
Xofigo is co-marketed in the US by Wayne, N.J.-based Bayer Pharmaceuticals and Algeta US of Cambridge, Mass.
Please help!!
hey everyone I need some input REALLY bad. ok so I was off work for a while, sat around and was really lazy only walking and basic needs. I ate 2200 calories and I never gained weight. I now have been working midnights at a grocery store. I carry lots of heavy boxes and our night crew is waay understaffed so we all work super fast and even run around alot. I weighed my self last week and I was 110 pounds. I have not been on the scale since I started work so dont really know if I lost weight. I weighed myself today and was 108 pounds. does that mean I burned 7000 extra calories last week? and does that mean I need to eat 1000 more calories a day just to maintain. oh and my stats are male, 110 pounds, 5'5, and 20 years old. I REALLY need to know if i should be eating more and how much more? please help!
Sienna Miller on the street in NY
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