Robotic Prostate Surgery May Mean Big Trade-Off

CHICAGO — A new study suggests less-invasive keyhole surgery for prostate cancer may mean a higher risk for lasting incontinence and impotence when compared with traditional surgery.

Laparoscopic, or keyhole, surgery is increasingly chosen by men having a cancerous prostate removed. And often it involves the highly marketed da Vinci robotics system. Da Vinci’s popularity has been rising even though there’s never been a rigorous head-to-head comparison between it and standard surgery.

“There’s been a rapid adoption of this relatively new technique,” said the study’s lead author Dr. Jim Hu of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. The results add to confusion around prostate cancer treatment. It’s not clear that either surgery is superior to radiation alone or watchful waiting, which means simply monitoring the prostate for changes.

For the study, appearing in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers analyzed Medicare data for nearly 9,000 prostate cancer patients who had surgical treatment from 2003-07. Of those, 1,938 patients had minimally invasive surgery and 6,899 patients had standard surgery. The data did not indicate how many of the less invasive cases involved robotics.

The patients who had keyhole surgery left the hospital in two days, rather than three, on average. They also had lower rates of blood transfusions, breathing problems and internal scarring.

But they were more likely to report complications in the first 30 days after surgery involving genital and urinary function. About 5 percent of the minimally invasive surgery patients vs. about 2 percent of the standard surgery patients had these complications. And after 18 months, they had more incontinence and erectile dysfunction.

Great Gifts for Men

This article will give you some ideas on great gifts for men. With a little bit of application and creativity, you can find a truly original gift in these categories.

Locating some great gifts for men is not as hard a task as it is made out to be. There are only a few selected categories of gifts that excite men, and as long as you stick to these general categories, you will be safe. Now, obviously some ideas will depend on the age of the man and his status in society, but this article will tell you about the generalized areas that you should be looking at. You can also learn more about gifts for young men.

Gift Ideas for Men

It will obviously help to know more about the man for whom you are buying the gift, as there will be certain things that he would prefer more than others. As long as you are aware that he has a genuine interest in something, you can come up with some good ideas for the same.

Gadgets

When you’re looking for great gifts for men, you need not look further than gadgets and electronic gizmos. There are not many men in the world who are not excited by these devices, and this is certainly a safe bet for you. Depending on your budget you can get him a mobile phone, a laptop, a TV set, a video game console, a digital camera, a music player or you can also choose from a long list of accessories as well. Here are some cool gadgets for men 2010 to pick from.

Sports Gear

Just like most men love gadgets, the love of sports is also a universal fact among men. There is bound to be one game and one team that he loves more than others, and you can get him any kind of official merchandise of this team. Apart from this merchandise, you can also choose some unique gifts for men by picking out some sports equipment for him. Men who love camping will be thrilled to see something to do with camping equipment.

What Healthy Foods Do You Force Yourself to Eat?

When I was a kid, I ate junk. A lot of junk. The only fresh things I’d allow to pass my lips were fruit and maybe the wayward carrot stick. So when I came across this FitSugar post about forcing yourself to eat healthy food, I wondered what good-for-you-bites you’ve trained your palate to love.

I’ll start: When I was a kid, I hated yogurt, tomatoes and beans. But today, I eat these foods regularly and genuinely enjoy them! What happened? Because I knew these foods were good for me, I kept trying and trying them until one day, my taste buds said, “Aha!” I hear this is how you’re supposed to get small children to accept new foods, so maybe I’m just a few decades behind everyone else.

How have your tastes changed since you were a kid? Have you been able to re-train your taste buds to enjoy healthy food? What healthy foods do you force yourself to eat?

Three Tricks for Working With Brushes From a Professional Graphic Design Toolkit

Brushes may be one of the most fun and under-utilized Photoshop and GIMP graphic tools. Nearly every graphic designer has a variety of brushes available in her professional graphic design toolkit, most of them loaded onto her computer and ready to use. If you’re a hobbyist or beginner who’s shy about using brushes in your graphic designs, these quick tips and tutorials can help you make the most of one of the best tools in your professional graphic design toolkit.

Creating Straight Lines of Patterns

Brushes are ideal for creating borders and frames for elements of your graphic design, but they can be an exercise in painstaking frustration unless you know this quick tip. Place your cursor at the point where you want your first brush stamp. Click the mouse to stamp the design. Move your cursor to the spot where you want the end of your straight line. Hold down the shift key and click. Voila – perfectly straight line.

Creating Cutouts in Your Design

To create a cutout look that allows the image below to peek through, start by creating a new blank layer in your file. Select the Fill tool and fill the new layer with a solid color or pattern that contrasts with the layer below. Select the Eraser tool. Choose your desired brush or load it from the DVD that came with your professional graphic design toolkit. Move the mouse to where you want your cutout to be positioned and click to remove the color from the upper layer and let the layer below show through.

Hint: Not sure where you want to position the cutout? Slide the transparency setting on the top layer down until you can see the lower layer clearly. Now you can tell exactly what will show when you make your cutout.

The Cold War: How Healthy Is Your Favorite Frozen Yogurt?

It’s August, and everywhere else in the country except Seattle (where I am, and where it’s raining), it’s HOT. Frozen yogurt is likely on your mind. So which brands are best (yes, we’re talking taste and nutrition)? Keri Gans, R.D., a New York-based dietician and spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association offers her top picks:

Pinkberry

The stats: First Hollywood fell in love, then the rest of the world. And for good reason: This tart fro yo is delish. But what’s in your cup? The company recently settled a lawsuit when plaintiffs alleged that it misled consumers by calling itself all “natural.” But it seems they’ve reformulated their recipe, which now contains all-natural ingredients and live-active cultures. Plus, ringing in at only 70 calories for a half-cup serving, it’s a low-cal treat that’s not a splurge.

Grade: B+

Red Mango

The stats: This Pinkberry copycat is just as tasty but lacks the controversy. From the get-go they’ve been up front about their ingredient list and nutritionals–so there was never any question about whether their yogurt contained live cultures or was all natural. You’ve gotta like that. Oh, but it would be great if they could whittle their half-cup (currently 80 calories) down to 70, like Pinkberry. Hey, 10 calories can add up!

Grade: A- (our winner!)

TCBY

The stats: It was your fave stomping ground in the ’80s and early ’90s (heck, you may have even worked there!), and this chain is still around today. A half-cup will give you about 20 percent of your calcium needs, plus it serves up seven good-for-you probiotics. But, they add corn syrup to their yogurt (not so good for you), so you’re getting extra calories (110 cals for a half cup, and nobody only eats a half cup!)

Victoza

Victoza

Generic Name: liraglutide (LIR a GLOO tde)

Brand Names: Victoza

What is Victoza?

Victoza is a diabetes medicine that helps control blood sugar levels. It works by increasing the amount of insulin that your body produces.

Victoza is used to treat type 2 diabetes (non-insulin dependent). This medication is not for treating type 1 diabetes.

Victoza may also be used for other purposes not listed in this medication guide.

Important information about Victoza

You should not use Victoza if you are allergic to liraglutide, or if you have multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2 (tumors in your glands), a personal or family history of medullary thyroid cancer, insulin-dependent diabetes, or if you are in a state of diabetic ketoacidosis (call your doctor for treatment with insulin).

Before using Victoza, tell your doctor if you have stomach problems causing slow digestion, kidney or liver disease, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, or if you have ever had pancreatitis, gallstones, or alcoholism.

You should not breast-feed while using Victoza. Never share an injection pen with another person. Sharing injection pens can allow disease such as hepatitis or HIV to pass from one person to another.

Call your doctor at once if you have a serious side effect while using Victoza, such as swelling or a lump in your throat area, hoarse voice, trouble swallowing, feeling short of breath, severe pain in your upper stomach spreading to your back, nausea and vomiting, or signs of infection such as fever, chills, sore throat, flu symptoms, mouth sores, or easy bruising or bleeding.

FluLaval

FluLaval

Generic Name: influenza virus vaccine (injection) (in floo ENZ a VYE rus VAK seen)

Brand Names: Afluria, Fluarix, FluLaval, Fluvirin, Fluzone

What is FluLaval ?

FluLaval is a brand of influenza virus vaccine (injectable).

FluLaval (influenza virus vaccine) is used to prevent infection caused by influenza virus. The vaccine is redeveloped each year to contain specific strains of inactivated (killed) flu virus that are recommended by public health officials for that year.

Influenza virus (commonly known as “the flu”) is a serious disease caused by a virus. Influenza virus can spread from one person to another through small droplets of saliva that are expelled into the air when an infected person coughs or sneezes. The virus can also be passed through contact with objects the infected person has touched, such as a door handle or other surfaces.

FluLaval vaccine (flu shot) is a “killed virus” vaccine. FluLaval works by exposing you to a small dose of the virus, which helps your body to develop immunity to the disease. FluLaval vaccine will not treat an active infection that has already developed in the body.

FluLaval is for use in adults 18 years of age and older. FluLaval is not indicated for use in children.

Becoming infected with influenza is much more dangerous to your health than receiving FluLaval vaccine. Influenza causes thousands of deaths each year, and hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations. However, like any medicine, FluLaval can cause side effects but the risk of serious side effects is extremely low.

Hemroid Complaints And Remedies Revealed

Hemroid Treatments are actually a must when it comes to varicose blood vessels in the posterior and rectum. They take place when veins that find themselves either in the posterior or around it turn out swollen. The further bloated they become, the more uncomfortable they are. Without proper hemroid treatments these varicosed blood vessels may generate blood loss, and their persistent irritation can lead to itching. On the other hand, more often itching is a manifestation of threadworms or else an overspreading of Candida albicans.

The following could generate hemroids: constipation, continual flux, forcing when you go to the bath, and in general squeezing that contributes to congestion in veins in that section (like coughing, sternutation, or in seated position or standing for extensive periods of time). But let’s face it, in case that you have healthy veins, sneezing and sitting won’t deliver you hemroids.

Popular Hemroid Treatments

The initial measure in the doctors’ technique to healing hemroids is to propose a high-fiber nutriment along with bulking agents, similar as Metamucil. Thereafter, they typically recommend taking laxatives for constipation. The question is that some of the plants used in laxative formulas, such as senna leaf, are bitter and unpleasant. Instead, eat a higher fiber nutriment and collect ground flaxseed provided that your digestive organs require a little aid.

Regular sitz baths can diminish inflammation. Collect a huge soft container or area where water is held and place it in your bathtub. Fill two to three inches of heated water (110-120 degrees) in the container or area where water is held and have a seat in it for almost twenty minutes. Provided that doable, add some hotter water in the tub to a degree your feet are warmer than your bottom. Bring a cool washcloth with you so you won`t get too warm. Following, get a cool shower or bathe the section with cold water and mildly dry right.

How to Find the Best Link Building Service

If you are new to the internet marketing, then you have to be familiar with the link building. In fact, it is quite wide term that is used to describe the number of links pointing at your website from different third party websites. Actually, link building could help you to increase web traffic at your website, create responsiveness for your website as well as help you in having your website found by main search engines. In plain words, link building is used to make your website popular and known.

In fact, link building could be gained by using reciprocal links like being listed in different newsletters, search engines, directories and ezines. As well you can opt for natural link building or take the help of special link building services for making your website famous as well as save both money and time. For natural link building, you could check out the back links at your websites and make a list of these links. After looking for some time, you will get to see a specific pattern and you could use it for building links for your website.

But, a lot of people like to use the link building service in order to increase more businesses and revenue from their websites. However, you have to check out a lot of different things before choosing a link building service.

Using link building services is a good idea as in that way you will increase the web traffic, improve the visibility of your website in search engines as well as earn revenue from advertisers. For sure, you will not want to see a link building service that links your website with thousands other websites that are completely hopeless. In addition, you will not want to see any of your pages in search engine’s supplemental index.

How To Find Th Right Dog Walker

As quite a few of you know, Lawrence Park has the top rate of dog ownership of any neighbourhood in the metropolis (I was astonished that we surpassed the beaches!). With this in thoughts, there is effortlessly a need for all of you pup and dog owners to find the best match when it arrives to who could be caring for your pooch. Initially and foremost, there is absolutely nothing far more important than for you to DO YOUR RESEARCH!!!I’m sure that if you were hunting for a caregiver for you baby you may not basically stop looking soon after interviewing one prospect, and potential walkers should need the same treatment. Guarantee that you locate another person who most meets the should of each your self and your dog, and do not be afraid to both change away or quit using the services of somebody who you do not experience is the proper fit. Here are most concerns which every individual seeking towards that service should ask of their potential walker :

1) Are you insured?

2) Are you accredited by the city of Toronto?

3) Can you offer recommendations? (By natural means virtually all walkers can offer positive references of existing clients, but it is important to contact these personal references to have a quick discussion and get honest feedback of any concerns you may possess).

4) Where do you consider the k9s?

5) What breeds of canines, and a lot more importantly, What ARE THE PERSONALITIES OF THE Canines that can be walking with my dog?

6) What routine methods do you use? Though most dog walkers are certified trainers, the majority are not. Thus, you would want to assure that your walker is using the same techniques that you use at home. That is crucial, as every single dog is educated in a different way, and various techniques function for different people and dogs.