Nurse's Notes
2003
NEW STUFF
One of the fun things about ageing—and there are lots of fun things,
despite propaganda to the contrary—is being able to look back and
see how far we’ve come in a lifetime. My grandmothers, who lived
from the horse and buggy to moon exploration, both felt the greatest
boon they witnessed was the automatic washing machine!
I frequently remind younger nurses that I go back before CPR or
“rescue breathing”. Many of us in this parish can certainly remember
times before paramedics, before organ transplants, before joint
replacements, before open heart surgery, even before antibiotics. It
really hasn’t been all that long ago!
Every day seems to bring new breakthroughs in medical practice. One
of the more interesting things now being researched is a “pacemaker”
for the brain, which is being tested to head off seizures in
patients who suffer from seizure disorders.
Until recently it was thought that seizures came on suddenly with no
warning. However new research has shown that these episodes start
with a tiny spark of activity and that they may take hours to build
to a surge.
Originally standard analysis of brain waves did not show any early
warning signs, but by using computers and chaos theory, patterns
started to become clear. (Chaos theory is a wide-ranging attempt to
uncover statistical regularity hidden in processes that otherwise
appear random—examples are weather patterns or the spread of
disease). By using a computer program that utilized chaos theory,
researchers were able to predict more than 80 percent of seizures
and identify the warning signs more than an hour before the actual
attack.
Of course this research is in the early stages and long from
practical implementation. However the hope is that a devise can be
implanted in the brain which, when it detects this early warning
sign, will automatically release either a very low dose of an
anti-seizure drug or an electrical signal that would block the
seizure.
Brain “pacemakers” may be only a few years away—what a wonderful
gift that will be to those who suffer from a seizure disorder! I
wonder what is next on the horizon?
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