Surgeons in Abu Dhabi have removed 40 kidney stones from a 27-year-old patient using a minimally invasive surgical procedure.
Medics at Lifecare Hospital in Mussaffah used laser lithotripsy to treat Balkar Singh, a carpenter from India.
The technology breaks kidney stones into smaller pieces that can be removed by surgeons or flushed out of the body.
Mr Singh, who works for a construction company in Mussaffah, was in agony when he visited doctors, after suffering with symptoms for more than a year.
The doctors diagnosed ureterocele, a blockage in his bladder. They said the congenital condition had caused his ureter to swell and the stones to accumulate.
Mr Singh, from Punjab, said he put up with chronic stomach pain and a burning sensation when urinating, before seeking medical help.
“I started getting pain in the lower portion of my stomach about a year ago,” he said.
“At that time, I was in India and did not consider it seriously.
“I used to get pain intermittently. But it was manageable until a few months later, when my condition worsened. It became excruciatingly painful.”
Doctors in India prescribed medicine and advised Mr Singh to consider surgery. But he was about to move to Abu Dhabi, so postponed the procedure owing to the recovery time required.
Medicine including painkillers allowed him to continue working for a few months, before the pain became too much to endure and his colleagues advised him to have a hospital check-up.
A urologist at Lifecare Hospital referred Mr Singh for an X-ray and ultrasound, and discovered 40 kidney stones blocking his ureter, each measuring from 8 to 25 millimetres in size.
“I was shocked when the doctor told me how many there were. I could not believe it,” Mr Singh said.
Ureteroceles are ballooning inside the ureters, tubes that connect the kidneys to the bladder.
The condition is most likely to cause problems in children and younger adults.
Commonly caused by a urinary tract infection, it can lead to symptoms such as fevers, a burning sensation and a loss of bladder control.
In adults, a ureterocele can cause urine to flow backwards from the bladder to the kidneyand become more serious. It occurs in less than one in 500 people and is usually caused by a genetic anomaly.
Doctors would usually perform minorsurgery to remove kidney stones, but owing to their number and size in Mr Singh’s case, this risked permanent damage to his bladder.
Instead, specialist urologist Dr Althaf Hussain took a more unusual approach.
Using laser, the stones were broken down into fragments small enough to pass through the patient’s ureter. They could then be expelled naturally from his body.
“In this case, the patient had a rare condition of a swollen ureter blocked by multiple stones – it is an unusual occurrence,” Dr Hussain said.
“Ideally, we would have preferred an open surgery to remove the stones. But that would have involved multiple risks of incurring injuries to the bladder and vessels. His recovery would also have taken much longer.”
Mr Singh was discharged from hospital only 24 hours after the procedure and has recovered well.
“Being a doctor, it is our responsibility to offer the best care to our patients,” Dr Hussain said.
“That means quicker recovery and maximum comfort.
“I had explained the procedure in detail to Mr Singh, and he also chose to undergo the laser therapy.”

Young people exercising more than 10 hours a week should be screened for hidden heart problems and all sports coaches should have CPR training, doctors have said following Danish footballer Christian Eriksen’s cardiac scare.

The Inter Milan midfielder stunned a global audience of millions as he collapsed on the field near the left touchline at the end of the first half of Denmark’s opening Euro 2020 clash with Finland on Saturday.

Medics who performed cardio pulmonary resuscitation on the player were praised for averting tragedy.

While Eriksen recovers in hospital, a former Bayern Munich club doctor now working in Dubai said even fit young people can have undiagnosed but potentially life-threatening heart conditions.

Dr Erik Hohmann, an orthopaedic sports physician at Burjeel Hospital in Dubai, worked with the German football club to screen junior players for undiagnosed health problems.

“Arrhythmia or myocarditis due to a previous infection are the most common reasons for these kinds of incidents in young sportspeople during exercise,” he told The National.

“Thankfully, they are very rare.

“I can only recall 10 or so incidents in the past 20 years and I did not find a single case in the young players I worked with in Germany. “Every young athlete that aspires to train more than 10 to 20 hours a week should have an annual examination. But with millions of athletes, this is not always financially viable.”

Source: https://www.thenationalnews.com/uae/health/christian-eriksen-doctor-says-all-sports-coaches-should-have-cpr-training-1.1240355

India’s Health Ministry announced last month that it had detected 771 variants of concern (VOCs) of the coronavirus in India.

For more than a week, more than 2,000 Indians have been dying every day because of Covid-19 and on Wednesday, the country faced the grim reality of recording over 200,000 virus deaths.

Indian doctors in the UAE, who are keeping a close watch on the crisis back home, have looked into the coronavirus variants in the country, shedding light on why Covid is spreading fast.

India’s Health Ministry announced last month that it had detected 771 variants of concern (VOCs) of the coronavirus in India. These include viruses of the UK (B.1.1.7) lineage, South African (B.1.351) lineage, Brazilian (P.1) lineage, N440K variant, etc.

Source: https://www.khaleejtimes.com/coronavirus-pandemic/covid-in-india-uae-doctors-analyse-link-between-surge-in-cases-new-variants

Doctors and heads of medical facilities renewed calls for residents to take the Covid jab, a day after a senior health official revealed that the vast majority of Covid-19 infections in Dubai are detected among those who are yet to receive the vaccine.

Health experts said those who refuse to get vaccinated could be the reason behind a spike in Covid cases in the country.

Nine in 10 patients with Covid-19 — who were hospitalised and admitted to the ICU — were unvaccinated, according to Dr Alawi Al Sheikh Ali, deputy director-general of Dubai Health Authority (DHA). He added that eight in 10 people who tested positive for Covid-19 were yet to take the jab.

These figures should have been a wake-up call, medical professionals said, adding that taking the vaccine doesn’t only protect a person against the disease but prevents sick individuals from infecting others.

“Developing immunity through vaccination means there is a reduced risk of developing the illness and its consequences. This immunity helps you fight the virus if exposed. Getting vaccinated may also protect people around you because if you are protected from getting infected, you are less likely to infect someone else,” said Dr Tholfkar Al Baaj, chief clinical officer of Al Futtaim Health Group.

He explained: “This is particularly important to protect people at increased risk of severe illness from Covid-19, such as healthcare providers, the elderly, and people with other medical conditions.”

Dr Gunjan Mahajan, a clinical pathologist at Burjeel Hospital, Dubai, said “the vaccine will help us achieve herd immunity when enough people have been vaccinated and have developed protective antibodies against future infection.”

Dr Mohammed Salman Khan, a general medicine specialist at Aster Clinic, Qusais 1, said that even though the UAE’s vaccination drive is being conducted at an enormous scale, there remained those who were hesitant.

“Unfortunately, many people have still opted not to take the vaccine, and it could have led to the sudden rise in the number of Covid-19 cases recently,” Dr Khan said.

However, Dr Sarla Kumari is confident that the UAE remains on track to vaccinating 100 per cent of eligible groups by the end of 2021.

The country has so far administered over 13.8 million vaccine doses, with a vaccine distribution rate of 139.61 doses per 100 people.

“The percentage of people who need to be immune to achieve herd immunity varies with each disease. For example, herd immunity against measles requires about 95 per cent of a population to be vaccinated. The remaining five per cent will be protected by the fact that measles will not spread among those who are vaccinated,” said Dr Kumari, specialist physician and diabetologist at Canadian Specialist Hospitals.

For polio, the threshold is about 80 per cent. “The proportion of the population that must be vaccinated against Covid-19 to begin inducing herd immunity is still unknown. This is an important area of research and will likely vary according to the community, the vaccine, the populations prioritized for vaccination, and other factors,” added Dr Kumari.

“Most people who are infected with Covid-19 develop an immune response within the first few weeks, but we don’t know how strong or lasting that immune response is, or how it differs for different people. There have also been reports of people infected with the coronavirus for a second time.

“Until researchers better understand Covid-19 immunity, it will not be possible to know how much of a population is immune and how long that immunity lasts for, let alone make future predictions. “These challenges should preclude any plans that try to increase immunity within a population by allowing people to get infected,” she added.

The only people exempted from jabs

>Patients with active Covid-19 infection

>Children under 12 years old

>Pregnant women (until further data becomes available)

>Those who are allergic to vaccines or any of their ingredients

>People suffering from conditions that may ‘conflict with the vaccine.’

>Volunteers in Covid-19 vaccine clinical trials

>People vaccinated outside of the country

>People who have previously contracted Covid-19, following a medical assessment

Why you shouldn’t delay your second dose

Vaccines are designed to create immunological memory, which gives one’s immune system the ability to recognise and fend off viruses. “Most Covid vaccines elicit this response by presenting the immune system with copies of the novel coronavirus’ spike proteins,” explained Al Baaj.

Two-shot vaccinations aim for maximum benefit — the first dose primes immunological memory, and the second dose solidifies it, he explained.

“You can think of it as a gradient. One dose of the Pfizer vaccine can reduce the average person’s risk of getting an asymptomatic infection by about 50 per cent, and one dose of the Moderna shot can do so by about 80 per cent. Two doses of either vaccine lower the risk by about 95 per cent,” he added.

Dr Kumari said: “It doesn’t matter if it’s early by a few days or late by a few days or even a couple of weeks. It’s important to go back and get that second dose because the first dose actually presents this new antigen to the immune system to prime it.”

Dr Khan added: “Research during the trial phase for each of the two-dose vaccines showed that after a certain time, the rate of immunity to Covid-19 infection plateaus with just one dose but that the second dose helped boost the immunity to higher rates.”

Source: https://www.khaleejtimes.com/coronavirus-pandemic/covid-19-doctors-explain-why-vaccine-doubters-are-a-threat-to-dubais-safety

The World Health Organisation (WHO) approved Covid-19 vaccines offer 90 per cent protection against developing severe disease and hospitalisation due to the Delta variant, a top WHO scientist said. “The Delta variant is more transmissible than the previous variant and also has been able to resist the antibodies that we have in our blood. So, what that means is that you need a higher level of antibodies to overcome this variant as compared to, let’s say, the Alpha variant. Now, the good news is that all of the WHO emergency-use listed vaccines do protect against developing severe disease, hospitalisation and death due to the Delta variant,” WHO’s chief scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan told ‘Science in 5’, which is WHO’s conversation in science. Source: https://www.khaleejtimes.com/coronavirus-pandemic/delta-variant-covid-vaccines-90-effective-in-preventing-hospitalisations-who-scientist-says

Public health officials and physicians have been combating misconceptions about Covid-19 vaccine safety since mid-2020.

Despite the fact that numerous studies have found no evidence to support the notion that vaccines cause neurological disorders, infertility, and other chronic illnesses, a growing number of individuals are refusing to get the jab.

Khaleej Times reached out to Dr Gunjan Mahajan, a specialist clinical pathologist at Burjeel Hospital, Dubai, to debunk some common myths about the Covid-19 vaccines.

Myth 1: Covid-19 vaccinations cause infertility among women.

Truth: There is no scientific evidence suggesting vaccination causes problems with fertility and pregnancy, including the development of the placenta. Vaccines work by stimulating an immune response against a particular protein or antigen of a virus or bacteria. A Covid-19 vaccine stimulates antibody response and a cell-mediated immune response against the spike protein of the SARS- CoV-2 virus.

There is no way it will interfere with the functions of reproductive organs, either in men or women. Scientifically, there is also no reason for menstruating women not to take the vaccine, apart from the fact that she may feel a bit tired. If your vaccination appointment coincides with those dates, there is still no problem in going ahead and getting the jab.

Myth 2: If I've gotten Covid-19 previously, I don't need to take the vaccine.

Truth: Recent studies suggest the immune systems of more than 95 per cent of people who recovered from the disease had durable memories of the virus up to eight months after infection. At the same time, there is not enough data to say how long an individual is protected after receiving natural immunity. So, it is advised to get the vaccine.

If a patient has an active infection, he/she must wait until the isolation period is completed to be vaccinated. If the infection was moderate or severe and required hospitalisation, the timeframe for vaccination after infection will depend on the discretion of the medical team that treated the patient. However, all mild cases or cases without symptoms can take the vaccine after completion of the isolation period.

Myth 3: Covid-19 vaccines can cause death.

Truth: Some say that people shouldn’t be taking vaccines against Covid-19, as the mortality rate of people affected by the infection is between one to two per cent. The proponents of this argument suggest that there is no need to vaccinate oneself against a virus with a high survival rate. However, these people need to understand that one per cent mortality rate is 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu. Also, mortality due to Covid-19 is dependent on various other factors, such as age, underlying health condition and so on.

Also, there are a few who believe that getting the vaccine would cause them to get infected. They cite that people who take the vaccine develop similar symptoms of being infected by the virus. However, the reality is that when a person takes a vaccine against a particular infection or virus, it is natural for the body to respond to it as part of creating an immune response. This is very normal and lasts only for a day or two. These reactions do not lead to life-threatening complications.

People who are against vaccines should also realise that they are not just to keep you safe from infection, but also to prevent the spread of the infection to others in society. The vaccine also protects one from developing life-threatening complications due to Covid-19 and helps one avoid hospitalisation. Though vaccines do not ensure 100 per cent safety, its benefits definitely outweigh the risks.

Myth 4: Researchers rushed the vaccine research and development, so we cannot trust its safety and efficacy.

Truth: The vaccine manufacturers dedicated immense resources to developing the vaccine quickly. It is true that the vaccine against Covid-19 was developed in a shorter span of time. But that does not mean that the manufacturers bypassed safety protocols.

All the vaccines approved by health bodies have undergone tough scrutiny and the developers have published the data and the results of their testing too. These test results and data have been verified by a body of experts before approval for their use was granted.

Myth 5: Scientists and researchers are yet to find a cure for cancer; yet, they found a cure to Covid-19 so fast. That means we cannot trust the vaccine.

Truth: All vaccines are subject to adequate testing and go through several stages of pre-clinical and clinical trials before they are approved for use. The UAE has selected these vaccines on a scientific basis and ensured that these vaccines meet all safety requirements.

Myth 6: The mRNA technology used to make the vaccine is brand new.

Truth: Researchers have been studying and working with mRNA vaccines for decades. The advantage of the technology is that vaccines developed through this method can be produced in a laboratory using readily available materials. This contributes to the standardisation and scaling up of vaccine manufacturing at a faster pace than traditional methods.

The mRNA technology of developing a vaccine has earlier been studied for flu, Zika, rabies, and cytomegalovirus (CMV). As soon as the necessary information about the virus that causes Covid-19 was available, scientists began designing the mRNA instructions for cells to build the unique spike protein into an mRNA vaccine.

Future mRNA vaccine technology may allow for one vaccine to provide protection for multiple diseases, thus decreasing the number of shots needed for protection against common vaccine-preventable diseases. Beyond vaccines, cancer research has used mRNA to trigger the immune system to target specific cancer cells.

Myth 7: Vaccines cause neurological disorders in later stages of your life.

Truth: There is no evidence to suggest that Covid-19 vaccines trigger neurological disorders in people.

Source: https://www.khaleejtimes.com/coronavirus-pandemic/dubai-no-covid-19-vaccines-wont-cause-infertility-or-neurological-diseases