Spiritual crises facing surgical patients

Conclusion The surgical patient, then, offers the chaplain a rather special challenge. While most patients suffer a disruption of life and community, this disruption may be particularly trying to the surgical patient due to its suddenness. While most patients undergo certain fears and apprehensions upon hospitalization, it is the surgical patient who must pass through realms of the unknown and never know when this may occur. While virtually anyone may lose his desire to live, the patient who suffers severe emotional trauma in surgery, along with severe distortions of his body, may be particularly susceptible to this apprehensiveness. And while guilt is a common feeling, surgery usually presupposes a disease or accident about which the patient is prone to ask, What did I do to cause this? And finally, there are spiritual crises peculiar to particular kinds of surgery.The hospital minister, then, must learn what to expect on the surgical ward generally, and also in regard to particular types of surgical patients. At the same time he must be open to new and unusual crises. When the chaplain is aware in this way, he will be able to meet, in the lives of surgical patients, the crises that demand the flexible mobilization of all his resources.     

胸腔镜肺癌切除：多样化的手术切口和流程

胸腔镜肺癌切除是一种复杂腔镜手术,由于手术自身的复杂性及医生对手术的认识不同,出现了多种手术模式,其主要表现在手术入路（手术切口）、肺叶切除手术流程以及淋巴结切除方法。本文简要介绍对此方面的认识。     

纸质与视频补充材料对手术知情同意体验的影响：以腹腔镜胆囊切除手术为例

知情同意书在医患沟通中起着间接传递信息的重要作用。以159名大学生为被试,通过操纵不同的知情同意方式,考察了纸质或视频补充信息对患者知情同意满意度、理解程度以及患者信息需求的满足程度影响。结果发现,接受纸质补充知情同意或视频补充知情同意的被试对知情同意过程的满意度、对手术信息的理解程度与知情同意信息需求的满足程度显著高于接受普通知情同意的被试。同时,纸质补充知情同意使得“治疗信息需求的满足程度”最高。这表明,纸质补充知情同意更能满足患者对治疗信息的需求。     

我国社区卫生服务发展的障碍与对策研究

自1996年试点至今,我国社区卫生服务在政策支持、覆盖面、社区卫生服务站(点)的数量、人员的素质和群众的意识等都取得了令人瞩目的成绩.但是,我国的社区卫生服务尚处于初级阶段,在发展过程中还存在很多的问题,亟待采取有力的措施,克服存在的障碍,进一步完善我国的社区卫生服务体系.     

Patients’ expectations for the functional and psychosocial outcomes of orbital decompression surgery for thyroid eye disease: a qualitative study

Patients with appearance-altering conditions may be dissatisfied with the outcomes of reconstructive surgery due to unmet expectations. This study explored patients’ expectations of orbital decompression surgery for thyroid eye disease (TED) and whether these were met. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at two times: (1) in the weeks after patients were listed for decompression surgery and before surgery; (2) up to 12 months after surgery. Thematic analysis was performed for each time point, to identify themes within the data. Fourteen adults with TED were interviewed prior to surgery and five were followed up after surgery. Thematic analyses found: (1) Prior to surgery, patients had formed expectations through online information about the procedure, consultations with physicians, the impact TED had on their lives, and speaking to relevant others. Patients had specific expectations about the procedure, the recovery, post-operative appearance and post-operative vision. (2) After surgery, patients generally felt their appearance and well-being had improved. However, dissatisfaction was linked to unanticipated specific aspects of surgical care, recovery, or appearance. Dissatisfaction can arise from unmet expectations for the outcomes of reconstructive surgery. Physicians should be aware of the processes by which patients form expectations, for example different types and quality of online information. Ensuring that preoperative expectations are realistic could enhance satisfaction after surgery.     

良性前列腺增生手术适应证探讨与方法的选择

良性前列腺增生（benign prostatic hyperplasia,BPH）是中老年患者的常见疾病,生活水平提高和寿命延长使得患者数量在逐年增加。电切镜的应用使下尿路疾病尤其是前列腺增生症的治疗发生了根本性的改变,新的治疗方法近年发展较快,并在BPH治疗过程中得到了广泛运用。前列腺增生症患者症状和程度各不相同,并且高龄高危患者居多,其手术适应证需要进一步探讨。开放前列腺切除术、经尿道前列腺电切术、经尿道前列腺汽化电切术、经尿道等离子前列腺电切术是目前常用的治疗方法,经尿道激光治疗、腹腔镜手术近几年开始尝试,初步应用证实其应用得当是有效、微创、并发症少的治疗方法,因此发展迅速。微波、超声消融、支架植入治疗目前较少应用,但有其适应证,尚不能替代经尿道前列腺电切术,可作为对症辅助治疗或适用于无法耐受手术者。结合国内外BPH诊治指南提出的手术适应证,查阅近年国内外发表相关文献,对于指南在实际应用和执行中遇到的问题与解决办法进行探讨。对各种外科手术的临床疗效予以对比和总结,探讨良性前列腺增生症外科治疗的临床决策问题。     

系统论在胰腺外科中的意义

胰腺作为一个消化器官,不过是人体中很小的部分,但由于胰腺在人体内发挥的重要作用以及在人体中的重要解剖毗邻关系,胰腺外科为广大普外科医生关注的焦点,成为普外科研究的热点问题。将系统论的整体性、联系性、有序性、综合性、动态性、最优化等原则运用到胰腺外科临床及科研工作中去,能更好地改进胰腺手术技巧和手术方式,能更好地提高胰腺疾病的诊治水平。     

Neurocognitive correlates of stereotactic thalamotomy and thalamic stimulation in Parkinsonian patients

In the present paper we have reviewed five different studies that relate to neuropsychological consequences of stereotactic thalamotomy and thalamic stimulation in patients with Parkinson's disease. The neuropsychological results are in a strict sense confined to thalamotomy and thalamic stimulation, although the more general message of the importance of investigating cognitive functions before and after surgery applies to other stereotactic techniques for surgical treatment of movement disorders as well. It is argued in the paper that stereotactic thalamotomy provides a unique model for basic research on the neuropsychology of the thalamus, while in return, neuropsychological tests for cognitive dysfunction after surgery may be the most important clinical follow-up. Three general conclusions seem warranted from the data. (1) Parkinsonian patients are impaired on a range of cognitive functions, including language processing, memory, and executive functions. (2) Stereotactic thalamotomy does not further impair the patient; instead, we observed improvement on some tests, particularly verbal memory. (3) In general, there does not seem to be a laterality effect, depending on which side the thalamotomy lesion is applied. An exception to this are dichotically presented simple speech sounds and autonomic responses. In both instances, left-sided brain stimulation produced enhanced performance, while lesioning the left thalamus impaired dichotic listening performance. Finally, we present a new hypothesis for a mechanism behind the thalamotomy effect, based in part on changes in arousal thresholds.     

What Can Feminist Epistemology Do for Surgery?

Surgery is an important part of contemporary health care, but currently much of surgery lacks a strong evidence base. Uptake of evidence‐based medicine (EBM) methods within surgical research and among practitioners has been slow compared with other areas of medicine. Although this is often viewed as arising from practical and cultural barriers, it also reflects a lack of epistemic fit between EBM research methods and surgical practice. In this paper we discuss some epistemic challenges in surgery relating to this lack of fit, and investigate how resources from feminist epistemology can help to characterize them. We point to ways in which these epistemic challenges may be addressed by gathering and disseminating evidence about what works in surgery using methods that are contextual, pluralistic, and sensitive to hierarchies.     

Paradoxical depression after heart surgery: a form of survivor syndrome

A study of patients who developed depression immediately after heart surgery is presented. Nineteen of the twenty patients shared a history of having lost a close object who had died as a result of complications following a minor surgical procedure or illness, or had suffered from a disease similar to the one the patient now had, but for which there had been no surgical help at the time. The patients are compared with other survivors and are discussed in terms of both survival and paradoxical reaction. Almost all of the patients showed quick recovery when these issues were pointed out.     

麻醉医生是外科的内科医生——浅谈21世纪麻醉医生的责任与义务

在科学技术高速发展的21世纪,西医外科学取得了相当大的成绩。心脏直视手术,器官移植的巨大成功标志着外科学已经进入了一个崭新的时代。但这些成绩的取得离不开麻醉学科的发展。麻醉医生是外科的内科医生,这句话里有两层含义,一是表明了麻醉医生在外科领域里所要承担的责任;二是在今后的医学发展中麻醉学研究的方向及自身的义务。本文将从麻醉学科的历史定位、现代定位和责任与义务三个层面展开讨论,为中国麻醉事业美好的明天而努力。     

“Big eye” surgery: the ethics of medicalizing Asian features

The popularity of surgical modifications of race-typical features among Asian women has generated debates on the ethical implications of the practice. Focusing on blepharoplasty as a representative racial surgery, this article frames the ethical discussion by viewing Asian cosmetic surgery as an example of medicalization, which can be interpreted in two forms: treatment versus enhancement. In the treatment form, medicalization occurs by considering cosmetic surgery as remedy for pathologized Asian features; the pathologization usually occurs in reference to western features as the norm. In the enhancement form, medicalization occurs by using medical means to improve physical features to achieve a certain type of beauty or physical appearance. Each type of medicalization raises slightly different ethical concerns. The problem with treatment medicalization lies in the pathologization of Asian features, which is oppressive as it continues to reinforce racial norms of appearance and negative stereotypes. Enhancement medicalization is ethically problematic because cosmetic surgery tends to conflate beauty and health as medical goals of surgery, overemphasizing the value of appearance that can further displace women’s control over their own bodies. I conclude that in both forms of medicalization, cosmetic surgery seems to narrowly frame a complex psychosocial issue involving physical appearance as a matter that can be simply solved through surgical means.     

A hidden markov model-based analysis framework using eye-tracking data to characterise re-orientation strategies in minimally invasive surgery

Natural Orifice Translumenal Endoscopic Surgery (NOTES) represents a new paradigm in minimally invasive surgery whereby an operator uses a flexible instrument to navigate within an anatomical space. The flexible instrument is introduced via a natural body orifice such as the mouth to perform an operative intervention controlled by the surgeon without making incisions in the anterior abdominal wall. It differs from laparoscopic (traditional keyhole) surgery in two main ways: (1) the instruments used in NOTES are not rigid as in laparoscopic surgery and not specifically designed for this application; and (2) there are no incisions in the anterior abdominal wall. Disorientation during NOTES is a significant problem because as in laparoscopic surgery the operator typically uses a 2D camera-monitor interface for visualisation by the camera at the site of the operation. Furthermore, the positional cue offered by the external component (outside the body) of the camera is absent, and camera navigation is more cumbersome. When the operator is disorientated, it is important to be able to re-orientate quickly to minimise potential surgical errors. It is hypothesised that when surgeons become disorientated, there exist discrete patterns in psychophysical behaviour which are associated with effective re-orientation, and that these patterns are recognisable. In this study, we examine visual re-orientation behaviour in 18 subjects using eye-tracker data in a model comprised of selective image manipulation of everyday objects in a box trainer. We characterise effective behaviour using a fixation sequence similarity-based hidden Markov model. We show that the output of this algorithm is reliable in differentiating visual behavioural sequences, and that there are specific behavioural patterns and strategies associated with successful re-orientation in this model. Good re-orientation strategy appears to rely on identification and focus on a central object within the scene and judging position of its surrounding peripheral objects, suggesting integration of both geometric and feature information in a systematic way. Using selective, inconsistent feature cues for re-orientation were associated with less effective performance.     

A device for the easy administration of volatile anesthetics to rats undergoing stereotaxic surgery

Conventional procedures do not provide a practical method for the administration of volatile anesthetics such as halothane to rats while they are undergoing stereotaxic surgery. This paper describes a device which meets this need and which is easy and inexpensive to construct. A two-piece cylinder cut from the mouth of a polyethylene bottle forms a closed system around the muzzle of a rat and does not interfere with the stereotaxic apparatus or with the operation itself. The cylinder is attached to any standard device for the dispension of volatile anesthetics. The immediate advantage is that behavioral assesaments can be made relatively soon after surgery.     

The Universe as a Saturated Phenomenon: The Christian Concept of Creation in View of Modern Philosophical and Scientific Developments

Abstract

The article develops an argument that the Christian concept of creation of the world, being an issue of the modern dialogue between theology and science, must be rethought and reformulated along the lines of recent advancements in cosmology and philosophy. It is argued that the prevailing natural attitude to the issue of the creation of the universe (whether based on Biblical hermeneutics or scientific theories) is philosophically inadequate because it does not account for the facticity of the articulating consciousness, which itself is the modality of the created. Correspondingly, the issue of creation receives a different interpretation: it is the coming into existence of personal life in the Divine image, capable of recognizing its createdness, and articulating creation as hypostatically distant from the comprehending subjectivity. Creation as inseparable from the life of subjectivity thus acquires the status of a saturated phenomenon to which neither successive quantitative, nor qualitative synthesis, nor temporal synthesis can be applied; it also escapes a rubric of relation. The created world, or the universe as a whole, gives itself to us from its own “self” to such an extent that it affects us, changes us and almost constitutes us, and stages us out of its own giving itself to us. The universe is present in the background of our existence through relationship and communion in such a way that we can express this presence ecstatically—through music, painting, poetry etc.—that presence which cannot be formalized in definitions of physics and mathematics. It is the living humanity that is the only and ultimate manifestation of God through its creation.     

At Death's Door: Therapists and Patients as Agents

This paper explores the interrelationship between patients' exercise of will to make advances in an analysis and their readiness to forgive their analysts for their human limitations. There is a thin line between idealization of the analyst, probably a necessary component of the process, and resentment of the analyst for his or her privileged position in the world and in the analytic situation itself. The patient's “progress” emerges as a kind of reparative gift, one that implicitly overcomes the patient's tendency to withhold such change out a sense of chronic, malignant envy. Particularly poignant in terms of its potential to elicit the patient's reparative concern is the situation in which the analyst is struggling with his or her mortality because of aging or life-threatening illness. In this essay two clinical vignettes are presented to illustrate some of the issues that this situation poses. One begins with an elderly patient appearing at the door of the analyst's (the author's) home the day of his return from the hospital after coronary bypass surgery. The other begins with an analyst who is terminally ill appearing at the door of a patient who is threatening suicide. The two stories are compared in terms of their implications for human agency, the exercise of will, and the coconstruction of meaning in the face of mortality in the analytic process.     

4例肾上腺区局限性Castleman病临床诊治分析

探讨肾上腺区局限性Castleman病的临床特点及诊治方法。回顾性分析4例经术后病理证实的肾上腺区局限性 Castle-man病患者的临床资料,并结合文献复习讨论Castleman病的临床特点及诊治方法。结果4例肾上腺区局限性Castleman病均顺利手术切除,术后随访1个月～22个月,未见肿瘤复发。Castleman病临床上少见,表现为不明原因的淋巴结肿大,临床表现无特异性,最终确诊依靠病理诊断。病变可发生在淋巴组织的任何部位,肾上腺区罕见,手术切除为首选治疗。     

Dispositional optimism and recovery from coronary artery bypass surgery: the beneficial effects on physical and psychological well-being

The effect of dispositional optimism on recovery from coronary artery bypass surgery was examined in a group of 51 middle-aged men. Patients provided information at three points in time--(a) on the day before surgery, (b) 6-8 days postoperatively, and (c) 6 months postoperatively. Information was obtained relating to the patient's rate of physical recovery, mood, and postsurgical quality of life. Information was also gathered regarding the manner in which the patients attempted to cope with the stress of the surgery and its aftermath. As expected, dispositional optimism proved to be an important predictor of coping efforts and of surgical outcomes. More specifically, dispositional optimism (as assessed prior to surgery) correlated positively with manifestations of problem-focused coping and negatively with the use of denial. Dispositional optimism was also associated with a faster rate of physical recovery during the period of hospitalization and with a faster rate of return to normal life activities subsequent to discharge. Finally, there was a strong positive association between level of optimism and postsurgical quality of life at 6 months.     

Three-dimensional scapula kinematics and shoulder function examined before and after surgical treatment for breast cancer

Shoulder motion loss following surgical treatment of breast cancer is common and may be associated with surgery-related soft tissue changes and altered shoulder kinematics. Knowledge of short term biomechanical changes at the shoulder will inform treatment decisions and may help prevent the development of shoulder pathology. Shoulder motion loss following surgery also impacts quality of life and shoulder function, and measuring function with a shoulder-specific tool may direct rehabilitation. This study examined the short term effects of surgery on scapula kinematics and function in breast cancer survivors. Bilateral three-dimensional scapular kinematics were quantified before and after surgery for unilateral breast cancer and analyzed with repeated measures ANOVA. Shoulder function was assessed with the Shoulder Rating Questionnaire (SRQ) and analyzed with ANOVA. Subjects (n = 11) demonstrated statistically significant increases in scapula internal rotation on their involved side following surgery. An intention to treat analysis on all enrolled subjects supported this finding. The findings suggest that soft tissues restrictions impact short-term scapula motion following surgery for breast cancer. Significantly poorer shoulder function was reported for pain, recreation/athletic activities and total SRQ score after surgery. The SRQ appears sensitive enough to identify areas of life affected by changes in shoulder function following surgical intervention for breast cancer.     

Type D personality as a prognostic factor in heart disease: assessment and mediating mechanisms

Type D personality, a synergy between negative affectivity and social inhibition, has established itself as a serious risk factor for morbidity and mortality in patients suffering from cardiovascular disease. In this review, we summarize studies on the validity of the assessment methods of Type D, emphasizing its role as an independent vulnerability factor in the progression of cardiovascular disease. We further present evidence on the physiological characteristics that accompany the 2 psychological traits negative affectivity and social inhibition and may mediate the relation between personality and prognosis in heart disease. Further research needs to determine the mechanisms by which Type D affects the course and outcome of cardiovascular disease as well as how Type D patients may benefit from psychosocial intervention.