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Site FeedbackWH - A Guide to Women's Health: Winter 2009
A Guide To
Women's Health
Winter 2009
Breast cancer strikes an estimated 1 in 8 U.S. women, so it’s important for you to be knowledgeable about advances in treatment of the disease and your access to state-of-the-art procedures and technology. This month’s feature article reports on leading-edge radio-therapy at John Muir Health that precisely targets cancer cells with accelerated treatments and fewer side effects. Read on to get updates on John Muir Health’s new 3 Tesla MRI, the highest clinical field strength MRI currently available, and John Muir Medical Center’s lifesaving Chest Pain centers. Before you’re done, be sure to take time to read this issue’s article about prostate cancer. If you want to help safeguard the health of the men in your life, this is information you need to know—and need to share.
—J. Kendall Anderson
President and CEO,
John Muir Health
Visit the John Muir Women's Health Center
Are you looking for information you can trust about some of today's leading health and wellness issues? At our Women's Health Center, you'll find resources on everything from women and heart disease to childbirth education and menopause, as well as osteoporosis screenings and mammography. The center also offers classes, support groups, massage therapy and lactation services.
Stop by 1656 N. California Blvd., Ste. 100, in Walnut Creek.
Business hours: Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m.-7 p.m.; Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. For more information, call (925) 941-7900.
Help for Troubled Teens
John Muir Health offers inpatient and outpatient behavioral health programs for youths, ages 13 to 18, through the John Muir Behavioral Health Center. The adolescent inpatient program focuses on accurate diagnosis and crisis stabilization. Our full day and after school outpatient programs provide cognitive therapy, process groups, art therapy, medication and drug education, as well as parent education and multifamily groups. For more information, call the John Muir Behavioral Health Center, (800) 680-6555.
Find A Physician
For a referral to the more than 800 primary care and specialty doctors in the John Muir Physician Network in East Bay communities from Antioch and Brentwood to Livermore, call (925) 941-2244.
[back to top]On The Alert For Chest Pain
When a heart attack strikes, the Chest Pain Centers at the Walnut Creek and Concord campuses of John Muir Medical Center are prepared to take fast action. Patients who arrive in their Emergency Departments with chest pain receive a rapid assessment, diagnosis and, when needed, immediate intervention in the cardiac catheterization laboratory to open a blocked coronary artery.
Cardiologist Andrew Benn, M.D., F.A.C.C., medical director of the Walnut Creek center, describes a hypothetical scenario that illustrates John Muir’s finely tuned plan for emergency cardiac care. “Suppose someone suddenly develops a feeling of heaviness in the chest. Rather than writing it off to indigestion, she calls 9-1-1. Once she’s onboard the ambulance, emergency medical technicians perform an EKG. The results are transmitted to the emergency room and immediately brought to the attention of the ER physician. If the EKG is consistent with heart attack, it activates a special code—before the ambulance arrives—that alerts cardiologists, the cath lab team and lab technicians that a heart attack patient is en route. That means that the cath lab team and cardiologists start moving to the hospital sooner than they otherwise would have. The ER staff already knows it’s a heart attack patient, so essential medications can start much sooner. They get the patient stabilized and to the cath lab sooner. It all saves time, and saving time saves lives.”
John Muir’s Chest Pain Centers been in operation about two years and are the result of multidisciplinary planning and collaboration involving physicians, nurses and technicians. “We’ve established a uniform treatment policy and an evidence-based approach to treating chest pain,” says Patrick Kavanaugh, M.D., F.A.C.C, medical director of the Concord campus’s Chest Pain Center. “We’ve looked to published experience in creating protocols for assessing and treating these cases.” Already, John Muir’s efforts have paid off, says Drs. Kavanaugh and Benn.
SEE WARNING SIGNS? CALL 9-1-1
Heart attack symptoms include discomfort in the center of the chest that lasts more than a few minutes, or that goes away and comes back; pain or discomfort in one or both arms, the back, neck, jaw, or stomach; shortness of breath; cold sweat; nausea; or light-headedness. Women are more likely than men to experience atypical symtoms that may or may not include chest pain such as overwhelming fatigue and weakness, shortness of breath, nausea/vomiting, and back or jaw pain.In 2008, the centers beat national standards set by the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology. Those groups want heart attack patients in the cardiac cath lab to have a blocked coronary artery opened within 90 minutes from the time the patient enters the hospital’s Emergency Department (door to balloon). Says Dr. Benn, “We’re not content with meeting national standards. On average, our door-to-balloon time has been consistently below 60 minutes.”
“At John Muir Health, we’re committed to reducing death and morbidity from heart attack because of our ability to intervene early,” emphasizes Dr. Kavanaugh. “We’re a vital resource for protecting community health.”
Some Handy Advice
If you’ve heard of or know someone who has carpal tunnel syndrome, you may have wondered how to avoid it yourself. Truth is, there aren’t any proven strategies to prevent this condition, which is characterized by numbness, pain and eventual weakness in the hand. But you can protect your hands from a variety of ailments by taking a few precautions:
- Relax your grip and reduce your force, using no more than what’s needed to perform the task at hand.
- Take breaks every 15 to 20 minutes, gently stretching and bending your hands. When possible, alternate tasks.
- Avoid bending your wrist all the way up or down. Keep your keyboard at elbow height or slightly lower.
- Use good posture. When shoulders roll forward, this can affect your neck and possibly pinch nerves, which then can create problems for your wrists, fingers and hands.
- To avoid hand pain and stiffness, keep your hands and wrists warm. If you can’t keep the temperature warm enough at work, put on fingerless gloves to maintain heat.
Burn Calories at Work
- Substitute a fitness ball for your office chair. You’ll tone up your core muscles and improve your balance while perched on a firmly inflated fitness ball.
- Convene meetings on the go. When feasible, schedule walking meetings or brainstorming sessions. Weather permitting, take the meeting outdoors; otherwise, indoor laps inside your building work fine.
- Take fitness breaks. Plan regular lunchtime walks or trips to the gym with co-workers; you’ll hold each other accountable for getting physical. Do some gentle stretching on your break (at a table in the lounge or at your desk), by slowly bringing your shoulders up toward your ears or pulling your chin toward your chest until you feel a stretch along the back of your neck. A workout option: arm curls with hand weights or resistance bands.
Are You Savvy About Scars?
Did you know that the look of a scar depends on how big and deep the wound is, where it is, how long it takes to heal, your age and your inherited tendency to scar? To test and boost your smarts about scars—one of the body’s self-healing mechanisms — and ways to minimize them, take the following true-or-false quiz.
- Sun exposure helps scars blend in better to surrounding skin.
- Scars shouldn’t be disinfected with hydrogen peroxide.
- Wounds should be kept uncovered so air can help them heal.
- False. Scar tissue is more sun sensitive and prone to burning. UV rays also interfere with new collagen production and slow healing. Protect healed wounds by using a broad-spectrum sunscreen with SPF 15 or higher.
- True. Hydrogen peroxide kills bacteria but also slows healing because it destroys white blood cells that help repair wounds. Clean wounds with soap and clear water, using tweezers sterilized with alcohol to remove any dirt or debris.
- False. To encourage faster healing, keep wounds moist (petroleum jelly does the trick) and covered; moisture prevents the formation of a hard scab, which acts as a barrier to tissue development. Allowing a fresh cut to “breathe” can delay healing by as much as 50 percent.
Copyright © 2008 by John Muir Health. WH is published three times a year by John Muir Health as a community service and is not intended for the purpose of diagnosing or prescribing. WH Editorial Advisory Board: American Heart Association and the Office on Women's Health, U.S. Public Health Service. Produced by DCP.