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How a life-saving transplant transformed my life

| Annemarie Ward shares her journey of keeping hope alive amidst heart disease | NEARLY 15 YEARS AGO, Annemarie Ward was walking the family’s three dogs with her mother Polly and sister Emily when she collapsed. At age seven, Annemarie had suffered a heart attack. She was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or enlargement of the…
Pop Quiz: Maintaining optimal optical health

| Understanding the causes of low vision and taking precautions as you age | EYESIGHT is a precious thing, and unfortunately there are many threats to optimal optical health. One common eye problem is low vision, and it affects seniors the most. Low vision, in its simplest terms, is any vision loss that interferes with…
Celebrating Black History Month with a look at local African-Americans in medicine

ALEX ALEXANDER Registered Nurse Bartow Regional Medical Center As a black registered nurse from North Carolina, 56-year-old Alex Alexander has had his run-ins with prejudice. But he’s learned to remember who he is, treat others like his brothers and sisters, forgive, and … not believe everything he hears. “You earn things by your merit and…

Operative Management of Peripheral Arterial Disease

We’ve talked about what Peripheral Arterial Disease is in previous columns. Now, let’s look at some possible operative treatment options for PAD. When medical management alone has failed to improve symptoms, the possible treatment options include the following: Endovascular treatment with balloon angioplasty: In this procedure, a catheter is threaded through a blood vessel to…
Breast Cancer Surpasses Lung Cancer as Most Common

According to new information released by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), breast cancer has now overtaken lung cancer as the world’s most commonly diagnosed cancer, accounting for 12% of all new annual cancer cases worldwide. It’s also now the most commonly diagnosed cancer among American women. In 2021, it’s estimated that over…
What Is Peripheral Arterial Disease?

We’ve talked about what Peripheral Arterial Disease is in previous columns. Now, let’s look at some possible operative treatment options for PAD. When medical management alone has failed to improve symptoms, the possible treatment options include the following: 1.) Endovascular treatment with balloon angioplasty: In this procedure, a catheter is threaded through a blood vessel…