Hands to Help Seniors

Foot surgery can be very painful and recovering from it can be difficult.  Therefore, podiatrists have been coming up with new ways to treat foot pain that are non-surgical.  Bunions, plantar fasciitis, hammertoes and metatarsalgia, depending on the severity, can be treated without surgery.  Treatment techniques include ultrasound-guided injections that deliver anti-inflammatory drugs to the site of the pain and shockwave therapy that promotes soft tissue healing.  Talk to your doctor about the various treatment methods if you are experiencing foot pain.

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The Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, CHOMP, is sponsoring an Emergency Preparedness Fair on Saturday, September 26 from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at the Del Monte Center in Monterey.  Stop by to get emergency kit essentials and information like:

Safe food and water

Home safety

Fire extinguisher how to’s

Fire-safe landscaping

There will be more than 20 emergency agencies and the first 500 attendees will receive free emergency starter kits courtesy of CHOMP.

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There has been quite a bit of controversy regarding how high blood pressure is treated and how high should be considered too high.  A major study was ended more than a year early on Friday when researchers said that the data was conclusive.  The findings were that current blood pressure guidelines were set way too high and the theory that senior citizens needed somewhat higher blood pressure to the brain were not compelling enough to set guidelines higher for them.  Patients that had their systolic blood pressure lowered below 120 (well below guidelines of 140-150 for those over 60) reduced their risk of death by nearly one quarter.  The study by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of 9,300 people who were at high risk of heart disease or had kidney disease wasn’t supposed to end until 2017 but researchers went public with what they said was potentially lifesaving information.

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Federal regulators made a great move, announcing a plan which will bring health care for poor senior citizens up to a level which is more on par with elderly men and women that are middle income and wealthy as well as making sure minorities are given good care.  The Department of Health and Human Services pointed out this issue over 30 years ago and yet the disparity still exists today.  The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released what it is calling the “equity plan” which set a goal of four years for addressing the differences in benefits.  In addition to focusing on low-income and minority seniors, the government said that it will consider sexual gender minorities, those with disabilities and those living in rural areas.

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A month after Congress called on them to do so, the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) has said that it plans to investigate a surgical device which was marketed for decades before the Food & Drug Administration warned that it spread uterine cancer.  The laparoscopic power morcellators were commonly used to cut up growths called fibroids in minimally invasive surgeries such as hysterectomies.  The FDA warned last year that there are 1-in-350 odds the fibroids harbor an undetected cancer and surgery on them could spread the cancer.

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