Human Antibiotics’ Use on Crops Poses a Threat

An established Southern California emergency physician, Zachary Lutsky, MD, handled acute medical traumas for more than a decade at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. With a focus on preventive care, Dr. Zachary Lutsky has a particular concern about overprescription of drugs and increased antibiotic resistance.

One emerging issue centers on the spraying of human antibiotics on rice cropland in countries such as Vietnam, China, and Cambodia. As reported in the journal CABI Agriculture and Bioscience, tetracycline and streptomycin are being applied as a safeguard against fungal diseases and insect infestations. In certain years, up to approximately 10 percent of rice within some regions were found to contain human antibiotics.

The risk posed by this is that resistant bacteria and the antibiotics can remain present within the harvested crop. In cases where the food is not properly cooked, they can become part of the human food chain. In addition, a large portion of the sprayed antibiotic remains in the soil, which may create “reservoirs of resistance.” Recommendations for addressing such issues center on enhancing food safety regulations at national and international levels.

First Aid Tips to Reduce Bleeding

An experienced emergency medicine physician with close to two decades of experience, Zachary Lutsky specializes in treating patients with various life threatening conditions. Over the course of his career, he has worked at numerous hospitals, including Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Zachary Lutsky has treated patients with a range of major trauma injuries, including fractures and excessive bleeding.

Bleeding is a serious health emergency that can lead to shock, or even death, if it is not well addressed. When handling major bleeding injuries, it is important to act quickly and stop further blood loss. With the right interventions, bleeding can be controlled before an ambulance arrives and a patient is taken to hospital. Below are tips to help reduce bleeding before emergency help arrives.

1. Ask the individual who is bleeding to lie down if possible, and remain calm. If the bleeding wound is on their leg or arm, raise that limb above the heart to slow down the rate of bleeding. Raising the legs also helps to reduce the effects of shock, but a limb should not be moved if the individual has a broken bone.

2. Apply pressure to pressure points, which are sections of the body where blood vessels run close to the skin surface. When you press on these areas, blood flowing from other parts of the body will be slowed, enabling you to continue applying direct pressure to stop bleeding. Always apply pressure to blood vessels that are closer to the heart. Applying pressure in other areas will not reduce bleeding as effectively.

3. If you’ve applied a bandage and blood begins to seep through it, do not remove the bandage. Instead, add an extra bandage and continue applying firm pressure to the wound. Do not tie the bandage too tightly or apply a bulky dressing, as this can reduce the effects of pressure. Pale and cold skin, as well as numbness, are signs that a bandage is too tight.

Fever in Kids Can Sometimes Result in Seizures

The recipient of an MD from the Rosalind Franklin University in Chicago, Dr. Zachary Lutsky served as an emergency physician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for 11 years. Dr. Zachary Lutsky is experienced in treating a variety of emergency conditions, such as accidental injuries, shootings, high-grade fevers, and other trauma.

The normal body temperature for humans is 37 C, which is equivalent to 98.6 F. Normally, body temperature can differ slightly from this value due to daily activities and some other factors. However, significant deviation (increase or decrease) from this value may be a sign of illness and can also be dangerous to health.

Fever, according to guidance from the Cleveland Clinic, is relatively common in children. It occurs when the body temperature exceeds 38 C (100.4 F). In most cases, it subsides within a few days. However, if a fever lasts longer, occurs in an infant younger than three months, exceeds 40 C (104 F), happens after a child is immunized, affects urination, or does not respond to fever reducers, it may be important to call or visit a doctor.

Severe temperature changes in some fevers can have serious side effects, such as seizures. These can appear in the form of a jerking movement or the child passing out. Seizures typically last for less than five minutes, but it is still advisable for parents or guardians to call the child’s doctor right away or seek immediate medical attention. If the seizure persists for longer, 911 should be called.

Stroke Warning Signs Using the FAST Trick

A board-certified emergency medicine physician in Los Angeles, California, Zachary Lutsky attended the Rosalind Franklin University Chicago Medical School. Zachary Lutsky served as an attending physician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for 11 years. Cedars-Sinai holds Comprehensive Stroke Center certification and is one of the region’s top stroke-intervention facilities.

One of the top five causes of death in the United States, a stroke occurs when a blood vessel carrying oxygen and nutrients to the brain is blocked or bursts. To recognize the early warning signs of a stroke, the American Stroke Association recommends using the word FAST:

F: First, look for signs of a drooping face. When the person smiles, does his or her face look uneven?

A: Next, check for arm weakness. With both arms overhead, does one lower automatically?

S: Slurred speech and other speech difficulties can be another sign of stroke. Check if the person can repeat simple sentences.

T: If any of these symptoms are present, it’s time to call 911. Prompt treatment for stroke can help minimize long-term effects.

What Causes Brain Hemorrhages?

Brain Model
Image: unsplash.com

Dr. Zachary Lutsky, a board-certified emergency medicine physician in California, received his MD from the Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University over 10 years ago. Since then, Dr. Zachary Lutsky has practiced medicine at such institutions as Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Santa Clara Valley Medical, and become familiar with a range of subjects, such as dangerous headaches.

A severe headache that comes on suddenly is one symptom of brain hemorrhages. Brain hemorrhage refers to bleeding in the brain and are a type of stroke. They occur when an artery in the brain bursts or when blood pools in an area of the brain as a result of swelling in the brain tissue.

There are several potential causes of a brain hemorrhage, but the most common cause is high blood pressure. High blood pressure is a chronic condition that weakens the walls of blood vessels over time. This makes the vessels more likely to burst, thus resulting in a brain hemorrhage.

High blood pressure is far from the only potential cause of brain hemorrhages. In fact, any condition that weakens the arteries or blood vessels increases a person’s risk of this condition. This includes certain cancers that spread to the brain, aneurysms, and arteriovenous malformation (AVM), a congenital condition characterized by abnormal connections between veins and arteries.

While brain hemorrhages are more common in older adults, they can occur in those younger than 50 due to head trauma. In younger individuals, head trauma is the most common cause of brain bleeding. Drug abuse is another common cause in individuals of all ages since it weakens the blood vessels.

Emergency Room Visits in Southern California Increase

A board-certified emergency medicine physician, Zachary Lutsky, MD, practices in Southern California. Dr. Zachary Lutsky began his career as an emergency medical technician at UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica, and has since been on staff at such hospitals as Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Between 2006 and 2016, emergency department visits in California increased by about 4 percent each year. Meanwhile, from 2010 to 2016, emergency department visits in Southern California increased by 27 percent. During that same time, the area’s population grew only by 5 percent, so the increase in ER visits wasn’t solely the result of a population increase.

Instead, the rise in emergency department visits has been attributed to the higher number of insured individuals in Southern California. In Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Los Angeles counties, Medi-Cal recipients went from being 25 percent of emergency room users to being around 50 percent of users. Plus, the number of uninsured ER visitors dropped from 18 to 8 percent.

Of those who visited the ER, many were homeless with mental health conditions. Unfortunately, the entire state has too few beds in psychiatric and drug rehabilitation facilities. As a result, people with these issues are looking to sleep in emergency departments rather than these other facilities.

Despite this increase in ER visits in Southern California, the average wait time to see an emergency department health care professional improved slightly from 2013 to 2016. Still, emergency waits in the state as a whole are roughly an hour longer than national wait times. Fewer patients were also admitted to Southern California hospitals, suggesting that they were effectively treated in the ER and released.

Antibiotic-Resistant Disease - MRSA

For more than a decade, Dr. Zachary Lutsky worked as an emergency physician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. As a medical professional, Dr. Zachary Lutsky has concerns regarding antibiotic-resistant diseases, one of the best-known of which is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

MRSA causes infections in various parts of the body and occurs when certain strains of staphylococcus aureus (staph) infect the body. Unlike typical staph infections, MRSA resists commonly-used antibiotics, making it more difficult to treat. Since it was first discovered in 1961, this bacterium has developed resistance to most common antibiotics, and regularly develops new resistances. About one in 50 people carry the disease, though most lack infections.

While MRSA most commonly occurs in hospitals, which may contain many immunocompromised patients who spread the disease, it can also occur in otherwise healthy people outside of hospitals. These infections often occur when large numbers of people congregate in close quarters regularly, such as athletes, military personnel, and prison inmates. Those in these categories should take care to have any strange bumps, sores, or infections assessed by a medical professional.

Addressing the Issue of Antibiotic Resistance

Zachary Lutsky, MD, graduated at the top of his class at RFU/Chicago Medical School before going on to become an accomplished emergency physician, including at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he served for more than a decade. Throughout his career, Dr. Zachary Lutsky has had an interest in topics such as antibiotic resistance.

Posing a significant risk to public health, antibiotic resistance arises primarily from an overprescription of antibiotics. As urgent care centers across the country prescribe antibiotics for the common cold and other viral ailments unaffected by antibiotics, patients become at risk for gut issues and allergic reactions.

The Journal of the American Medical Association recently published a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicating that 30 percent or more of antibiotic prescriptions are gratuitous. This overprescription may lead to a loss of antibiotic effectiveness.

To combat this problem, the White House issued The National Action Plan for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria in 2015, setting a goal for decreasing overprescription by half within five years. Some groups have tackled the issue by providing lists of non-antibiotic alternative prescriptions and requiring that the reason for prescribing an antibiotic be indicated in patients’ electronic health record.

Sudden Pains that Require a Visit to the Emergency Room

Dr. Zachary Lutsky is a board-certified practitioner of emergency medicine. For over 10 years, Dr. Zachary Lutsky provided medical care to patients with acute illnesses and severe injuries as an attending physician for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Emergency Department.

Sudden pain can be a sign of serious injury or illness that requires immediate treatment. Here are a few types of pain symptoms that should be addressed with medical attention.

Abdominal Pain -- Abdominal pain is often a symptom of serious conditions such as appendicitis or a ruptured spleen. Sudden pain combined with fever and/or bloody bowel movements, or abdominal pain that remains for longer than a few days, is a sign of a serious problem.

Testicular Pain -- Intense pain that appears suddenly may signal that the testicle is twisted. This is a dangerous condition that can prevent blood flow to the area. Testicular pain accompanied by nausea or fever should also be examined by a doctor.

Back Pain -- If lower back pain appears simultaneously with abdominal pain, it may be a sign of an aneurysm in the aorta, an artery that pumps blood throughout the body. The combination of these symptoms suggests that the aneurysm has ruptured the aorta, which can be life-threatening.

Headaches - Indicators That Emergency Care Might Be Appropriate

Since completing his graduate medical education in emergency medicine, Zachary Lutsky, MD, has practiced emergency medicine throughout California. In the course of doing so, Dr. Zachary Lutsky has diagnosed and treated a wide variety of conditions, including severe headaches.

Among the most common reasons people go to the emergency room, headaches can be a sign of a serious underlying medical problem. For example, medical emergencies like strokes and encephalitis can give rise to headaches. However, most headaches aren’t caused by a serious medical condition.

How can patients differentiate between dangerous headaches requiring immediate medical attention and common headaches that do not? If a person experiences a sudden headache with uncharacteristically severe pain, perhaps the worst headache pain they’ve ever encountered, they should call 911 or go immediately to an emergency room, as this could be a sign of internal bleeding.

Headache symptoms that worsen over a 24-hour period should also prompt an individual to seek medical attention. Headaches with additional symptoms like trouble seeing or speaking, vomiting, neck stiffness, paralysis, and/or fever are also among those that should compel someone to seek immediate medical care.

Type 2 Diabetes More Aggressive among Young Patients

Serving the needs of Southern California patients, Zachary Lutsky, MD, most recently engaged as an attending physician with the Emergency Department at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Dr. Zachary Lutsky handled a wide range of emergencies, from heart attacks to shootings, and has a strong knowledge of general medicine.

With type 2 diabetes on the rise among young Americans, recent research has shown that diagnosis with the condition at an early age significantly elevates the mortality risks associated with stroke and heart disease.

According to the director of Montefiore Medical Center’s Clinical Diabetes Center in New York, type 2 diabetes is more aggressive when experienced among the young than when it targets the elderly.

This elevated impact is felt in areas such as inflammation, insulin resistance, and weight, all of which are associated with premature cardiovascular disease. In addition, it results in elevated lipotoxicity, or the unwanted buildup of cholesterol in areas of the body such as the kidneys, heart, and liver.

One area in which type 2 diabetes does not translate into increased risk seems to be cancer, with one reason being the slow initial rate of growth of such diseases, which are typically not diagnosed until the later years.

ER Screening for Women at Risk of Postpartum Depression Yields Results

An experienced emergency room physician, Dr. Zachary Lutsky most recently served in the Emergency Department of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. As part of his work, Dr. Zachary Lutsky remains apprised of developments in the emergency medicine field.

There are several challenges when it comes to diagnosing and treating postpartum depression, especially given the stigma that still surrounds the illness. One of the approaches that is gaining traction, however, is the use of emergency departments as safe spaces for mothers in these situations.

Recent research surrounding postpartum depression screenings in the ER led to the development of several treatment interventions within emergency departments, including connection with a trained social worker. Those who were shown to be a greater risk were also connected to clinical professionals such as psychiatrists. When later interviewed, the women who participated in the research overwhelmingly rated their screening experience as positive and pointed to it as an important part of their postpartum care.

Electrical Stimulation of the Brain May Improve Stroke Recovery

A skilled physician, Dr. Zachary Lutsky has been practicing medicine for over 15 years. He has focused his career in the area of Emergency Medicine, serving in the emergency departments of several hospitals. Working in the ER, Dr. Zachary Lutsky has worked with many patients who have suffered strokes.

After a stroke, only a third of patients recover completely. The remaining two-thirds suffer from either paralysis or movement problems that continue long after the stroke.

These movement issues cause difficulties for patients in the home and in the workplace. Fortunately, scientists from UC San Francisco are working to help patients with mobility issues.

A new study published in Nature Medicine looked at neural activity in rats and discovered that low-frequency oscillations (LFOs) were found in the rats’ brains before and during their actions of grabbing a food pellet. In humans, these LFOs help the neurons in the primary motor cortex fire, which allows humans to engage in voluntary movement.

After the rats suffered strokes, their LFO levels were reduced but gradually returned, and they recovered their ability to move precisely and quickly. This demonstrated a strong correlation between the re-emergence of LFOs and the recovery of mobility. Considering epilepsy patients who had suffered strokes and also had reduced LFOs, researchers believe electrical stimulation of the brain may help patients regain their motor functions more quickly following a stroke.

Knowing the Symptoms of Stroke Saves Lives

Dr. Zachary Lutsky earned his medical degree from the Chicago School of Medicine and completed his residency in emergency medicine at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. For over 12 years, Dr. Zachary Lutsky delivered medical care to trauma patients at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. 

Strokes are one of the leading causes of death and disability for Americans and one of the major reasons for emergency room visits. Obtaining fast medical attention is key to recovering from a stroke and preventing long-term damage. Fatalities due to strokes have decreased in recent years due to easier access to treatment centers and an effective awareness campaign launched by many stroke and heart health associations.

One campaign has popularized the acronym FAST (Face, Arms, Speech, Time) to help people remember and identify the early symptoms of stroke. FAST means that if you notice face drooping, weakness in the arms, or slurred speech, now is the time to call 911 and request medical help. Arriving at the hospital within three hours of the first signs of stroke greatly reduces a patient’s likelihood of developing stroke-related disabilities later on.

How ER Professionals Can Stay Calm in Stressful Situations

A graduate of Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University, Dr. Zachary Lutsky has spent more than two decades working as an emergency physician. Most recently working as an attending physician at the emergency department for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Dr. Zachary Lutsky handled every type of medical emergency, including heart attacks and car accident injuries.

Here are a couple of tips to help ER professionals stay calm when things get stressful:

- Be prepared for any situation. The more knowledge you have, the easier it is to stay calm. For this reason, ER professionals must be prepared for all kinds of different situations.

- Communicate. Communication in the emergency room is key to ensuring patients are properly cared for. Throughout an emergency, ER professionals are either listening or talking. This constant communication with patients, patients’ family members, and other hospital workers allows ER professionals to work as efficiently as possible.