Bacterial Conjunctivitis Treatment Experiment

Bacterial Conjunctivitis Treatment Experiment Introduction and Background Thanks to the wildly popular Judd Apatow hit â€Å"Knocked Up†, an alarming number of Americans believe that you can contract â€Å"pinkeye† (conjunctivitis) by farting into your pillow. Contrary to popular belief, simply passing gas is not enough to spread conjunctivitis. Conjunctivitis is categorized by the redness or swelling of the conjunctiva – the membrane that lines the eyelid and eye surface. This membrane is typically clear but when it is infected, it becomes red or pink and swells – thus, the common name â€Å"pinkeye† since the infected eye literally appears to be pink. 10 Common symptoms associated with conjunctivitis include eye redness (hyperemia), swollen or red eye lids, an excess of tearing, a burning or itching feeling in the eye, sensitivity to light (photophobia) and drainage from the eye. Conjunctivitis is common but not typically considered threatening – as it can disappear on its own in 7 to 10 days. However, particular strains of bacterial conjunctivitis – namely those caused by the sexually transmitted infections gonorrhea or Chlamydia – can very harmful.9 Most cases of conjunctivitis are caused by viruses or bacteria. However, dry eyes caused by lack of tears or over exposure to wind and sun, chemicals, fumes or smoke (known as chemical conjunctivitis) and allergies are also common culprits. The viral and bacterial forms of conjunctivitis are the contagious forms and subsequently, the most common. The majority of cases are caused by adenoviruses and can be attributed to poor hygiene (i.e. not washing your hands after using the restroom or poor care of contact lenses).10 Since there is no medication available to treat the viral form of conjunctivitis, patients are advised to avoid contact with others until symptoms begin to improve – which typically lasts three to five days. Bacterial conjunctivitis can be treated with a wide variety of antibioti cs including Levofloxacin, Vigamox Opht (Vigamox), Azasite Opht (Azasite) and Polymyxin B Sul-Trimethoprim Opht (Polytrim).5 Patients may return to usual activities such as work and school 24 hours after taking their first does of the prescribed antibiotic. To test and diagnose conjunctivitis, your primary care physician or optometrist can take a sample of eye secretions from the conjunctiva and send the sample to a laboratory for analysis. To prevent the spread of conjunctivitis – bacterial or viral – patients are advised to wash their hands often, to avoid sharing any form of eye make-up, to replace contacts with eye glasses if available and to wash all bed linens, pillowcases and towels with hot water and detergent. Bacterial Conjunctivitis Bacterial conjunctivitis is relatively less common than viral conjunctivitis, especially in adults.3 and essentially, despite having clinically suggestive signs and symptoms of bacterial conjunctivitis, the diagnosis can be incor rect in approximately 50% of cases. Further, bacteria that reside among the normal ocular flora can result in â€Å"false positives† when microbiologic tests are performed.3 This makes treatment of this form of conjunctivitis difficult. In fact, according to multiple studies, general practitioners are unable to determine whether conjunctivitis is bacterial or viral and therefore resort to prescribing antibiotics regardless. According to an article published in BMJ, when confronted with acute infectious conjunctivitis, most general practitioners feel unable to discriminate between a bacterial and a viral cause. In practice, more than 80% of such patients receive antibiotics.  Hence, in cases of acute infectious conjunctivitis, many unnecessary ocular antibiotics are prescribed.4 In 2001 in the Netherlands; more than 900,000 prescriptions for topical ocular antibiotics were issued, at a cost of  £8.85 million ($10.9 million). In England 3.4 million community prescriptions f or these antibiotics are issued each year, at a cost to the NHS of  £4.7 million ($7.1 million, $8.7 million).4

A Reaction to the Article Are Poor People Responsible for Their Own Essay - 4

A Reaction to the Article Are Poor People Responsible for Their Own Poverty - Essay Example Larzelere argues â€Å"Being poor was not a choice, it was a condition brought about by the people in power.† Upon examining the substance of their individual arguments at depth, I feel disposed to prefer the side that acknowledges the truth of poverty as perceived in reality where in general, due to a number of factors that influence our state of the economy, we may not plainly put the blame on the poor. Even if the poor may, to a certain extent, be observed weak in the ability to improve themselves in terms of economy, we ought to understand that they do not merely struggle with the financial aspect of living. Poor people find it difficult to gain inspiration from a depressed environment they dwell in for evidently, the strong presence of vices, crimes, violence, and other elements that threaten to ruin or degrade the quality of life in a society bears negative impact in their attitude toward personal growth. Moreover, we may not have them take the sole accountability of neg lecting to live with decent income and shelter for most of them are either those uneducated or those who receive but an inadequate amount of formal learning so that they barely have a proper way of determining suitable professional careers or of simply employing themselves to be resourceful and persevering in finding work that matches one’s set of skills. Jensen accuses the poor of being lazy, irresponsible, and unable to handle money and the tasks of every day yet on suggesting to remedy this situation â€Å"By developing work ethics and feeling some sense of pride and ownership of the money†, we may with high-pitched voice collectively ask, in return, how? How are these less fortunate citizens able to manage at least knowing what ‘work ethics’ is about if they do not have work in the first place and how can they be proud of monetary possession if the little money they have is immediately spent on basic necessities and nothing remains to be saved for the comfort of future living? Larzelere appears as rather one-sided in suspecting ‘people in power’ when it comes to the matter of significant control over the poor which keeps the latter from advancing to a higher level of self-net worth. I agree, however, to the writer’s biased stand because, in view of the actual occurrences, it seems more reasonable to catch red-handed those who are corrupt in their acquisition of considerable wages with tax anomalies than those who are paying taxes delinquently on the ground of working in an irregular basis.  

Chapter 4, 5 assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Chapter 4, 5 - Assignment Example The techniques used for this model are simple series moving averages and weighted moving averages where data from past periods are summed and divided by the number of time periods. The only difference between simple and weighted moving averages fall on more weights being placed on more recent data for the latter technique. Finally, the cause and effect model assumes that factors are related to demand and that relationships between cause and effect are used to estimate future demands. Techniques for this model are simple and multiple regressions where distinguishing factor depends on the number of variables. For simple, there is only one variable; while for multiple, the demand is dependent on more than one variable. The appropriate forecasting technique or model considers varying factors, to wit: current situation, time and funds available, and accuracy of the technique. As initially proffered, the judgmental approach is most appropriate for the introduction of new product were no historical data is available. For example, a global organization seeking to expand in a new market, with no previous experience, could use judgmental forecasting. Should the organization opt to conduct a survey to establish the possible demand for a new product, the company must consider time, money and efforts for doing so. Another forecasting issue is determining the accuracy of the forecast. For the analog technique, the company requires using a similar product or service to project the future demand of their own product. For example, a company planning to market bottled water uses the performance of a competitive product of the same qualities to establish demand. Some factors could be similar but the company must consider location of the target market, as well as other environmental factors that could influence demand. The following product characteristics influence packaging and materials handling: physical characteristics,