BACTERIA- FREE DIET -Presented by: Edith Umeh RN,BSN,CCRN [C8A]

• Simply avoid eating raw foods

• Proper hand washing before putting food in your mouth

• Fruits to avoid- any fruit you can eat with peeling such as: apples, grapes, pears, peaches and others, you have to wash it thoroughly or peel the skin off before eating.

• Avoid eating salads especially outside home or singly wash each leaves and other washable ingredients in your salad.

LEGAL INFORMATION: Advanced Directive -Presented by: Jessica Roehrick RN

What is an Advance Directive?

• Directive to the Physician: goes into effect only when you are no longer able to communicate and have an incurable, irreversible condition.

• Medical Power of Attorney: A document that allows you to appoint a person or persons to make health care decisions for him if he is unable to do for ANY reason,

• Out-of-Hospital “Do Not Resuscitate” (DNR) Order: no mechanical or chemical means will be used to resuscitate a person after his or her heart has stopped beating or breathing has ceased.

FAQS:

• A lawyer is not necessary to complete these documents.

• If you change your mind while hospitalized, your stated wishes always supercede an advanced directive.

• A person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment from a pregnant patient.

• Signed by 2 witnesses OR notarized.

• Under Texas law, if a physician believes that an appointed medical power of attorney is not making health care choices that are in the best interest of the patient, then the physician can challenge the treatment decisions by involving the hospital or facility administrator and/or the ethics committee of the facility.

• Does not have an effect on life insurance policies.

The Texas Health & Safety Code prioritizes the order of authority regarding life sustaining treatment in the event a written directive does not exist as follows:

• The patient's spouse

• The patient's reasonably available adult children

• The patient's parents

• The patient's nearest living relative

If there is no legal guarding and none of the above are available, then the decision may be made by the treating physician and a second physician who is not involved in the treatment of the patient or who is a representative of an ethics or medical committee of the health care facility in which the person is a patient.

GENE TEST DETECTS HEART TRANSPLANT REJECTION - Presented by Helene Lazar RN, BSN  

STUDY

A simple blood test may detect whether a chronic heart transplant patient is rejecting their heart, and may reduce the need for invasive heart-muscle biopsies, according to the results of a multi-center study called: CARGO (Cardiac Allograft Rejection Gene Expression Observational Study)  

- led by NewYork Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Medical Center and to be published in 'The American Journal of Transplantation." (The study is now available online)    

ALLO-MAP

• The gene-expression test, called AlloMap

• It was developed in partnership with XDx, a molecular diagnostics company in South San Francisco, CA, and using data from more than 600 patients

• The test presents a snapshot of the immune status of the transplanted heart recipient

  • this snapshot represents a profile of 20 genes representing molecular pathways in white blood cells that were found to be associated with heart transplant (allograft) rejection, and control genes.

  • AlloMap test in this study appeared to distinguish patients who were rejecting their heart from those who were not.

  • patients with a low AlloMap score had a less than one percent chance of rejection

CONCLUSION

• AlloMap test is a non-invasive, objective measurement of molecular signals in the blood that could detect the rejection process before damage occurs.

• AlloMap test will be used for patients one year post transplant.