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IntroductionLa Peste How do you get ventolin (Camus 1947) has served as a basis for several critical works, including some in the field of medical is it better to take cialis on an empty stomach humanities (Bozzaro 2018. Deudon 1988. Tuffuor and Payne is it better to take cialis on an empty stomach 2017). Frequently interpreted as an allegory of Nazism (with the plague as a symbol of the German occupation of France) (Finel-Honigman 1978.

Haroutunian 1964), it has also received philosophical readings beyond the sociopolitical context in which it was written (Lengers 1994). Other scholars, on is it better to take cialis on an empty stomach the other hand, have centred their analyses on its literary aspects (Steel 2016).The erectile dysfunction treatment cialis has increased general interest about historical and fictional epidemics. La Peste, as one of the most famous literary works about this topic, has been revisited by many readers during recent months, leading to an unexpected growth in sales in certain countries (Wilsher 2020. Zaretsky 2020).

Apart from that, commentaries about the novel, especially among health sciences scholars, have emerged is it better to take cialis on an empty stomach with a renewed interest (Banerjee et al. 2020. Bate 2020. Vandekerckhove 2020 is it better to take cialis on an empty stomach.

Wigand, Becker, and Steger 2020). This sudden curiosity is easy to understand if we consider both La Peste’s literary value, and people’s desire to discover real or fictional situations similar to theirs. Indeed, Oran inhabitants’ experiences are not quite far from our own, even if geographical, chronological and, specially, scientific factors (two different diseases occurring at two different stages in the history of medical development) prevent us from establishing too close resemblances between both situations.Furthermore, it will not be strange if erectile dysfunction treatment serves as a frame is it better to take cialis on an empty stomach for fictional works in the near future. Other narrative plays were based on historical epidemics, such as Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year or Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (Wigand, Becker, and Steger 2020.

Withington 2020). The biggest cialis in the last century, the so-called ‘Spanish Influenza’, has been described as not very fruitful in this sense, even if it produced famous novels such as is it better to take cialis on an empty stomach Katherine A Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider or John O’Hara’s The Doctor Son (Honigsbaum 2018. Hovanec 2011). The overlapping with another disaster like World War I has been argued as one of the reasons explaining this scarce production of fictional works (Honigsbaum 2018).

By contrast, is it better to take cialis on an empty stomach we may think that erectile dysfunction treatment is having a global impact hardly overshadowed by other events, and that it will leave a significant mark on the collective memory.Drawing on the reading of La Peste, we point out in this essay different aspects of living under an epidemic that can be identified both in Camus’s work and in our current situation. We propose a trip throughout the novel, from its early beginning in Part I, when the Oranians are not aware of the threat to come, to its end in Part V, when they are relieved of the epidemic after several months of ravaging disasters.We think this journey along La Peste may be interesting both to health professionals and to the lay person, since all of them will be able to see themselves reflected in the characters from the novel. We do not skip critique of some aspects related to the authorities’ management of erectile dysfunction treatment, as Camus does concerning Oran’s rulers. However, what we want to foreground is La Peste’s intrinsic value, its suitability to is it better to take cialis on an empty stomach be read now and after erectile dysfunction treatment has passed, when Camus’s novel endures as a solid art work and erectile dysfunction treatment remains only as a defeated plight.MethodsWe confronted our own experiences about erectile dysfunction treatment with a conventional reading of La Peste.

A first reading of the novel was used to establish associations between those aspects which more saliently reminded us of erectile dysfunction treatment. In a second reading, we searched for some examples to illustrate those aspects and tried to detect new associations. Subsequent readings of certain parts is it better to take cialis on an empty stomach were done to integrate the information collected. Neither specific methods of literary analysis, nor systematic searches in the novel were applied.

Selected paragraphs and ideas from Part I to Part V were prepared in a draft copy, and this manuscript was written afterwards.Part ISome phrases in the novel could be transposed word by word to our situation. This one pertaining to its start, for instance, may make us remember the first months of 2020:By now, it will be easy to accept that nothing could lead the people of is it better to take cialis on an empty stomach our town to expect the events that took place in the spring of that year and which, as we later understood, were like the forerunners of the series of grave happenings that this history intends to describe. (Camus 2002, Part I)By referring from the beginning to ‘the people of our town’, Camus is already suggesting an idea which is repeated all along the novel, and which may be well understood by us as erectile dysfunction treatment’s witnesses. Epidemics affect the community as a whole, they are present in everybody’s mind and their joys and sorrows are not individual, but collective.

For example (and we are anticipating Part II), the narrator says:But, once the is it better to take cialis on an empty stomach gates were closed, they all noticed that they were in the same boat, including the narrator himself, and that they had to adjust to the fact. (Camus 2002, Part II)Later, he will insist in this opposition between the concepts of ‘individual’, which used to prevail before the epidemic, and ‘collective’:One might say that the first effect of this sudden and brutal attack of the disease was to force the citizens of our town to act as though they had no individual feelings. (Camus 2002, Part II)There were no longer any individual destinies, but a collective history that was the plague, and feelings shared by all. (Camus 2002, Part III)This distinction is it better to take cialis on an empty stomach is not trivial, since the story will display a strong confrontation between those who get involved and help their neighbours and those who remain behaving selfishly.

Related to this, Claudia Bozzaro has pointed out that the main topic in La Peste is solidarity and auistic love (Bozzaro 2018). We may add that the disease is so attached to people’s lives that the epidemic becomes the new everyday life:In the morning, they would return to the pestilence, that is to say, to routine. (Camus 2002, Part III)Being collective issues does not mean that epidemics always enhance auism and is it better to take cialis on an empty stomach solidarity. As said by Wigand et al, they frequently produce ambivalent reactions, and one of them is the opposition between auism and maximised profit (Wigand, Becker, and Steger 2020).

Therefore, the dichotomy between individualism and collectivism, a central point in the characterisation of national cultures (Hofstede 2015), could play a role in epidemics. In fact, is it better to take cialis on an empty stomach concerning erectile dysfunction treatment, some authors have described a greater impact of the cialis in those countries with higher levels of individualism (Maaravi et al. 2021. Ozkan et al.

2021). However, this finding should be complemented with other national cultures’ aspects before concluding that collectivism itself exerts a protective role against epidemics. Concerning this, it has been shown how ‘power distance’ frequently intersects with collectivism, being only a few countries in which the last one coexists with a small distance to power, namely with a capacity to disobey the power authority (Gupta, Shoja, and Mikalef 2021). Moreover, those countries classically classified as ‘collectivist’ (China, Japan, South Korea, India, Vietnam, etc.) are also characterised by high levels of power distance, and their citizens have been quite often forced to adhere to erectile dysfunction treatment restrictions and punished if not (Gupta, Shoja, and Mikalef 2021).

Thus, it is important to consider that individualism is not always opposed to ‘look after each other’ (Ozkan et al. 2021, 9). For instance, the European region, seen as a whole as highly ‘individualistic’, holds some of the most advanced welfare protection systems worldwide. It is worth considering too that collectivism may hide sometimes a hard institutional authority or a lack in civil freedoms.Coming back to La Peste, we may think that Camus’s Oranians are not particularly ‘collectivist’.

Their initial description highlights that they are mainly interested in their own businesses and affairs:Our fellow-citizens work a good deal, but always in order to make money. They are especially interested in trade and first of all, as they say, they are engaged in doing business. (Camus 2002, Part I)And later, we see some of them trying selfishly to leave the city by illegal methods. By contrast, we observe in the novel some examples of more ‘collectivistic’ attitudes, such as the discipline of those quarantined at the football pitch, and, over all, the main characters’ behaviour, which is generally driven by auism and common goals.Turning to another topic, the plague in Oran and erectile dysfunction treatment are similar regarding their animal origin.

This is not rare since many infectious diseases pass to humans through contact with animal vectors, being rodents, especially rats (through rat fleas), the most common carriers of plague bacteria (CDC. N.d.a, ECDC. N.d, Pollitzer 1954). Concerning erectile dysfunction, even if further research about its origin is needed, the most recent investigations conducted in China by the WHO establish a zoonotic transmission as the most probable pathway (Joint WHO-China Study Team 2021).

In Camus’s novel, the animal’s link to the epidemic seemed very clear since the beginning:Things got to the point where Infodoc (the agency for information and documentation, ‘ all you need to know on any subject’) announced in its free radio news programme that 6,231 rats had been collected and burned in a single day, the 25th. This figure, which gave a clear meaning to the daily spectacle that everyone in town had in front of their eyes, disconcerted them even more. (Camus 2002, Part I)This accuracy in figures is familiar to us. People nowadays have become very used to the statistical aspects of the cialis, due to the continuous updates in epidemiological parameters launched by the media and the authorities.

Camus was aware about the relevance of figures in epidemics, which always entail:…required registration and statistical tasks. (Camus 2002, Part II)Because of this, the novel is scattered with numbers, most of them concerning the daily death toll, but others mentioning the number of rats picked up, as we have seen, or combining the number of deaths with the time passed since the start of the epidemic:“ Will there be an autumn of plague?. Professor B answers. €˜ No’ ”, “ One hundred and twenty-four dead.

The total for the ninety-fourth day of the plague.” (Camus 2002, Part II)We permit ourselves to introduce here a list of recurring topics in La Peste, since the salience of statistical information is one of them. These topics, some of which will be treated later, appear several times in the novel, in various contexts and stages in the evolution of the epidemic. We synthesise them in Table 1, coupled with a erectile dysfunction treatment parallel example extracted from online press. This ease to find a current example for each topic suggests that they are not exclusive of plague or of Camus’s mindset, but shared by most epidemics.View this table:Table 1 Recurring topics in La Peste.

Each topic is accompanied by two examples from the novel and one concerning erectile dysfunction treatment, extracted from online press.Talking about journalism and the media (one of the topics above), we might say that erectile dysfunction treatment’s coverage is frequently too optimistic when managing good news and too alarming when approaching the bad. Media’s ‘exaggerated’ approach to health issues is not new. It was already a concern for medical journals’ editors a century ago (Reiling 2013) and it continues to be it for these professionals in recent times (Barbour et al. 2008).

It is well known that media tries to attract spectators’ attention by making the news more appealing. However, they deal with the risk of expanding unreliable information, which may be pernicious for the public opinion. Related to the intention of ‘garnishing’ the news, Aslam et al. (2020) have described that 82% of more than 100 000 pieces of information about erectile dysfunction treatment appearing in media from different countries carried an emotional, either negative (52%) or positive (30%) component, with only 18% of them considered as ‘neutral’ (Aslam et al.

2020). Some evidence about this tendency to make news more emotional was described in former epidemics. For instance, a study conducted in Singapore in 2009 during the H1N1 crisis showed how press releases by the Ministry of Health were substantially transformed when passed to the media, by increasing their emotional appeal and by changing their dominant frame or their tone (Lee and Basnyat 2013). In La Peste, this superficial way of managing information by the media is also observed:The newspapers followed the order that they had been given, to be optimistic at any cost.

(Camus 2002, Part IV)At the first stages of the epidemic in Oran, journalists proclaim the end of the dead rats’ invasion as something to be celebrated. Dr Rieux, the character through which Camus symbolises caution (and comparable nowadays to trustful scientists, well-informed journalists or sensible authorities), exposes then his own angle, quite far from suggesting optimism:The vendors of the evening papers were shouting that the invasion of rats had ended. But Rieux found his patient lying half out of bed, one hand on his belly and the other around his neck, convulsively vomiting reddish bile into a rubbish bin. (Camus 2002, Part I)Camus, who worked as a journalist for many years, insists afterwards on this cursory interest that some media devote to the epidemic, more eager to grab the noise than the relevant issues beneath it:The press, which had had so much to say about the business of the rats, fell silent.

This is because rats die in the street and people in their bedrooms. And newspapers are only concerned with the street. (Camus 2002, Part I)By then, Oranians continue rejecting the epidemic as an actual threat, completely immersed in that phase that dominates the beginning of all epidemics and is characterised by ‘denial and disbelief’ (Wigand, Becker, and Steger 2020, 443):A pestilence does not have human dimensions, so people tell themselves that it is unreal, that it is a bad dream which will end. […] The people of our town were no more guilty than anyone else, they merely forgot to be modest and thought that everything was still possible for them, which implied that pestilence was impossible.

They continued with business, with making arrangements for travel and holding opinions. Why should they have thought about the plague, which negates the future, negates journeys and debate?. They considered themselves free and no one will ever be free as long as there is plague, pestilence and famine. (Camus 2002, Part I)Probably to avoid citizens' disapproval, among other reasons, the Oranian Prefecture (health authority in Camus' novel) does not want to go too far when judging the relevance of the epidemic.

While not directly exposed, we can guess in this fragment the tone of the Prefect’s message, his intention to convey confidence despite his own doubts:These cases were not specific enough to be really disturbing and there was no doubt that the population would remain calm. None the less, for reasons of caution which everyone could understand, the Prefect was taking some preventive measures. If they were interpreted and applied in the proper way, these measures were such that they would put a definite stop to any threat of epidemic. As a result, the Prefect did not for a moment doubt that the citizens under his charge would co-operate in the most zealous manner with what he was doing.

(Camus 2002, Part I)The relevant role acquired by health authorities during epidemics is another topic listed in our table. Language use, on the other hand, is an issue linkable both with the media topic and with this one. As in La Peste, during erectile dysfunction treatment we have seen some public figures using words not always truthfully, carrying out a careful selection of words that serves to the goal of conveying certain interests in each moment. Dr Rieux refers in Part I to this language manipulation by the authorities:The measures that had been taken were insufficient, that was quite clear.

As for the ‘ specially equipped wards’, he knew what they were. Two outbuildings hastily cleared of other patients, their windows sealed up and the whole surrounded by a cordon sanitaire. (Camus 2002, Part I)He illustrates the need of frankness, the preference for clarity in language, which is often the clarity in thinking:No. I phoned Richard to say we needed comprehensive measures, not fine words, and that either we must set up a real barrier to the epidemic, or nothing at all.

(Camus 2002, Part I)At the end of this part, his fears about the inadequacy of not taking strict measures are confirmed. Oranian hospitals become overwhelmed, as they are now in many places worldwide due to erectile dysfunction treatment.Part IILeft behind the phases of ‘denial and disbelief’ and of ‘fear and panic’, it appears among the Oranians the ‘acceptance paired with resignation’ (Wigand, Becker, and Steger 2020, 443):Then we knew that our separation was going to last, and that we ought to try to come to terms with time. […] In particular, all of the people in our town very soon gave up, even in public, whatever habit they may have acquired of estimating the length of their separation. (Camus 2002, Part II)In erectile dysfunction treatment as well, even if border closure has not been so immovable as in Oran, many people have seen themselves separated from their loved ones and some of them have not yet had the possibility of reunion.

This is why, in the actual cialis, the idea of temporal horizons has emerged like it appeared in Camus’s epidemic. In Spain, the general lockdown in March and April 2020 made people establish the summer as their temporal horizon, a time in which they could resume their former habits and see their relatives again. This became partially true, and people were allowed in summer to travel inside the country and to some other countries nearby. However, there existed some reluctance to visit ill or aged relatives, due to the fear of infecting them, and some families living in distant countries were not able to get together.

Moreover, autumn brought an increase in the number of cases (‘the second wave’) and countries returned to limit their internal and external movements.Bringing all this together, many people nowadays have opted to discard temporal horizons. As Oranians, they have noted that the epidemic follows its own rhythm and it is useless to fight against it. Nonetheless, it is in human nature not to resign, so abandoning temporal horizons does not mean to give up longing for the recovery of normal life. This vision, neither maintaining vain hopes nor resigning, is in line with Camus’s philosophy, an author who wrote that ‘hope, contrary to what it is usually thought, is the same to resignation.’ (Camus 1939, 83.

Cited by Haroutunian 1964, 312 (translation is ours)), and that ‘there is not love to human life but with despair about human life.’ (Camus 1958, 112–5. Cited by Haroutunian 1964, 312–3 (translation is ours)).People nowadays deal with resignation relying on daily life pleasures (being not allowed to make further plans or trips) and in company from the nearest ones (as they cannot gather with relatives living far away). Second, they observe the beginning of vaccination campaigns as a first step of the final stage, and summer 2021, reflecting what happened with summer 2020, has been fixed as a temporal horizon. This preference for summers has an unavoidable metaphorical nuance, and their linking to joy, long trips and life in the streets may be the reason for which we choose them to be opposed to the lockdown and restrictions of the cialis.We alluded previously to the manipulation of language, and figures, as relevant as they are, they are not free from manipulation either.

Tarrou, a close friend to Dr Rieux, points out in this part of the novel how this occurred:Once more, Tarrou was the person who gave the most accurate picture of our life as it was then. Naturally he was following the course of the plague in general, accurately observing that a turning point in the epidemic was marked by the radio no longer announcing some hundreds of deaths per week, but 92, 107 and 120 deaths a day. €˜The newspapers and the authorities are engaged in a battle of wits with the plague. They think that they are scoring points against it, because 130 is a lower figure than 910.’ (Camus 2002, Part II)Tarrou collaborates with the health teams formed to tackle the plague.

Regarding these volunteers and workers, Camus refuses to consider them as heroes, as many essential workers during erectile dysfunction treatment have rejected to be named as that. The writer thinks their actions are the natural behaviour of good people, not heroism but ‘a logical consequence’:The whole question was to prevent the largest possible number of people from dying and suffering a definitive separation. There was only one way to do this, which was to fight the plague. There was nothing admirable about this truth, it simply followed as a logical consequence.

(Camus 2002, Part II)We consider suitable to talk here about two issues which represent, nowadays, a great part of erectile dysfunction treatment fears and hopes, respectively. New genetic variants and treatments. Medical achievements are another recurrent issue included in table 1, and we write about them here because it is in Part II where Camus writes for the first time about treatments, and where it insists on an idea aforementioned in Part I. That the plague bacillus affecting Oran is different from previous variants:…the microbe differed very slightly from the bacillus of plague as traditionally defined.

(Camus 2002, Part II)Related to erectile dysfunction treatment new variants, they represent a challenge because of two main reasons. Their higher transmissibility and/or severity and their higher propensity to skip the effect of natural or treatment-induced immunity. Public health professionals are determining which is the actual threat of all the new variants discovered, such as those first characterised in the UK (Public Health England 2020), South Africa (Tegally et al. 2021) or Brazil (Fujino et al.

2021). In La Peste, Dr Rieux is always suspecting that the current bacteria they are dealing with is different from the one in previous epidemics of plague. Since several genetic variations for the bacillus Yersinia pestis have been characterised (Cui et al. 2012), it could be possible that the epidemic in Oran originated from a new one.

However, we should not forget that we are analysing a literary work, and that scientific accuracy is not a necessary goal in it. In fact, Rieux’s reluctances have to do more with clinical aspects than with microbiological ones. He doubts since the beginning, relying exclusively on the symptoms observed, and continues doing it after the laboratory analysis:I was able to have an analysis made in which the laboratory thinks it can detect the plague bacillus. However, to be precise, we must say that certain specific modifications of the microbe do not coincide with the classic description of plague.

(Camus 2002, Part II)Camus is consistent with this idea and many times he mentions the bacillus to highlight its oddity. Insisting on the literary condition of the work, and among other possible explanations, he is maybe declaring that that in the novel is not a common (biological, natural) bacteria, but the Nazism bacteria.Turning to treatments, they constitute the principal resource that the global community has to defeat the erectile dysfunction treatment cialis. Vaccination campaigns have started all over the world, and three types of erectile dysfunction treatments are being applied in the European Union, after their respective statements of efficacy and security (Baden et al. 2021.

Polack et al. 2020. Voysey et al. 2021), while a fourth treatment has just recently been approved (EMA 2021a).

Although some concerns regarding the safety of two of these treatments have been raised recently (EMA 2021b. EMA 2021c), vaccination plans are going ahead, being adapted according to the state of knowledge at each moment. Some of these treatments are mRNA-based (Baden et al. 2021.

Polack et al. 2020), while others use a viral vector (Bos et al. 2020. Voysey et al.

2021). They are mainly two-shot treatments, with one exception (Bos et al. 2020), and complete immunity is thought to be acquired 2 weeks after the last shot (CDC. N.d.b, Voysey et al.

2021). Other countries such as China or Russia, on the other hand, were extremely early in starting their vaccination campaigns, and are distributing among their citizens different treatments than the aforementioned (Logunov et al. 2021. Zhang et al.

2021).Even if at least three types of plague treatments had been created by the time the novel takes place (Sun 2016), treatments do not play an important role in La Peste, in which therapeutic measures (the serum) are more important than prophylactic ones. Few times in the novel the narrator refers to prophylactic inoculations:There was still no possibility of vaccinating with preventive serum except in families already affected by the disease. (Camus 2002, Part II)Deudon has pointed out that Camus mixes up therapeutic serum and treatment (Deudon 1988), and in fact there exists a certain amount of confusion. All along the novel, the narrator focuses on the prophylactic goals of the serum, which is applied to people already infected (Othon’s son, Tarrou, Grand…).

However, both in the example above (which can be understood as vaccinating household contacts or already affected individuals) and in others, the differences between treating and vaccinating are not clear:After the morning admissions which he was in charge of himself, the patients were vaccinated and the swellings lanced. (Camus 2002, Part II)In any case, this is another situation in which Camus stands aside from scientific matters, which are to him less relevant in his novel than philosophical or literary ones. The distance existing between the relevance of treatments in erectile dysfunction treatment and the superficial manner with which Camus treats the topic in La Peste exemplifies this.Part IIIIn part III, the plague’s ravages become tougher. The narrator turns his focus to burials and their disturbance, a frequent topic in epidemics’ narrative (table 1).

Camus knew how acutely increasing demands and hygienic requirements affect funeral habits during epidemics:Everything really happened with the greatest speed and the minimum of risk. (Camus 2002, Part III)Like many other processes during epidemics, the burial process becomes a protocol. When protocolised, everything seems to work well and rapidly. But this perfect mechanism is the Prefecture’s goal, not Rieux’s.

He reveals in this moment an aspect in his character barely shown before. Irony.The whole thing was well organized and the Prefect expressed his satisfaction. He even told Rieux that, when all was said and done, this was preferable to hearses driven by black slaves which one read about in the chronicles of earlier plagues. €˜ Yes,’ Rieux said.

€˜ The burial is the same, but we keep a card index. No one can deny that we have made progress.’ (Camus 2002, Part III)Even if this characteristic may seem new in Dr Rieux, we must bear in mind that he is the story narrator, and the narration is ironic from time to time. For instance, speaking precisely about the burials:The relatives were invited to sign a register –which just showed the difference that there may be between men and, for example, dogs. You can keep check of human beings-.

(Camus 2002, Part III)In Camus’s philosophy, the absurd is a core issue. According to Lengers, Rieux is ironic because he is a kind of Sisyphus who has understood the absurdity of plague (Lengers 1994). The response to the absurd is to rebel (Camus 2013), and Rieux does it by helping his fellow humans without questioning anything. He does not pursue any other goal than doing his duty, thus humour (as a response to dire situations) stands out from him when he observes others celebrating irrelevant achievements, such as the Prefect with his burial protocol.

In the field of medical ethics, Lengers has highlighted the importance of Camus’s perspective when considering ‘the immediacy of life rather than abstract values’ (Lengers 1994, 250). Rieux himself is quite sure that his solid commitment is not ‘abstract’, and, even if he falls into abstraction, the importance relies on protecting human lives and not in the name given to that task:Was it truly an abstraction, spending his days in the hospital where the plague was working overtime, bringing the number of victims up to five hundred on average per week?. Yes, there was an element of abstraction and unreality in misfortune. But when an abstraction starts to kill you, you have to get to work on it.

(Camus 2002, Part II)Farewells during erectile dysfunction treatment may have not been particularly pleasant for some families. Neither those dying at nursing homes nor in hospitals could be accompanied by their families as previously, due to corpses management protocols, restrictions of external visitors and hygienic measures in general. However, as weeks passed by, certain efforts were made to ease this issue, allowing people to visit their dying beloved sticking to strict preventive measures. On the other hand, the number of people attending funeral masses and cemeteries was also limited, which affected the conventional development of ceremonies as well.

Hospitals had to deal with daily tolls of deaths never seen before, and the overcrowding of mortuaries made us see rows of coffins placed in unusual spaces, such as ice rinks (transformation of facilities is another topic in table 1).We turn now to two other points which erectile dysfunction treatment has not evaded. s among essential workers and epidemics’ economic consequences. The author links burials with s among essential workers because gravediggers constitute one of the most affected professions, and connects this fact with the economic recession because unemployment is behind the large availability of workers to replace the dead gravediggers:Many of the male nurses and the gravediggers, who were at first official, then casual, died of the plague. […] The most surprising thing was that there was never a shortage of men to do the job, for as long as the epidemic lasted.

[…] When the plague really took hold of the town, its very immoderation had one quite convenient outcome, because it disrupted the whole of economic life and so created quite a large number of unemployed. […] Poverty always triumphed over fear, to the extent that work was always paid according to the risk involved. (Camus 2002, Part III)The effects of the plague over the economic system are one of our recurrent topics (table 1). The plague in Oran, as it forces to close the city, impacts all trading exchanges.

In addition, it forbids travellers from arriving to the city, with the economic influence that that entails:This plague was the ruination of tourism. (Camus 2002, Part II)Oranians, who, as we saw, were very worried about making money, are especially affected by an event which jeopardises it. In erectile dysfunction treatment, for one reason or for another, most of the countries are suffering economic consequences, since the impact on normal life from the epidemic (another recurrent topic) means also an impact on the normal development of trading activities.Part IVIn Part IV we witness the first signals of a stabilisation of the epidemic:It seemed that the plague had settled comfortably into its peak and was carrying out its daily murders with the precision and regularity of a good civil servant. In theory, in the opinion of experts, this was a good sign.

The graph of the progress of the plague, starting with its constant rise, followed by this long plateau, seemed quite reassuring. (Camus 2002, Part IV)At this time, we consider interesting to expand the topic about the transformation of facilities. We mentioned the case of ice rinks during erectile dysfunction treatment, and we bring up now the use of a football pitch as a quarantine camp in Camus’s novel, a scene which has reminded some scholars of the metaphor of Nazism and concentration camps (Finel-Honigman 1978). In Spain, among other measures, a fairground was enabled as a field hospital during the first wave, and it is plausible that many devices created with other purposes were used in tasks attached to healthcare provision during those weeks, as occurred in Oran’s pitch with the loudspeakers:Then the loudspeakers, which in better times had served to introduce the teams or to declare the results of games, announced in a tinny voice that the internees should go back to their tents so that the evening meal could be distributed.

(Camus 2002, Part IV)Related to this episode, we can also highlight the opposition between science and humanism that Camus does. The author alerts us about the dangers of a dehumanised science, of choosing procedures perfectly efficient regardless of their lack in human dignity:The men held out their hands, two ladles were plunged into two of the pots and emerged to unload their contents onto two tin plates. The car drove on and the process was repeated at the next tent.‘ It’s scientific,’ Tarrou told the administrator.‘ Yes,’ he replied with satisfaction, as they shook hands. €˜ It’s scientific.’ (Camus 2002, Part IV)Several cases with favourable outcomes mark Part IV final moments and prepare the reader for the end of the epidemic.

To describe these signs of recovering, the narrator turns back to two elements with a main role in the novel. Rats and figures. In this moment, the first ones reappear and the second ones seem to be declining:He had seen two live rats come into his house through the street door. Neighbours had informed him that the creatures were also reappearing in their houses.

Behind the walls of other houses there was a hustle and bustle that had not been heard for months. Rieux waited for the general statistics to be published, as they were at the start of each week. They showed a decline in the disease. (Camus 2002, Part IV)Part VGiven that we continue facing erectile dysfunction treatment, and that forecasts about its end are not easy, we cannot compare ourselves with the Oranians once they have reached the end of the epidemic, what occurs in this part.

However, we can analyse our current situation, characterised by a widespread, though cautious, confidence motivated by the beginning of vaccination campaigns, referring it to the events narrated in Part V.Even more than the Oranians, since we feel further than them from the end of the problem, we are cautious about not to anticipate celebrations. From time to time, however, we lend ourselves to dream relying on what the narrator calls ‘a great, unadmitted hope’. erectile dysfunction treatment took us by surprise and everyone wants to ‘reorganise’ their life, as Oranians do, but patience is an indispensable component to succeed, as fictional and historical epidemics show us.Although this sudden decline in the disease was unexpected, the towns-people were in no hurry to celebrate. The preceding months, though they had increased the desire for liberation, had also taught them prudence and accustomed them to count less and less on a rapid end to the epidemic.

However, this new development was the subject of every conversation and, in the depths of people’s hearts, there was a great, unadmitted hope. […] One of the signs that a return to a time of good health was secretly expected (though no one admitted the fact) was that from this moment on people readily spoke, with apparent indifference, about how life would be reorganized after the plague. (Camus 2002, Part V)We put our hope on vaccination. Social distancing and other hygienic measures have proved to be effective, but treatments would bring us a more durable solution without compromising so hardly many economic activities and social habits.

As we said, a more important role of scientific aspects is observed in erectile dysfunction treatment if compared with La Peste (an expected fact if considered that Camus’s story is an artistic work, that he skips sometimes the most complex scientific issues of the plague and that health sciences have evolved substantially during last decades). Oranians, in fact, achieve the end of the epidemic not through clearly identified scientific responses but with certain randomness:All one could do was to observe that the sickness seemed to be going as it had arrived. The strategy being used against it had not changed. It had been ineffective yesterday, and now it was apparently successful.

One merely had the feeling that the disease had exhausted itself, or perhaps that it was retiring after achieving all its objectives. In a sense, its role was completed. (Camus 2002, Part V)They receive the announcement made by the Prefecture of reopening the town’s gates in 2 weeks time with enthusiasm. Dealing with concrete dates gives them certainty, helps them fix the temporal horizons we wrote about.

This is also the case when they are told that preventive measures would be lifted in 1 month. Camus shows us then how the main characters are touched as well by this positive atmosphere:That evening Tarrou and Rieux, Rambert and the rest, walked in the midst of the crowd, and they too felt they were treading on air. Long after leaving the boulevards Tarrou and Rieux could still hear the sounds of happiness following them… (Camus 2002, Part V)Then, Tarrou points out a sign of recovery coming from the animal world. In a direct zoological chain, infected fleas have vanished from rats, which have been able again to multiply across the city, making the cats abandon their hiding places and to go hunting after them again.

At the final step of this chain, Tarrou sees the human being. He remembers the old man who used to spit to the cats beneath his window:At a time when the noise grew louder and more joyful, Tarrou stopped. A shape was running lightly across the dark street. It was a cat, the first that had been seen since the spring.

It stopped for a moment in the middle of the road, hesitated, licked its paw, quickly passed it across its right ear, then carried on its silent way and vanished into the night. Tarrou smiled. The little old man, too, would be happy. (Camus 2002, Part V)Unpleasant things as a town with rats running across its streets, or a man spending his time spitting on a group of cats, constitute normality as much as the reopening of gates or the reboot of commerce.

However, when Camus speaks directly about normality, he highlights more appealing habits. He proposes common leisure activities (restaurants, theatres) as symbols of human life, since he opposes them to Cottard’s life, which has become that of a ‘wild animal’:At least in appearance he [ Cottard ] retired from the world and from one day to the next started to live like a wild animal. He no longer appeared in restaurants, at the theatre or in his favourite cafés. (Camus 2002, Part V)We do not disclose why Cottard’s reaction to the end of the epidemic is different from most of the Oranians’.

In any case, the narrator insists later on the assimilation between common pleasures and normality:‘ Perhaps,’ Cottard said, ‘ Perhaps so. But what do you call a return to normal life?. €™ ‘ New films in the cinema,’ said Tarrou with a smile. (Camus 2002, Part V)Cinema, as well as theatre, live music and many other cultural events have been cancelled or obliged to modify their activities due to erectile dysfunction treatment.

Several bars and restaurants have closed, and spending time in those who remain open has become an activity which many people tend to avoid, fearing contagion. Thus, normality in our understanding is linked as well to these simple and pleasant habits, and the complete achievement of them will probably signify for us the desired defeat of the cialis.In La Peste, love is also seen as a simple good to be fully recovered after the plague. While Rieux goes through the ‘reborn’ Oran, it is lovers’ gatherings what he highlights. Unlike them, everyone who, during the epidemic, sought for goals different from love (such as faith or money, for instance) remain lost when the epidemic has ended:For all the people who, on the contrary, had looked beyond man to something that they could not even imagine, there had been no reply.

(Camus 2002, Part V)And this is because lovers, as the narrator says:If they had found that they wanted, it was because they had asked for the only thing that depended on them. (Camus 2002, Part V)We have spoken before about language manipulation, hypocrisy and public figures’ roles during epidemics. Camus, during Dr Rieux’s last visit to the old asthmatic man, makes this frank and humble character criticise, with a point of irony, the authorities’ attitude concerning tributes to the dead:‘ Tell me, doctor, is it true that they’re going to put up a monument to the victims of the plague?. €™â€˜ So the papers say.

A pillar or a plaque.’‘ I knew it!. And there’ll be speeches.’The old man gave a strangled laugh.‘ I can hear them already. €œ Our dead…” Then they’ll go and have dinner.’ (Camus 2002, Part V)The old man illustrates wisely the authorities’ propensity for making speeches. He knows that most of them usually prefer grandiloquence rather than common words, and seizes perfectly their tone when he imitates them (‘Our dead…’).

We have also got used, during erectile dysfunction treatment, to these types of messages. We have also heard about ‘our old people’, ‘our youth’, ‘our essential workers’ and even ‘our dead’. Behind this tone, however, there could be an intention to hide errors, or to falsely convey carefulness. Honest rulers do not usually need nice words.

They just want them to be accurate.We have seen as well some tributes to the victims during erectile dysfunction treatment, some of which we can doubt whether they serve to victims’ relief or to authorities’ promotion. We want rulers to be less aware of their own image and to stress truthfulness as a goal, even if this is a hard requirement not only for them, but for every single person. Language is essential in this issue, we think, since it is prone to be twisted and to become untrue. The old asthmatic man illustrates it with his ‘There’ll be speeches’ and his ‘Our dead…’, but this is not the only time in the novel in which Camus brings out the topic.

For instance, he does so when he equates silence (nothing can be thought as further from wordiness) with truth:It is at the moment of misfortune that one becomes accustomed to truth, that is to say to silence. (Camus 2002, Part II)or when he makes a solid statement against false words:…I understood that all the misfortunes of mankind came from not stating things in clear terms. (Camus 2002, Part IV)The old asthmatic, in fact, while praising the deceased Tarrou, remarks that he used to admire him because ‘he didn’t talk just for the sake of it.’ (Camus 2002, Part V).Related to this topic, what the old asthmatic says about political authorities may be transposed in our case to other public figures, such as scholars and researchers, media leaders, businessmen and women, health professionals… and, if we extend the scope, to every single citizen. Because hypocrisy, language manipulation and the fact of putting individual interests ahead of collective welfare fit badly with collective issues such as epidemics.

Hopefully, also examples to the contrary have been observed during erectile dysfunction treatment.The story ends with the fireworks in Oran and the depiction of Dr Rieux’s last feelings. While he is satisfied because of his medical performance and his activity as a witness of the plague, he is concerned about future disasters to come. When erectile dysfunction treatment will have passed, it will be time for us as well to review our life during these months. For now, we are just looking forward to achieving our particular ‘part V’.AbstractThis study addresses the existing gap in literature that ethnographically examines the experiences of Spanish-speaking patients with limited English proficiency in clinical spaces.

All of the participants in this study presented to the emergency department (ED) for evaluation of non-urgent health conditions. Patient shadowing was employed to explore the challenges that this population face in unique clinical settings like the ED. This relatively new methodology facilitates obtaining nuanced understandings of clinical contexts under study in ways that quantitative approaches and survey research do not. Drawing from the field of medical anthropology and approach of narrative medicine, the collected data are presented through the use of clinical ethnographic vignettes and thick description.

The conceptual framework of health-related deservingness guided the analysis undertaken in this study. Structural stigma was used as a complementary framework in analysing the emergent themes in the data collected. The results and analysis from this study were used to develop an argument for the consideration of language as a distinct social determinant of health.emergency medicinemedical anthropologymedical humanitiesData availability statementData sharing not applicable as no datasets were generated and/or analysed for this study..

IntroductionLa Peste (Camus 1947) buy cialis online usa has served as a basis for several critical works, including some in the How do you get ventolin field of medical humanities (Bozzaro 2018. Deudon 1988. Tuffuor and buy cialis online usa Payne 2017). Frequently interpreted as an allegory of Nazism (with the plague as a symbol of the German occupation of France) (Finel-Honigman 1978.

Haroutunian 1964), it has also received philosophical readings beyond the sociopolitical context in which it was written (Lengers 1994). Other scholars, on the other hand, have centred their analyses on its literary aspects (Steel 2016).The erectile dysfunction treatment cialis has increased general interest about historical and fictional epidemics buy cialis online usa. La Peste, as one of the most famous literary works about this topic, has been revisited by many readers during recent months, leading to an unexpected growth in sales in certain countries (Wilsher 2020. Zaretsky 2020).

Apart from that, commentaries about the novel, buy cialis online usa especially among health sciences scholars, have emerged with a renewed interest (Banerjee et al. 2020. Bate 2020. Vandekerckhove 2020 buy cialis online usa.

Wigand, Becker, and Steger 2020). This sudden curiosity is easy to understand if we consider both La Peste’s literary value, and people’s desire to discover real or fictional situations similar to theirs. Indeed, Oran inhabitants’ experiences are not buy cialis online usa quite far from our own, even if geographical, chronological and, specially, scientific factors (two different diseases occurring at two different stages in the history of medical development) prevent us from establishing too close resemblances between both situations.Furthermore, it will not be strange if erectile dysfunction treatment serves as a frame for fictional works in the near future. Other narrative plays were based on historical epidemics, such as Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year or Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (Wigand, Becker, and Steger 2020.

Withington 2020). The biggest cialis in the last century, the so-called ‘Spanish Influenza’, has been described as not very buy cialis online usa fruitful in this sense, even if it produced famous novels such as Katherine A Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider or John O’Hara’s The Doctor Son (Honigsbaum 2018. Hovanec 2011). The overlapping with another disaster like World War I has been argued as one of the reasons explaining this scarce production of fictional works (Honigsbaum 2018).

By contrast, we may think that erectile dysfunction treatment is having a global impact hardly overshadowed by other events, and that it will leave a significant mark on the collective memory.Drawing on the reading of La Peste, we point out in this essay different aspects of living under an epidemic that can be identified both in Camus’s work and in our buy cialis online usa current situation. We propose a trip throughout the novel, from its early beginning in Part I, when the Oranians are not aware of the threat to come, to its end in Part V, when they are relieved of the epidemic after several months of ravaging disasters.We think this journey along La Peste may be interesting both to health professionals and to the lay person, since all of them will be able to see themselves reflected in the characters from the novel. We do not skip critique of some aspects related to the authorities’ management of erectile dysfunction treatment, as Camus does concerning Oran’s rulers. However, what we want to foreground is La Peste’s intrinsic value, its suitability to be read now and after erectile dysfunction treatment has passed, when Camus’s novel endures as a solid art work and erectile dysfunction treatment remains only as a buy cialis online usa defeated plight.MethodsWe confronted our own experiences about erectile dysfunction treatment with a conventional reading of La Peste.

A first reading of the novel was used to establish associations between those aspects which more saliently reminded us of erectile dysfunction treatment. In a second reading, we searched for some examples to illustrate those aspects and tried to detect new associations. Subsequent readings buy cialis online usa of certain parts were done to integrate the information collected. Neither specific methods of literary analysis, nor systematic searches in the novel were applied.

Selected paragraphs and ideas from Part I to Part V were prepared in a draft copy, and this manuscript was written afterwards.Part ISome phrases in the novel could be transposed word by word to our situation. This one pertaining to its start, for instance, may make us remember the first months of 2020:By now, it will be easy to accept that nothing could lead the people of our town to expect the events that took place in the spring of that year and which, as we later understood, were like the forerunners of the series of grave happenings that this history intends buy cialis online usa to describe. (Camus 2002, Part I)By referring from the beginning to ‘the people of our town’, Camus is already suggesting an idea which is repeated all along the novel, and which may be well understood by us as erectile dysfunction treatment’s witnesses. Epidemics affect the community as a whole, they are present in everybody’s mind and their joys and sorrows are not individual, but collective.

For example (and we are anticipating Part II), the narrator says:But, once the gates were closed, they all noticed that they were in the same boat, including the narrator himself, and buy cialis online usa that they had to adjust to the fact. (Camus 2002, Part II)Later, he will insist in this opposition between the concepts of ‘individual’, which used to prevail before the epidemic, and ‘collective’:One might say that the first effect of this sudden and brutal attack of the disease was to force the citizens of our town to act as though they had no individual feelings. (Camus 2002, Part II)There were no longer any individual destinies, but a collective history that was the plague, and feelings shared by all. (Camus 2002, buy cialis online usa Part III)This distinction is not trivial, since the story will display a strong confrontation between those who get involved and help their neighbours and those who remain behaving selfishly.

Related to this, Claudia Bozzaro has pointed out that the main topic in La Peste is solidarity and auistic love (Bozzaro 2018). We may add that the disease is so attached to people’s lives that the epidemic becomes the new everyday life:In the morning, they would return to the pestilence, that is to say, to routine. (Camus 2002, Part III)Being collective issues does not mean that epidemics always enhance auism buy cialis online usa and solidarity. As said by Wigand et al, they frequently produce ambivalent reactions, and one of them is the opposition between auism and maximised profit (Wigand, Becker, and Steger 2020).

Therefore, the dichotomy between individualism and collectivism, a central point in the characterisation of national cultures (Hofstede 2015), could play a role in epidemics. In fact, concerning erectile dysfunction treatment, some authors have described a greater buy cialis online usa impact of the cialis in those countries with higher levels of individualism (Maaravi et al. 2021. Ozkan et al.

2021). However, this finding should be complemented with other national cultures’ aspects before concluding that collectivism itself exerts a protective role against epidemics. Concerning this, it has been shown how ‘power distance’ frequently intersects with collectivism, being only a few countries in which the last one coexists with a small distance to power, namely with a capacity to disobey the power authority (Gupta, Shoja, and Mikalef 2021). Moreover, those countries classically classified as ‘collectivist’ (China, Japan, South Korea, India, Vietnam, etc.) are also characterised by high levels of power distance, and their citizens have been quite often forced to adhere to erectile dysfunction treatment restrictions and punished if not (Gupta, Shoja, and Mikalef 2021).

Thus, it is important to consider that individualism is not always opposed to ‘look after each other’ (Ozkan et al. 2021, 9). For instance, the European region, seen as a whole as highly ‘individualistic’, holds some of the most advanced welfare protection systems worldwide. It is worth considering too that collectivism may hide sometimes a hard institutional authority or a lack in civil freedoms.Coming back to La Peste, we may think that Camus’s Oranians are not particularly ‘collectivist’.

Their initial description highlights that they are mainly interested in their own businesses and affairs:Our fellow-citizens work a good deal, but always in order to make money. They are especially interested in trade and first of all, as they say, they are engaged in doing business. (Camus 2002, Part I)And later, we see some of them trying selfishly to leave the city by illegal methods. By contrast, we observe in the novel some examples of more ‘collectivistic’ attitudes, such as the discipline of those quarantined at the football pitch, and, over all, the main characters’ behaviour, which is generally driven by auism and common goals.Turning to another topic, the plague in Oran and erectile dysfunction treatment are similar regarding their animal origin.

This is not rare since many infectious diseases pass to humans through contact with animal vectors, being rodents, especially rats (through rat fleas), the most common carriers of plague bacteria (CDC. N.d.a, ECDC. N.d, Pollitzer 1954). Concerning erectile dysfunction, even if further research about its origin is needed, the most recent investigations conducted in China by the WHO establish a zoonotic transmission as the most probable pathway (Joint WHO-China Study Team 2021).

In Camus’s novel, the animal’s link to the epidemic seemed very clear since the beginning:Things got to the point where Infodoc (the agency for information and documentation, ‘ all you need to know on any subject’) announced in its free radio news programme that 6,231 rats had been collected and burned in a single day, the 25th. This figure, which gave a clear meaning to the daily spectacle that everyone in town had in front of their eyes, disconcerted them even more. (Camus 2002, Part I)This accuracy in figures is familiar to us. People nowadays have become very used to the statistical aspects of the cialis, due to the continuous updates in epidemiological parameters launched by the media and the authorities.

Camus was aware about the relevance of figures in epidemics, which always entail:…required registration and statistical tasks. (Camus 2002, Part II)Because of this, the novel is scattered with numbers, most of them concerning the daily death toll, but others mentioning the number of rats picked up, as we have seen, or combining the number of deaths with the time passed since the start of the epidemic:“ Will there be an autumn of plague?. Professor B answers. €˜ No’ ”, “ One hundred and twenty-four dead.

The total for the ninety-fourth day of the plague.” (Camus 2002, Part II)We permit ourselves to introduce here a list of recurring topics in La Peste, since the salience of statistical information is one of them. These topics, some of which will be treated later, appear several times in the novel, in various contexts and stages in the evolution of the epidemic. We synthesise them in Table 1, coupled with a erectile dysfunction treatment parallel example extracted from online press. This ease to find a current example for each topic suggests that they are not exclusive of plague or of Camus’s mindset, but shared by most epidemics.View this table:Table 1 Recurring topics in La Peste.

Each topic is accompanied by two examples from the novel and one concerning erectile dysfunction treatment, extracted from online press.Talking about journalism and the media (one of the topics above), we might say that erectile dysfunction treatment’s coverage is frequently too optimistic when managing good news and too alarming when approaching the bad. Media’s ‘exaggerated’ approach to health issues is not new. It was already a concern for medical journals’ editors a century ago (Reiling 2013) and it continues to be it for these professionals in recent times (Barbour et al. 2008).

It is well known that media tries to attract spectators’ attention by making the news more appealing. However, they deal with the risk of expanding unreliable information, which may be pernicious for the public opinion. Related to the intention of ‘garnishing’ the news, Aslam et al. (2020) have described that 82% of more than 100 000 pieces of information about erectile dysfunction treatment appearing in media from different countries carried an emotional, either negative (52%) or positive (30%) component, with only 18% of them considered as ‘neutral’ (Aslam et al.

2020). Some evidence about this tendency to make news more emotional was described in former epidemics. For instance, a study conducted in Singapore in 2009 during the H1N1 crisis showed how press releases by the Ministry of Health were substantially transformed when passed to the media, by increasing their emotional appeal and by changing their dominant frame or their tone (Lee and Basnyat 2013). In La Peste, this superficial way of managing information by the media is also observed:The newspapers followed the order that they had been given, to be optimistic at any cost.

(Camus 2002, Part IV)At the first stages of the epidemic in Oran, journalists proclaim the end of the dead rats’ invasion as something to be celebrated. Dr Rieux, the character through which Camus symbolises caution (and comparable nowadays to trustful scientists, well-informed journalists or sensible authorities), exposes then his own angle, quite far from suggesting optimism:The vendors of the evening papers were shouting that the invasion of rats had ended. But Rieux found his patient lying half out of bed, one hand on his belly and the other around his neck, convulsively vomiting reddish bile into a rubbish bin. (Camus 2002, Part I)Camus, who worked as a journalist for many years, insists afterwards on this cursory interest that some media devote to the epidemic, more eager to grab the noise than the relevant issues beneath it:The press, which had had so much to say about the business of the rats, fell silent.

This is because rats die in the street and people in their bedrooms. And newspapers are only concerned with the street. (Camus 2002, Part I)By then, Oranians continue rejecting the epidemic as an actual threat, completely immersed in that phase that dominates the beginning of all epidemics and is characterised by ‘denial and disbelief’ (Wigand, Becker, and Steger 2020, 443):A pestilence does not have human dimensions, so people tell themselves that it is unreal, that it is a bad dream which will end. […] The people of our town were no more guilty than anyone else, they merely forgot to be modest and thought that everything was still possible for them, which implied that pestilence was impossible.

They continued with business, with making arrangements for travel and holding opinions. Why should they have thought about the plague, which negates the future, negates journeys and debate?. They considered themselves free and no one will ever be free as long as there is plague, pestilence and famine. (Camus 2002, Part I)Probably to avoid citizens' disapproval, among other reasons, the Oranian Prefecture (health authority in Camus' novel) does not want to go too far when judging the relevance of the epidemic.

While not directly exposed, we can guess in this fragment the tone of the Prefect’s message, his intention to convey confidence despite his own doubts:These cases were not specific enough to be really disturbing and there was no doubt that the population would remain calm. None the less, for reasons of caution which everyone could understand, the Prefect was taking some preventive measures. If they were interpreted and applied in the proper way, these measures were such that they would put a definite stop to any threat of epidemic. As a result, the Prefect did not for a moment doubt that the citizens under his charge would co-operate in the most zealous manner with what he was doing.

(Camus 2002, Part I)The relevant role acquired by health authorities during epidemics is another topic listed in our table. Language use, on the other hand, is an issue linkable both with the media topic and with this one. As in La Peste, during erectile dysfunction treatment we have seen some public figures using words not always truthfully, carrying out a careful selection of words that serves to the goal of conveying certain interests in each moment. Dr Rieux refers in Part I to this language manipulation by the authorities:The measures that had been taken were insufficient, that was quite clear.

As for the ‘ specially equipped wards’, he knew what they were. Two outbuildings hastily cleared of other patients, their windows sealed up and the whole surrounded by a cordon sanitaire. (Camus 2002, Part I)He illustrates the need of frankness, the preference for clarity in language, which is often the clarity in thinking:No. I phoned Richard to say we needed comprehensive measures, not fine words, and that either we must set up a real barrier to the epidemic, or nothing at all.

(Camus 2002, Part I)At the end of this part, his fears about the inadequacy of not taking strict measures are confirmed. Oranian hospitals become overwhelmed, as they are now in many places worldwide due to erectile dysfunction treatment.Part IILeft behind the phases of ‘denial and disbelief’ and of ‘fear and panic’, it appears among the Oranians the ‘acceptance paired with resignation’ (Wigand, Becker, and Steger 2020, 443):Then we knew that our separation was going to last, and that we ought to try to come to terms with time. […] In particular, all of the people in our town very soon gave up, even in public, whatever habit they may have acquired of estimating the length of their separation. (Camus 2002, Part II)In erectile dysfunction treatment as well, even if border closure has not been so immovable as in Oran, many people have seen themselves separated from their loved ones and some of them have not yet had the possibility of reunion.

This is why, in the actual cialis, the idea of temporal horizons has emerged like it appeared in Camus’s epidemic. In Spain, the general lockdown in March and April 2020 made people establish the summer as their temporal horizon, a time in which they could resume their former habits and see their relatives again. This became partially true, and people were allowed in summer to travel inside the country and to some other countries nearby. However, there existed some reluctance to visit ill or aged relatives, due to the fear of infecting them, and some families living in distant countries were not able to get together.

Moreover, autumn brought an increase in the number of cases (‘the second wave’) and countries returned to limit their internal and external movements.Bringing all this together, many people nowadays have opted to discard temporal horizons. As Oranians, they have noted that the epidemic follows its own rhythm and it is useless to fight against it. Nonetheless, it is in human nature not to resign, so abandoning temporal horizons does not mean to give up longing for the recovery of normal life. This vision, neither maintaining vain hopes nor resigning, is in line with Camus’s philosophy, an author who wrote that ‘hope, contrary to what it is usually thought, is the same to resignation.’ (Camus 1939, 83.

Cited by Haroutunian 1964, 312 (translation is ours)), and that ‘there is not love to human life but with despair about human life.’ (Camus 1958, 112–5. Cited by Haroutunian 1964, 312–3 (translation is ours)).People nowadays deal with resignation relying on daily life pleasures (being not allowed to make further plans or trips) and in company from the nearest ones (as they cannot gather with relatives living far away). Second, they observe the beginning of vaccination campaigns as a first step of the final stage, and summer 2021, reflecting what happened with summer 2020, has been fixed as a temporal horizon. This preference for summers has an unavoidable metaphorical nuance, and their linking to joy, long trips and life in the streets may be the reason for which we choose them to be opposed to the lockdown and restrictions of the cialis.We alluded previously to the manipulation of language, and figures, as relevant as they are, they are not free from manipulation either.

Tarrou, a close friend to Dr Rieux, points out in this part of the novel how this occurred:Once more, Tarrou was the person who gave the most accurate picture of our life as it was then. Naturally he was following the course of the plague in general, accurately observing that a turning point in the epidemic was marked by the radio no longer announcing some hundreds of deaths per week, but 92, 107 and 120 deaths a day. €˜The newspapers and the authorities are engaged in a battle of wits with the plague. They think that they are scoring points against it, because 130 is a lower figure than 910.’ (Camus 2002, Part II)Tarrou collaborates with the health teams formed to tackle the plague.

Regarding these volunteers and workers, Camus refuses to consider them as heroes, as many essential workers during erectile dysfunction treatment have rejected to be named as that. The writer thinks their actions are the natural behaviour of good people, not heroism but ‘a logical consequence’:The whole question was to prevent the largest possible number of people from dying and suffering a definitive separation. There was only one way to do this, which was to fight the plague. There was nothing admirable about this truth, it simply followed as a logical consequence.

(Camus 2002, Part II)We consider suitable to talk here about two issues which represent, nowadays, a great part of erectile dysfunction treatment fears and hopes, respectively. New genetic variants and treatments. Medical achievements are another recurrent issue included in table 1, and we write about them here because it is in Part II where Camus writes for the first time about treatments, and where it insists on an idea aforementioned in Part I. That the plague bacillus affecting Oran is different from previous variants:…the microbe differed very slightly from the bacillus of plague as traditionally defined.

(Camus 2002, Part II)Related to erectile dysfunction treatment new variants, they represent a challenge because of two main reasons. Their higher transmissibility and/or severity and their higher propensity to skip the effect of natural or treatment-induced immunity. Public health professionals are determining which is the actual threat of all the new variants discovered, such as those first characterised in the UK (Public Health England 2020), South Africa (Tegally et al. 2021) or Brazil (Fujino et al.

2021). In La Peste, Dr Rieux is always suspecting that the current bacteria they are dealing with is different from the one in previous epidemics of plague. Since several genetic variations for the bacillus Yersinia pestis have been characterised (Cui et al. 2012), it could be possible that the epidemic in Oran originated from a new one.

However, we should not forget that we are analysing a literary work, and that scientific accuracy is not a necessary goal in it. In fact, Rieux’s reluctances have to do more with clinical aspects than with microbiological ones. He doubts since the beginning, relying exclusively on the symptoms observed, and continues doing it after the laboratory analysis:I was able to have an analysis made in which the laboratory thinks it can detect the plague bacillus. However, to be precise, we must say that certain specific modifications of the microbe do not coincide with the classic description of plague.

(Camus 2002, Part II)Camus is consistent with this idea and many times he mentions the bacillus to highlight its oddity. Insisting on the literary condition of the work, and among other possible explanations, he is maybe declaring that that in the novel is not a common (biological, natural) bacteria, but the Nazism bacteria.Turning to treatments, they constitute the principal resource that the global community has to defeat the erectile dysfunction treatment cialis. Vaccination campaigns have started all over the world, and three types of erectile dysfunction treatments are being applied in the European Union, after their respective statements of efficacy and security (Baden et al. 2021.

Polack et al. 2020. Voysey et al. 2021), while a fourth treatment has just recently been approved (EMA 2021a).

Although some concerns regarding the safety of two of these treatments have been raised recently (EMA 2021b. EMA 2021c), vaccination plans are going ahead, being adapted according to the state of knowledge at each moment. Some of these treatments are mRNA-based (Baden et al. 2021.

Polack et al. 2020), while others use a viral vector (Bos et al. 2020. Voysey et al.

2021). They are mainly two-shot treatments, with one exception (Bos et al. 2020), and complete immunity is thought to be acquired 2 weeks after the last shot (CDC. N.d.b, Voysey et al.

2021). Other countries such as China or Russia, on the other hand, were extremely early in starting their vaccination campaigns, and are distributing among their citizens different treatments than the aforementioned (Logunov et al. 2021. Zhang et al.

2021).Even if at least three types of plague treatments had been created by the time the novel takes place (Sun 2016), treatments do not play an important role in La Peste, in which therapeutic measures (the serum) are more important than prophylactic ones. Few times in the novel the narrator refers to prophylactic inoculations:There was still no possibility of vaccinating with preventive serum except in families already affected by the disease. (Camus 2002, Part II)Deudon has pointed out that Camus mixes up therapeutic serum and treatment (Deudon 1988), and in fact there exists a certain amount of confusion. All along the novel, the narrator focuses on the prophylactic goals of the serum, which is applied to people already infected (Othon’s son, Tarrou, Grand…).

However, both in the example above (which can be understood as vaccinating household contacts or already affected individuals) and in others, the differences between treating and vaccinating are not clear:After the morning admissions which he was in charge of himself, the patients were vaccinated and the swellings lanced. (Camus 2002, Part II)In any case, this is another situation in which Camus stands aside from scientific matters, which are to him less relevant in his novel than philosophical or literary ones. The distance existing between the relevance of treatments in erectile dysfunction treatment and the superficial manner with which Camus treats the topic in La Peste exemplifies this.Part IIIIn part III, the plague’s ravages become tougher. The narrator turns his focus to burials and their disturbance, a frequent topic in epidemics’ narrative (table 1).

Camus knew how acutely increasing demands and hygienic requirements affect funeral habits during epidemics:Everything really happened with the greatest speed and the minimum of risk. (Camus 2002, Part III)Like many other processes during epidemics, the burial process becomes a protocol. When protocolised, everything seems to work well and rapidly. But this perfect mechanism is the Prefecture’s goal, not Rieux’s.

He reveals in this moment an aspect in his character barely shown before. Irony.The whole thing was well organized and the Prefect expressed his satisfaction. He even told Rieux that, when all was said and done, this was preferable to hearses driven by black slaves which one read about in the chronicles of earlier plagues. €˜ Yes,’ Rieux said.

€˜ The burial is the same, but we keep a card index. No one can deny that we have made progress.’ (Camus 2002, Part III)Even if this characteristic may seem new in Dr Rieux, we must bear in mind that he is the story narrator, and the narration is ironic from time to time. For instance, speaking precisely about the burials:The relatives were invited to sign a register –which just showed the difference that there may be between men and, for example, dogs. You can keep check of human beings-.

(Camus 2002, Part III)In Camus’s philosophy, the absurd is a core issue. According to Lengers, Rieux is ironic because he is a kind of Sisyphus who has understood the absurdity of plague (Lengers 1994). The response to the absurd is to rebel (Camus 2013), and Rieux does it by helping his fellow humans without questioning anything. He does not pursue any other goal than doing his duty, thus humour (as a response to dire situations) stands out from him when he observes others celebrating irrelevant achievements, such as the Prefect with his burial protocol.

In the field of medical ethics, Lengers has highlighted the importance of Camus’s perspective when considering ‘the immediacy of life rather than abstract values’ (Lengers 1994, 250). Rieux himself is quite sure that his solid commitment is not ‘abstract’, and, even if he falls into abstraction, the importance relies on protecting human lives and not in the name given to that task:Was it truly an abstraction, spending his days in the hospital where the plague was working overtime, bringing the number of victims up to five hundred on average per week?. Yes, there was an element of abstraction and unreality in misfortune. But when an abstraction starts to kill you, you have to get to work on it.

(Camus 2002, Part II)Farewells during erectile dysfunction treatment may have not been particularly pleasant for some families. Neither those dying at nursing homes nor in hospitals could be accompanied by their families as previously, due to corpses management protocols, restrictions of external visitors and hygienic measures in general. However, as weeks passed by, certain efforts were made to ease this issue, allowing people to visit their dying beloved sticking to strict preventive measures. On the other hand, the number of people attending funeral masses and cemeteries was also limited, which affected the conventional development of ceremonies as well.

Hospitals had to deal with daily tolls of deaths never seen before, and the overcrowding of mortuaries made us see rows of coffins placed in unusual spaces, such as ice rinks (transformation of facilities is another topic in table 1).We turn now to two other points which erectile dysfunction treatment has not evaded. s among essential workers and epidemics’ economic consequences. The author links burials with s among essential workers because gravediggers constitute one of the most affected professions, and connects this fact with the economic recession because unemployment is behind the large availability of workers to replace the dead gravediggers:Many of the male nurses and the gravediggers, who were at first official, then casual, died of the plague. […] The most surprising thing was that there was never a shortage of men to do the job, for as long as the epidemic lasted.

[…] When the plague really took hold of the town, its very immoderation had one quite convenient outcome, because it disrupted the whole of economic life and so created quite a large number of unemployed. […] Poverty always triumphed over fear, to the extent that work was always paid according to the risk involved. (Camus 2002, Part III)The effects of the plague over the economic system are one of our recurrent topics (table 1). The plague in Oran, as it forces to close the city, impacts all trading exchanges.

In addition, it forbids travellers from arriving to the city, with the economic influence that that entails:This plague was the ruination of tourism. (Camus 2002, Part II)Oranians, who, as we saw, were very worried about making money, are especially affected by an event which jeopardises it. In erectile dysfunction treatment, for one reason or for another, most of the countries are suffering economic consequences, since the impact on normal life from the epidemic (another recurrent topic) means also an impact on the normal development of trading activities.Part IVIn Part IV we witness the first signals of a stabilisation of the epidemic:It seemed that the plague had settled comfortably into its peak and was carrying out its daily murders with the precision and regularity of a good civil servant. In theory, in the opinion of experts, this was a good sign.

The graph of the progress of the plague, starting with its constant rise, followed by this long plateau, seemed quite reassuring. (Camus 2002, Part IV)At this time, we consider interesting to expand the topic about the transformation of facilities. We mentioned the case of ice rinks during erectile dysfunction treatment, and we bring up now the use of a football pitch as a quarantine camp in Camus’s novel, a scene which has reminded some scholars of the metaphor of Nazism and concentration camps (Finel-Honigman 1978). In Spain, among other measures, a fairground was enabled as a field hospital during the first wave, and it is plausible that many devices created with other purposes were used in tasks attached to healthcare provision during those weeks, as occurred in Oran’s pitch with the loudspeakers:Then the loudspeakers, which in better times had served to introduce the teams or to declare the results of games, announced in a tinny voice that the internees should go back to their tents so that the evening meal could be distributed.

(Camus 2002, Part IV)Related to this episode, we can also highlight the opposition between science and humanism that Camus does. The author alerts us about the dangers of a dehumanised science, of choosing procedures perfectly efficient regardless of their lack in human dignity:The men held out their hands, two ladles were plunged into two of the pots and emerged to unload their contents onto two tin plates. The car drove on and the process was repeated at the next tent.‘ It’s scientific,’ Tarrou told the administrator.‘ Yes,’ he replied with satisfaction, as they shook hands. €˜ It’s scientific.’ (Camus 2002, Part IV)Several cases with favourable outcomes mark Part IV final moments and prepare the reader for the end of the epidemic.

To describe these signs of recovering, the narrator turns back to two elements with a main role in the novel. Rats and figures. In this moment, the first ones reappear and the second ones seem to be declining:He had seen two live rats come into his house through the street door. Neighbours had informed him that the creatures were also reappearing in their houses.

Behind the walls of other houses there was a hustle and bustle that had not been heard for months. Rieux waited for the general statistics to be published, as they were at the start of each week. They showed a decline in the disease. (Camus 2002, Part IV)Part VGiven that we continue facing erectile dysfunction treatment, and that forecasts about its end are not easy, we cannot compare ourselves with the Oranians once they have reached the end of the epidemic, what occurs in this part.

However, we can analyse our current situation, characterised by a widespread, though cautious, confidence motivated by the beginning of vaccination campaigns, referring it to the events narrated in Part V.Even more than the Oranians, since we feel further than them from the end of the problem, we are cautious about not to anticipate celebrations. From time to time, however, we lend ourselves to dream relying on what the narrator calls ‘a great, unadmitted hope’. erectile dysfunction treatment took us by surprise and everyone wants to ‘reorganise’ their life, as Oranians do, but patience is an indispensable component to succeed, as fictional and historical epidemics show us.Although this sudden decline in the disease was unexpected, the towns-people were in no hurry to celebrate. The preceding months, though they had increased the desire for liberation, had also taught them prudence and accustomed them to count less and less on a rapid end to the epidemic.

However, this new development was the subject of every conversation and, in the depths of people’s hearts, there was a great, unadmitted hope. […] One of the signs that a return to a time of good health was secretly expected (though no one admitted the fact) was that from this moment on people readily spoke, with apparent indifference, about how life would be reorganized after the plague. (Camus 2002, Part V)We put our hope on vaccination. Social distancing and other hygienic measures have proved to be effective, but treatments would bring us a more durable solution without compromising so hardly many economic activities and social habits.

As we said, a more important role of scientific aspects is observed in erectile dysfunction treatment if compared with La Peste (an expected fact if considered that Camus’s story is an artistic work, that he skips sometimes the most complex scientific issues of the plague and that health sciences have evolved substantially during last decades). Oranians, in fact, achieve the end of the epidemic not through clearly identified scientific responses but with certain randomness:All one could do was to observe that the sickness seemed to be going as it had arrived. The strategy being used against it had not changed. It had been ineffective yesterday, and now it was apparently successful.

One merely had the feeling that the disease had exhausted itself, or perhaps that it was retiring after achieving all its objectives. In a sense, its role was completed. (Camus 2002, Part V)They receive the announcement made by the Prefecture of reopening the town’s gates in 2 weeks time with enthusiasm. Dealing with concrete dates gives them certainty, helps them fix the temporal horizons we wrote about.

This is also the case when they are told that preventive measures would be lifted in 1 month. Camus shows us then how the main characters are touched as well by this positive atmosphere:That evening Tarrou and Rieux, Rambert and the rest, walked in the midst of the crowd, and they too felt they were treading on air. Long after leaving the boulevards Tarrou and Rieux could still hear the sounds of happiness following them… (Camus 2002, Part V)Then, Tarrou points out a sign of recovery coming from the animal world. In a direct zoological chain, infected fleas have vanished from rats, which have been able again to multiply across the city, making the cats abandon their hiding places and to go hunting after them again.

At the final step of this chain, Tarrou sees the human being. He remembers the old man who used to spit to the cats beneath his window:At a time when the noise grew louder and more joyful, Tarrou stopped. A shape was running lightly across the dark street. It was a cat, the first that had been seen since the spring.

It stopped for a moment in the middle of the road, hesitated, licked its paw, quickly passed it across its right ear, then carried on its silent way and vanished into the night. Tarrou smiled. The little old man, too, would be happy. (Camus 2002, Part V)Unpleasant things as a town with rats running across its streets, or a man spending his time spitting on a group of cats, constitute normality as much as the reopening of gates or the reboot of commerce.

However, when Camus speaks directly about normality, he highlights more appealing habits. He proposes common leisure activities (restaurants, theatres) as symbols of human life, since he opposes them to Cottard’s life, which has become that of a ‘wild animal’:At least in appearance he [ Cottard ] retired from the world and from one day to the next started to live like a wild animal. He no longer appeared in restaurants, at the theatre or in his favourite cafés. (Camus 2002, Part V)We do not disclose why Cottard’s reaction to the end of the epidemic is different from most of the Oranians’.

In any case, the narrator insists later on the assimilation between common pleasures and normality:‘ Perhaps,’ Cottard said, ‘ Perhaps so. But what do you call a return to normal life?. €™ ‘ New films in the cinema,’ said Tarrou with a smile. (Camus 2002, Part V)Cinema, as well as theatre, live music and many other cultural events have been cancelled or obliged to modify their activities due to erectile dysfunction treatment.

Several bars and restaurants have closed, and spending time in those who remain open has become an activity which many people tend to avoid, fearing contagion. Thus, normality in our understanding is linked as well to these simple and pleasant habits, and the complete achievement of them will probably signify for us the desired defeat of the cialis.In La Peste, love is also seen as a simple good to be fully recovered after the plague. While Rieux goes through the ‘reborn’ Oran, it is lovers’ gatherings what he highlights. Unlike them, everyone who, during the epidemic, sought for goals different from love (such as faith or money, for instance) remain lost when the epidemic has ended:For all the people who, on the contrary, had looked beyond man to something that they could not even imagine, there had been no reply.

(Camus 2002, Part V)And this is because lovers, as the narrator says:If they had found that they wanted, it was because they had asked for the only thing that depended on them. (Camus 2002, Part V)We have spoken before about language manipulation, hypocrisy and public figures’ roles during epidemics. Camus, during Dr Rieux’s last visit to the old asthmatic man, makes this frank and humble character criticise, with a point of irony, the authorities’ attitude concerning tributes to the dead:‘ Tell me, doctor, is it true that they’re going to put up a monument to the victims of the plague?. €™â€˜ So the papers say.

A pillar or a plaque.’‘ I knew it!. And there’ll be speeches.’The old man gave a strangled laugh.‘ I can hear them already. €œ Our dead…” Then they’ll go and have dinner.’ (Camus 2002, Part V)The old man illustrates wisely the authorities’ propensity for making speeches. He knows that most of them usually prefer grandiloquence rather than common words, and seizes perfectly their tone when he imitates them (‘Our dead…’).

We have also got used, during erectile dysfunction treatment, to these types of messages. We have also heard about ‘our old people’, ‘our youth’, ‘our essential workers’ and even ‘our dead’. Behind this tone, however, there could be an intention to hide errors, or to falsely convey carefulness. Honest rulers do not usually need nice words.

They just want them to be accurate.We have seen as well some tributes to the victims during erectile dysfunction treatment, some of which we can doubt whether they serve to victims’ relief or to authorities’ promotion. We want rulers to be less aware of their own image and to stress truthfulness as a goal, even if this is a hard requirement not only for them, but for every single person. Language is essential in this issue, we think, since it is prone to be twisted and to become untrue. The old asthmatic man illustrates it with his ‘There’ll be speeches’ and his ‘Our dead…’, but this is not the only time in the novel in which Camus brings out the topic.

For instance, he does so when he equates silence (nothing can be thought as further from wordiness) with truth:It is at the moment of misfortune that one becomes accustomed to truth, that is to say to silence. (Camus 2002, Part II)or when he makes a solid statement against false words:…I understood that all the misfortunes of mankind came from not stating things in clear terms. (Camus 2002, Part IV)The old asthmatic, in fact, while praising the deceased Tarrou, remarks that he used to admire him because ‘he didn’t talk just for the sake of it.’ (Camus 2002, Part V).Related to this topic, what the old asthmatic says about political authorities may be transposed in our case to other public figures, such as scholars and researchers, media leaders, businessmen and women, health professionals… and, if we extend the scope, to every single citizen. Because hypocrisy, language manipulation and the fact of putting individual interests ahead of collective welfare fit badly with collective issues such as epidemics.

Hopefully, also examples to the contrary have been observed during erectile dysfunction treatment.The story ends with the fireworks in Oran and the depiction of Dr Rieux’s last feelings. While he is satisfied because of his medical performance and his activity as a witness of the plague, he is concerned about future disasters to come. When erectile dysfunction treatment will have passed, it will be time for us as well to review our life during these months. For now, we are just looking forward to achieving our particular ‘part V’.AbstractThis study addresses the existing gap in literature that ethnographically examines the experiences of Spanish-speaking patients with limited English proficiency in clinical spaces.

All of the participants in this study presented to the emergency department (ED) for evaluation of non-urgent health conditions. Patient shadowing was employed to explore the challenges that this population face in unique clinical settings like the ED. This relatively new methodology facilitates obtaining nuanced understandings of clinical contexts under study in ways that quantitative approaches and survey research do not. Drawing from the field of medical anthropology and approach of narrative medicine, the collected data are presented through the use of clinical ethnographic vignettes and thick description.

The conceptual framework of health-related deservingness guided the analysis undertaken in this study. Structural stigma was used as a complementary framework in analysing the emergent themes in the data collected. The results and analysis from this study were used to develop an argument for the consideration of language as a distinct social determinant of health.emergency medicinemedical anthropologymedical humanitiesData availability statementData sharing not applicable as no datasets were generated and/or analysed for this study..

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What is the difference between viagra and cialis

HANFORD, Calif what is the difference between viagra and cialis. €” On May 13 of last year, the cellphones of thousands of California residents undergoing treatment for chronic pain lit up with a terse text message. €œDue to unforeseen circumstances, Lags Medical Centers will be closing effective May 19, 2021.” In a matter of days, Lags Medical, a sprawling network of privately owned pain clinics serving more than 20,000 patients throughout what is the difference between viagra and cialis the state’s Central Valley and Central Coast, would shut its doors. Its patients, most of them working-class people reliant on government-funded insurance, were left without ready access to their medical records or handoffs to other physicians.

Many patients were dependent on opioids to manage the pain caused by a debilitating disease or injury, according to alerts about the closures that state health officials emailed to area physicians. They were sent off with one what is the difference between viagra and cialis final 30-day prescription, and no clear path for how to handle the agony — whether from their underlying conditions or the physical dependency that accompanies long-term use of painkillers — once that prescription ran out. The closures came on the same day that the California Department of Health Care Services suspended state Medi-Cal reimbursements to 17 of Lags Medical’s 28 locations, citing without detail “potential harm to patients” and an ongoing investigation by the state Department of Justice into “credible allegations of fraud.” In the months since, the state has declined to elaborate on the concerns that prompted its investigation. Patients are still in the dark about what happened with their care and to their bodies.

Even as the government remains largely silent about its investigation, interviews with former Lags Medical patients and employees, as well as KHN analyses of reams of Medicare and Medi-Cal billing data and other court and government documents, suggest the clinics operated based on a markedly high-volume and what is the difference between viagra and cialis unorthodox approach to pain management. This includes regularly performing skin biopsies that industry experts describe as out of the norm for pain specialists, as well as notably high rates of other sometimes painful procedures, including nerve ablations and high-end urine tests that screen for an extensive list of drugs. Those procedures generated millions of dollars in insurer payments in recent years for Lags Medical Centers, an affiliated network of clinics under the ownership of Dr. Francis P what is the difference between viagra and cialis.

Lagattuta. The clinics’ patients primarily were insured by Medicare, the federally funded program for seniors and people with disabilities, or Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program for low-income residents. Taken individually, the fees what is the difference between viagra and cialis for each procedure are not eye-popping. But when performed at high volume, they add up to millions of dollars.

Take, for example, the punch biopsy, a medical procedure what is the difference between viagra and cialis in which a circular blade is used to extract a sample of deep skin tissue the size of a pencil eraser. The technique is commonly used in dermatology to diagnose skin cancer but has limited use in pain management medicine, usually involving a referral to a neurologist, according to multiple experts interviewed. These experts said it would be unusual to use the procedure as part of routine pain management. In Lagattuta’s specialty — physical medicine and rehabilitation, a common pain management field — just six of what is the difference between viagra and cialis the nearly 8,000 U.S.

Physicians treating Medicare patients billed for punch biopsies on more than 10 patients in 2019, the most recent year for which data was available. Four, including Lagattuta, were affiliated with Lags Medical. Medicare and Medi-Cal what is the difference between viagra and cialis data are organized differently, and each provides distinct insights into Lags Medical’s billing practices. For Medicare, KHN’s findings reflect the number of procedures and actual reimbursements billed through Lagattuta’s provider number.

But the Medicare figures do not encompass services and billing amounts for other providers across the chain, nor reimbursements for patients enrolled in private Medicare Advantage plans. KHN used Medi-Cal records to assess the what is the difference between viagra and cialis volume of services performed across the entire chain. But the state could not provide totals for how much Lags Medical was reimbursed because of California’s extensive use of managed-care plans, which do not make their reimbursement rates public. Where possible, KHN estimated the worth of Medi-Cal procedures based on the set rates Medi-Cal pays traditional fee-for-service plans, which are public.

Lags Medical clinics performed more than 22,000 punch biopsies on Medi-Cal patients from 2016 through 2019, what is the difference between viagra and cialis according to state data. Medi-Cal reimbursement rates for punch biopsies changed over time. In 2019 the state’s reimbursement rate was more than $200 for a set of three biopsies performed on patients in fee-for-service what is the difference between viagra and cialis plans. Laboratory analysis of punch biopsies was worth far more.

Lags Medical clinics sent biopsies to a Lags-affiliated lab co-located at a clinic in Santa Maria, according to medical records and employee interviews. From 2016 through 2019, Lags Medical clinics and providers performed tens of thousands what is the difference between viagra and cialis of pathology services associated with the preparation and examination of tissue samples from Medi-Cal patients, according to state records. The services would have been worth an estimated $3.9 million using Medi-Cal’s average fee-for-service rates during that period. In that same period, Medicare reimbursed Lagattuta at least $5.7 million for pathology activities using those same billing codes, federal data shows.

Much of the work at Lags Medical was performed by a relatively small number of nurse practitioners and physician assistants, each juggling dozens of what is the difference between viagra and cialis patients a day with sporadic, often remote supervision by the medical doctors affiliated with the clinics, according to interviews with former employees. Lagattuta himself lived in Florida for more than a year while serving as medical director, according to testimony he provided as part of an ongoing malpractice lawsuit that names Lagattuta, Lags Medical, and a former employee as defendants. Former employees said they were given bonuses if they treated more than 32 patients in a day, a strategy Lagattuta confirmed in his deposition in the malpractice lawsuit. €œIf they saw over, like, 32 patients, what is the difference between viagra and cialis they would get, like, $10 a patient,” Lagattuta testified.

The lawsuit, filed in Fresno County Superior Court, accuses a Lags Medical provider in Fresno of puncturing a patient’s lung during a botched injection for back pain. Lagattuta and the other named defendants have denied the incident was due to negligent treatment, saying, in part, the patient consented to the procedure knowing it carried risks. Lags Medical what is the difference between viagra and cialis Centers, one of California’s largest chains of pain clinics, abruptly closed dozens of clinics, including this Hanford site, in May 2021. Nine months later, patients are still in the dark about what happened with their care.

(Anna Maria Barry-Jester / KHN) Hector Sanchez, the nurse practitioner who performed the injection and is named in the lawsuit, testified in his own deposition that providers at the Lags Medical clinic in Fresno each treated from what is the difference between viagra and cialis 30 to 40 patients on a typical workday. According to Sanchez’s testimony and interviews with two additional former employees, Lags Medical clinics also offered financial bonuses to encourage providers to perform certain medical procedures, including punch biopsies and various injections. €œWe were incentivized initially to do these things with cash bonuses,” said one former employee, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution. €œThere was a lot of pressure to get those done, to talk patients into getting these done.” In his own deposition in the Fresno what is the difference between viagra and cialis case, Lagattuta denied paying bonuses for specific medical procedures.

Interviews with 17 former patients revealed common observations at Lags Medical clinics, such as crowded waiting rooms and an assembly-line environment. Many reported feeling pressure to consent to injections and other procedures or risk having their opioid supplies cut off. Audrey Audelo Ramirez said she had worried for years that the care she was receiving at what is the difference between viagra and cialis a Lags Medical clinic in Fresno was subpar. In the past couple of years, she said, there were sometimes so many patients waiting that the line wrapped around the building.

Ramirez, 52, suffers from trigeminal neuralgia, a rare nerve disease that sends shocks of pain across the face so severe it’s known as the “suicide disease.” Over the years, Lags Medical had taken over prescribing almost all her medications. This included not only the opioids and gabapentin she relies on to endure excruciating pain, but also drugs to treat depression, anxiety, and sleep what is the difference between viagra and cialis issues. Ramirez said she often felt pressured to get procedures she didn’t want. €œThey were always just pushing injections, injections, injections,” she said.

She said staffers performed painful punch biopsies on her that resulted in an additional diagnosis of small fiber neuropathy, a nerve disorder that can what is the difference between viagra and cialis cause stabbing pain. She was among numerous patients who said they felt they needed to undergo the recommended procedures if they wanted continued prescriptions for their pain medications. €œIf you refuse any treatment they say they’re going to give you, you’re considered noncompliant and they stop your medication,” Ramirez said what is the difference between viagra and cialis. She said she eventually agreed to an injection in her face, which she said was administered without adequate sedation.

€œIt was horrible, horrible,” she said. Still, she said, she kept going to the office what is the difference between viagra and cialis because there weren’t many other options in her town. Lagattuta, through his lawyer, declined a request from KHN to respond to questions about the care provided at his clinics, citing the state investigation. €œSince there is an active investigation, Dr.

Lagattuta cannot comment on it until it is completed,” attorney Matthew Brinegar wrote in an email what is the difference between viagra and cialis. Lagattuta’s license remains in good standing, and he said in his deposition in the Fresno lawsuit that he is still seeing patients in California. Experts interviewed by KHN noted that medical procedures such as injections can have a legitimate role in comprehensive pain management. But they also spoke in general terms about the what is the difference between viagra and cialis emergence of a troubling pattern at U.S.

Pain clinics involving the overuse of procedures. In the 1990s and early 2000s, problematic pain clinics hooked patients on opioids, then demanded cash to continue prescriptions, said Dr. Theodore Parran, who is a professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University what is the difference between viagra and cialis and has served as an expert witness in federal investigations into pain clinics. €œWhat has replaced them are troubled pain clinics that hook patients with the meds and accept insurance, but overuse procedures which really pay well,” he said.

For patients, he added, the what is the difference between viagra and cialis consequences are not benign. €œI mean they are painful,” he said. €œYou’re putting needles into people.” Leah Munoz and her husband, Ramon, of Tulare, California, are former Lags Medical Centers patients. Although her pain never what is the difference between viagra and cialis disappeared with treatment, Leah says, the opioids prescribed provided enough relief for her to continue doing the things she loved.

€œI need it to live a halfway-normal life.” (Anna Maria Barry-Jester / KHN) ‘Knee Injections, Hip Injections, Foot Injections’ Before moving to California in 1998, Dr. Francis Lagattuta lived in Illinois and worked as a team doctor for the Chicago Bulls during its 1995-96 championship season. Out West, he opened a clinic in Santa Maria, a Latino-majority city what is the difference between viagra and cialis along California’s Central Coast known for its strawberry fields, vineyards, and barbecue. From 2015 to 2020, the chain grew from a couple of clinics in Santa Barbara County to dozens throughout California, largely in rural areas, as well as far-flung locations in Washington state, Delaware, and Florida.

The California portion of the chain is organized as more than two dozen corporations and limited liability corporations owned by Lagattuta. His son, what is the difference between viagra and cialis Francis P. Lagattuta II, was a manager for the company. On the Lags Medical website and in conversation with employees, the elder Lagattuta claimed he was on the vanguard of diagnosing and treating small fiber neuropathy.

Much of the what is the difference between viagra and cialis website has now been taken down. But pages available via an archival site claim he had pioneered a three-pronged approach to pain management that made minimal use of opioids and surgeries, instead emphasizing testing, injections, mental health, diet, and exercise. €œIn keeping with his social justice values, what is the difference between viagra and cialis Dr. Lagattuta plans to share these findings to the rest of the world, hopefully to help solve the opioid crisis, and end suffering for millions of people struggling with pain,” touted a biography once highlighted on the website.

Numerous Lags Medical patients interviewed by KHN said that even when they were given punch biopsies and a subsequent diagnosis of neuropathy, their treatment plan continued to involve high doses of opioid medications. Dr. Victor C. Wang, chief of the division of pain neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said punch biopsies are occasionally used in research but are not a standard part of pain medicine.

Instead, small fiber neuropathy is usually diagnosed with a simple clinical exam. €œThe treatment is going to be the same whether you have a biopsy or not,” said Wang. €œI always tell the fellows, you can do this test or that one, but is it really going to change the management of the patient?. € Ruby Avila, a mother of three in Visalia, remembers having the punch biopsies done at least three times during her four years as a Lags Medical patient.

€œI have scars down my leg,” she said. Each time, she said, providers removed a set of three skin specimens that were used to diagnose her with small fiber neuropathy. Avila, 37, who has lived with pain since childhood, had found it validating to finally have a diagnosis. But after learning more about how common the biopsies were at Lags Medical, she was shaken.

€œIt’s overwhelming to hear that they were doing it on a lot of people,” she said. Sanchez, the nurse practitioner named in the Fresno lawsuit, spoke of other procedures that garnered bonuses. €œTrigger point injections, knee injections, hip injections, foot injections for plantar fasciitis and elbow injections” all qualified for $10 bonuses, he said in his testimony. Two former employees, who asked not to be named, echoed Sanchez, saying they were incentivized to do certain procedures, including injections and punch biopsies.

In his testimony in the Fresno case, Lagattuta denied paying bonuses for procedures. €œIt was only for the patients,” he said. €œWe never did it based on procedures.” Incentive systems for a specific procedure are “completely unethical,” said Dr. Michael Barnett, an assistant professor of health policy at Harvard.

€œIt’s like giving police officers a quota for speeding tickets. What do you think they’re going to do?. I can’t think of any justification.” After Lags Medical Centers closed, Leah Munoz struggled to obtain her medical records and to find a doctor to refill her prescriptions, she says. As the pain surged, she says, it became hard to leave home.

€œI missed a lot of bingo, a lot of grocery shopping, a lot of going to my grandkids’ birthday parties.” (Anna Maria Barry-Jester / KHN) Dr. Carl Johnson, 77, is a pathologist who directed Lags Medical’s Santa Maria lab from 2018 to 2021. Johnson said the only specimens he looked at came from punch biopsies, the first time in his long career as a pathologist that he had been asked to run such an analysis. On an average day, he said, he examined the slides of about 40 patients, searching for signs of small fiber neuropathy.

Lagattuta gave him papers to read on peripheral neuropathy and assured him they were on the cutting edge of care for pain patients. Johnson said he “never thought there was anything untoward going on” until he arrived on his last day and was told to pack up his belongings because the entire operation was shutting down. Lags Medical performed other procedures at rates that also set them apart. From 2015 through 2020 — the span for which KHN had state data — Lags Medical performed more than 24,000 nerve ablations, a procedure in which part of a nerve is destroyed to reduce pain, on Medi-Cal patients.

That’s more than 1 in 6 of all nerve ablations billed through Medi-Cal during that period. An analysis of federal data also shows Lagattuta was an outlier. For example, in 2018 he billed Medicare for nerve ablations more often than 88% of the doctors in his field who performed the procedure. Lags Medical also used the in-house lab to run drug tests on patients’ urine samples.

From 2017 through 2019, Lags Medical facilities often ordered the most extensive — and expensive — set of drug tests, which check for the presence of at least 22 drugs, according to state and federal data. For perspective, in 2019, more than 23,000 of the most extensive drug tests were ordered on Medi-Cal patients under Lagattuta’s provider number, more than double the number tied to the next highest biller. The next five top billers were all lab companies. Overall, from 2017 through 2019, nearly 60,000 of the most extensive drug tests were billed to Medicare and Medi-Cal under Lagattuta’s provider number.

Medicare reimbursed Lagattuta $5.4 million for these tests during that period. Using state fee-for-service rates, the testing billed to Medi-Cal would have been worth an estimated $6.3 million. That doesn’t include less extensive drug screens or those billed under other providers’ numbers. Pain management experts described the use of extensive screening as unnecessary in routine pain treatment.

The overuse of such tests has been the subject of numerous Medicare investigations in recent years. Private pain clinics like Lags Medical are only loosely regulated and generally are not required to hold a special license from the state. But the physicians who work there are regulated by the Medical Board of California. In December 2019, a patient who’d visited clinics in both Visalia and the Central Coast filed a complaint against Lagattuta with the medical board claiming, among other things, that she received biopsies that were not properly performed, that she underwent excessive testing, and that positive drug tests had been falsified.

The medical board had another pain management doctor review more than 300 pages of documents and found “no deviations from the standard of care” and “did not find any over testing, or improperly performed biopsies.” He did, however, find some record-keeping problems, including numerous procedures in which patient consent was not documented. He also found instances in which procedures were performed and repeated without documentation that they were effective. The patient who filed the complaint was given a medial branch nerve block in November 2014, followed by a radiofrequency ablation in December, and another in February. No improvements for the patient were ever noted in the charts, the investigating doctor found.

The medical board chalked it up to a record-keeping error and fined Lagattuta $350. A Halfway-Normal Life On a warm evening in late July, Leah Munoz drove her power wheelchair around the long plastic tables at the Veterans Memorial Building in Hanford, a dusty farm town in California’s Central Valley. Senior bingo night was crowded with gray-haired players waiting for the game to begin. She found an empty spot and carefully set out $50 worth of bingo cards, alongside her collection of 14 brightly colored daubers.

Munoz, 55 and a mother of six, said she has suffered from a litany of illnesses — thyroid cancer, breast cancer, lupus, osteoarthritis — that leave her in near-constant pain. She’s been playing bingo since she was a little girl, and said it helps distract from the pain and calm her mind. She looks forward to this event all week. Munoz was a Lags Medical patient for about four years and, while her pain never disappeared, the opioids prescribed provided enough relief for her to continue doing the things she loved.

€œThere’s a difference between addiction and dependence. I need it to live a halfway-normal life,” Munoz said. After Lags Medical closed in May, her primary care doctor initially refused to refill her opioid prescriptions. She said she called the Lags Medical offices to try to get a copy of her medical records to prove her need, and even showed up in person.

But she said she was unable to get them. As the pills dwindled and the pain surged, Munoz said, it became hard to leave her home. €œI missed a lot of bingo, a lot of grocery shopping, a lot of going to my grandkids’ birthday parties. You miss out on life,” she said.

Ultimately, she said, her primary care doctor referred her to another pain clinic, and she was able to resume her prescription. Leah Munoz is a regular at senior bingo nights at the Veterans Memorial Building in Hanford, California. She says bingo helps distract her from the pain wrought by a litany of illnesses she has developed over the years. (Anna Maria Barry-Jester / KHN) Gail Soto runs senior bingo events in Hanford, California.

She is among the former Lags Medical Centers patients who say they received repeated medical procedures, including injections and nerve ablations, along with opioids. (Anna Maria Barry-Jester / KHN) Even with pain medications, Munoz said, she never received true relief during her time as a patient at Lags Medical. She said she felt coerced to get several injections, none of which seemed to help. €œIf I didn’t get the procedures, I didn’t get the pain medication,” she said.

Her husband, Ramon, a landscaper who was also a patient, received an injection there that he said left him with permanent stiffness in his neck. Munoz knows at least five other people at bingo night who were former patients at Lags Medical. One of them, Rick Freeman, came over to her table to chat. He swayed back and forth as he walked, his knees, he explained, swollen after 35 years living with HIV.

At Lags Medical, Freeman said, he felt pressured by staff to receive injections if he wanted to continue receiving his opioid prescriptions. €œIf you don’t cooperate with them, they would reduce your meds down,” he said. At the front of the room, Gail Soto, who ran the event, sold bingo cards to the latecomers. Soto, 72, said she injured her back while working an administrative job at a construction company years ago and suffers from spinal stenosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and fibromyalgia.

She, too, was a patient at Lags Medical for years. In addition to her opioid prescription, Soto said, she received repeated injections and three nerve ablations. At first, the ablations helped, but what staff members didn’t tell her, she said, was that the nerves they destroyed could grow back. Ultimately, she said, the procedures left her in worse pain.

Soto’s biggest concern is the spinal stimulator that she said Lags Medical surgically inserted into her back five years ago. She said the doctors told her the device would work so well that she would no longer need her pain pills. She said they didn’t explain that the device would work only two hours a day, and on one side of her body. She remained in too much pain to give up her meds, she said, and, five years later, the battery is failing.

Soto sleeps in a recliner chair in her three-bedroom mobile home in Lemoore, another small city near Hanford. It’s well kept but humble, and she and her husband keep a collection of wind chimes on the front porch that create a wave of gentle music when a breeze passes by. The couple take good care of each other and their two beloved Chihuahuas, but life has become increasingly difficult for Soto. As the battery on her spinal stimulator has started to fail, she said, she has sudden electrical pulses that shoot up her body.

€œMy husband says sometimes when I sleep that my body will just jump up in the air,” she said. But now that Lags Medical is closed, she said, she can’t find a doctor willing to remove the device. €œMost doctors are telling me right now, ‘We can’t, because we didn’t [put it in]. We don’t want nothing to do with that.’” Ramon Soto and his wife, Gail, are devoted to their two beloved Chihuahuas.

Their mobile home in Lemoore, California, is well kept but humble. (Anna Maria Barry-Jester / KHN) Waitlists and Withdrawal Audrey Audelo Ramirez said she picked up her final refill from Lags Medical on June 4 and by July 4 had no meds left to treat her pain. Ramirez said she called every pain management clinic in Fresno, but none were taking new patients. €œThey left us all high and dry,” she said.

€œEverybody.” In the weeks that followed the closures, county officials throughout the Central Valley saw a flood of patients on high doses of opioids in search of new providers, they said. Patients couldn’t access their medical records, so other providers had no idea what their treatments had been. €œWe had to create a crisis response to it because there was no organized response at that time,” said Dr. Rais Vohra, the interim health officer for Fresno County.

Fresno County’s health system is already lean, Vohra said. Toss in this abrupt closure and you end up in the kind of crisis rarely seen in other fields of medicine. €œYou’d never do this with a cancer clinic,” he said. €œYou’d never abruptly stop chemo.” The state asked Dr.

Phillip Coffin, director of substance abuse research for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, to run provider training and persuade doctors to take on new patients. Many practices have rules against taking new patients on opioids, or will refuse to prescribe doses above certain thresholds. €œWe know that when you stop prescribing opioids, some people end up with death from suicide, overdose, increased illicit opioid use, pain exacerbations. It’s really important to have a continuity, and that is not really possible in the current opioid-prescribing culture,” Coffin said.

The threat to patients is so severe that the FDA issued a warning in 2019 against cutting patients off from prescription opioids. Gina, a retired nurse who asked to be identified by only her first name for fear she’d be discriminated against by other doctors, had been a Lags Medical patient for six years. She said she called every practice she could find in her Central Coast town, and was put on a waiting list at one. Suffering from a severe case of scoliosis, she started rationing the pain pills she had come to rely on.

When she finally secured an appointment, she said, she was told by the doctor she was on “some very strong meds” and he would fill only one of her two prescriptions. €œYou’re like a criminal,” she said. €œYou’re branded as ‘we don’t trust you.’” She started experiencing withdrawal symptoms — sweating, lost appetite, sleeplessness, anxiety. Worst of all, her pain “came back with a vengeance,” she said.

€œI think about this, what I’d have been like if I’d never gone through pain management. I sometimes wonder if I’d be better off.” As for Ramirez, her primary care doctor finally secured an appointment for her at another pain clinic, she said. It was in the same space as the old Lags Medical clinic, and she said she recognized many of the staff members. But now there was a new name.

Central California Pain Management. From her perspective, it was as if nothing had changed. And she still doesn’t know whether she needs to worry about the care she received during more than four years at Lags Medical. The new clinic’s owner, Dr.

Ashok Parmar, said that he is leasing the space and that Lagattuta is his landlord. Parmar said he doesn’t do punch biopsies, nor does he diagnose small fiber neuropathy. After all, he said, he would treat the pain the same way, with or without the diagnosis. How We Did ThisKHN evaluated the billing practices of physicians and clinics associated with Lags Medical Centers using data from both Medicare and Medi-Cal.KHN did multiple analyses using Medicare Part B records that show, for each medical practitioner or lab, every procedure or service billed to the federal government, along with the number of times a procedure was performed, the number of Medicare beneficiaries who received specific services, and how much Medicare reimbursed.

The Part B records include billings from 2015 through 2019, the most recent years available. The records are limited to beneficiaries who have traditional fee-for-service Medicare rather than private Medicare Advantage plans. Medicare suppressed data in cases in which a provider performed a procedure on 10 or fewer beneficiaries in a year.KHN analyzed Medicare billing records for a range of specific procedures, comparing Dr. Francis P.

Lagattuta’s billings with those of other practitioners who also identified themselves in the records as Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation specialists.Through a public records request, KHN also obtained data from the California Department of Health Care Services for a range of specific medical procedures performed on state Medi-Cal recipients by all California providers from 2015 through 2020, as well as every service rendered through Medi-Cal under Lagattuta’s provider number during that time. The Medi-Cal data is organized to show both the rendering and billing provider for a procedure, allowing KHN to look across the network of Lags Medical clinics. To calculate services provided at Lags Medical Centers, KHN included services performed under Lagattuta’s provider number, as well as active provider numbers of organizations with a mailing address associated with Lags Medical clinics that listed Dr. Francis P.

Lagattuta or another Lags employee as their authorized official. DHCS suppressed data for instances in which a provider performed a procedure fewer than 11 times on Medi-Cal patients in a year.The Medi-Cal data did not include reimbursement amounts for procedures, so KHN obtained historical reimbursement amounts from DHCS to calculate the value of the services based on the fee-for-service reimbursement rate in July of each year. Care received by patients with Medi-Cal is generally reimbursed by the state in one of two ways. A fee-for-service model, in which physicians are reimbursed for services according to a set fee schedule that is public.

Or a managed-care model, in which the state pays insurers a monthly fee per patient, and the insurers reimburse providers amounts that are not public. Only a small percentage of Lags Medical services were reimbursed through fee-for-service plans during the years reviewed. As a result, the values of procedures calculated by KHN are meant to convey a general estimate of their worth. All estimates are calculated using the Basic Rate.

KHN senior correspondent Jordan Rau and Phillip Reese, an assistant professor of journalism at California State University-Sacramento, contributed to this report. This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation. Anna Maria Barry-Jester. annab@kff.org, @annabarryjester Jenny Gold.

jgold@kff.org, @JennyAGold Related Topics Contact Us Submit a Story TipSamantha Young, a political correspondent for California Healthline, on Feb. 15 discussed how Medi-Cal patients struggle to get their prescription drugs on KCRW’s “Press Play.” Interim Southern bureau editor Andy Miller discussed Medicare penalties for hospitals in Georgia on Georgia Public Broadcasting’s “Lawmakers” on Feb. 10. Related Topics Contact Us Submit a Story TipRory Adams did not know that Christmas in a small rural hospital in West Virginia would be the last time he saw his wife alive.

She’d entered prison in early January 2021 to serve a 42-month sentence for failure to collect payroll taxes. She was supposed to return to North Carolina, their two adult children, and their quilting business this summer. But when he saw her, she was heavily sedated. A ventilator was helping her breathe as she struggled with erectile dysfunction treatment.

Rebecca “Maria” Adams, 59, died 18 days after Christmas in the same hospital bed. The cialis has proved especially deadly behind bars. Inmates are more than twice as likely to die of erectile dysfunction treatment as the general population. And the deaths continue to pile up.

Adams was the second of three women incarcerated at Alderson Federal Prison Camp to die of erectile dysfunction treatment in less than a week in January. The prison that holds fewer than 700 inmates had 50 cases as of Feb. 8. When U.S.

Case numbers surged in December because of the omicron variant, an understaffed and still underprepared federal prison system was once again swamped by erectile dysfunction treatment cases. The deaths of these three women imprisoned in West Virginia reflect a federal prison system plagued by chronic problems exacerbated by the cialis, including understaffing, inadequate medical care, and few compassionate releases. The most recent statistics from the Federal Bureau of Prisons report 284 inmates and seven staff members have died nationwide because of erectile dysfunction treatment since March 28, 2020. Medical and legal experts say those numbers are likely an undercount, but the federal prison system lacks independent oversight.

Alderson, where Adams was incarcerated, was one of the first federal prisons to have a erectile dysfunction treatment outbreak in December in this latest national surge. But as of the first week of February, 16 federal facilities had over 100 cases. More than 5,500 federal inmates and over 2,000 BOP staffers had tested positive for erectile dysfunction treatment, according to BOP data. At one prison in Yazoo City, Mississippi, over 500 inmates — almost half the prison — tested positive in late January.

Including the three women from Alderson, 12 federal inmates died while sick with erectile dysfunction treatment in January. The Bureau of Prisons has come under fire in the past few months after investigations by The Associated Press and The Marshall Project alleged widespread corruption and called the agency a “hotbed of abuse.” In January, before all three Alderson inmates died, the head of the BOP, Michael Carvajal, announced his resignation, although he remains in charge until a successor takes the helm. The criticism of the agency continued in congressional testimony in January after the deaths at Alderson. Legal and medical experts specializing in the federal system, as well as members of Congress, accused the BOP of hiding erectile dysfunction treatment deaths and cases, repeatedly failing to provide adequate health care, and failing to properly implement the compassionate release program meant to move at-risk inmates to home confinement.

Five recently released inmates, two incarcerated inmates, and six family members of women incarcerated at Alderson, confirmed these allegations to KHN. The Alderson inmates and their families reported denial of medical care, a lack of erectile dysfunction treatment testing, retaliation for speaking out about conditions, understaffing, and a prison overrun by erectile dysfunction treatment. Absences by prison staff members sickened by the cialis led to cold meals, dirty clothes, and a denial of items like sanitary napkins and clean water from the commissary. In an email, BOP spokesperson Benjamin O’Cone said the agency does not comment on what he called “anecdotal allegations.” He said the BOP follows erectile dysfunction treatment guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

O’Cone pointed to the BOP’s online dashboard about erectile dysfunction treatment statistics when asked how many inmates have died since Dec. 1 and how many had tested positive for erectile dysfunction treatment before death. A day after KHN emailed the BOP about the deaths of the three inmates from Alderson, two appeared on the dashboard and news releases were published. The women had been dead for almost a week.

All three women — Adams, Juanita Haynes, and Bree Eberbaugh — had sought compassionate releases because of preexisting medical conditions that made them more susceptible to dying from erectile dysfunction treatment, including Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, congestive heart failure, obesity, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. View note Nationwide, over 23,000 people were released from the federal system from March 2020 to October 2021, but more than 157,000 people are still imprisoned. After early cialis releases, the prison population in the U.S. Is climbing back to pre-cialis levels.

Some of the early drop was due to inmate deaths, which rose 46% from 2019 to 2020, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. For people like Adams, compassionate release never came. The BOP reports that only two women have been granted compassionate release from Alderson since the outbreak began in December. One was Haynes, who was granted release while intubated.

She died four days later, in the hospital. €œThey will literally be released so they don’t die in chains,” Alison Guernsey, clinical associate professor of law at the University of Iowa, said in congressional testimony in January. She called BOP facilities “death traps,” referring to the BOP’s “inability or reticence to control the spread of erectile dysfunction treatment behind bars by engaging in aggressive evidence-based public-health measures.” Guernsey testified that the BOP death data is “suspect” because of delayed reporting, the exclusion of deaths in prisons run by private contractors, and those released just in time to “die free.” Haynes’ death, for example, is not counted in BOP data even though she got sick with erectile dysfunction treatment while incarcerated because she was freed through compassionate release right before she died in January, months after her first applications were denied. Guernsey questions the BOP’s erectile dysfunction treatment numbers because the agency does not report the number of tests administered, just the number of positive tests.

€œThe BOP can hide whether low rate is due to low erectile dysfunction treatment cases or inadequate testing,” she said. All these factors mean the numbers of deaths and cases are likely “substantially” greater than reported, Guernsey said. The impact of incorrect data trickles down to the denial of compassionate release requests. One factor that judges consider is the level of erectile dysfunction treatment cases and risk within that prison.

Eberbaugh, the third inmate from Alderson to die in January, applied in March 2020 for compassionate release from her 54-month sentence, citing preexisting medical conditions. In August 2020, a court denied Eberbaugh’s motion, in part citing the lack of erectile dysfunction treatment cases in the prison. A few days later, she responded in a handwritten letter, appealing for legal counsel from the public defender’s office. €œYour honor, it is only a matter of time before it reaches here and I am in fear of my life,” she wrote.

The court denied that appeal in April 2021. Within nine months, she had died of erectile dysfunction treatment. LJ Dawson. @LJDawson0 Related Topics Contact Us Submit a Story TipLate one night in January, Jonathan Coffino, 78, turned to his wife as they sat in bed.

€œI don’t know how much longer I can do this,” he said, glumly. Coffino was referring to the caution that’s come to define his life during the erectile dysfunction treatment cialis. After two years of mostly staying at home and avoiding people, his patience is frayed and his distress is growing. €œThere’s a terrible fear that I’ll never get back my normal life,” Coffino told me, describing feelings he tries to keep at bay.

€œAnd there’s an awful sense of purposelessness.” Despite recent signals that erectile dysfunction treatment’s grip on the country may be easing, many older adults are struggling with persistent malaise, heightened by the spread of the highly contagious omicron variant. Even those who adapted well initially are saying their fortitude is waning or wearing thin. Like younger people, they’re beset by uncertainty about what the future may bring. But added to that is an especially painful feeling that opportunities that will never come again are being squandered, time is running out, and death is drawing ever nearer.

€œFolks are becoming more anxious and angry and stressed and agitated because this has gone on for so long,” said Katherine Cook, chief operating officer of Monadnock Family Services in Keene, New Hampshire, which operates a community mental health center that serves older adults. €œI’ve never seen so many people who say they’re hopeless and have nothing to look forward to,” said Henry Kimmel, a clinical psychologist in Sherman Oaks, California, who focuses on older adults. To be sure, older adults have cause for concern. Throughout the cialis, they’ve been at much higher risk of becoming seriously ill and dying than other age groups.

Even seniors who are fully vaccinated and boosted remain vulnerable. More than two-thirds of vaccinated people hospitalized from June through September with breakthrough s were 65 or older. Kathleen Tate (Kathleen Tate) The constant stress of wondering “Am I going to be OK?. € and “What’s the future going to look like?.

€ has been hard for Kathleen Tate, 74, a retired nurse in Mount Vernon, Washington. She has late-onset post-polio syndrome and severe osteoarthritis. €œI guess I had the expectation that once we were vaccinated the world would open up again,” said Tate, who lives alone. Although that happened for a while last summer, she largely stopped going out as first the delta and then the omicron variants swept through her area.

Now, she said she feels “a quiet desperation.” This isn’t something that Tate talks about with friends, though she’s hungry for human connection. €œI see everybody dealing with extraordinary stresses in their lives, and I don’t want to add to that by complaining or asking to be comforted,” she said. Tate described a feeling of “flatness” and “being worn out” that saps her motivation. €œIt’s almost too much effort to reach out to people and try to pull myself out of that place,” she said, admitting she’s watching too much TV and drinking too much alcohol.

€œIt’s just like I want to mellow out and go numb, instead of bucking up and trying to pull myself together.” Beth Spencer(Tillie Spencer) Beth Spencer, 73, a recently retired social worker who lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with her 90-year-old husband, is grappling with similar feelings during this typically challenging Midwestern winter. €œThe weather here is gray, the sky is gray, and my psyche is gray,” she told me. €œI typically am an upbeat person, but I’m struggling to stay motivated.” “I can’t sort out whether what I’m going through is due to retirement or caregiver stress or erectile dysfunction treatment,” Spencer said, explaining that her husband was recently diagnosed with congestive heart failure. €œI find myself asking ‘What’s the meaning of my life right now?.

€™ and I don’t have an answer.” Bonnie Olsen, a clinical psychologist at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, works extensively with older adults. €œAt the beginning of the cialis, many older adults hunkered down and used a lifetime of coping skills to get through this,” she said. €œNow, as people face this current surge, it’s as if their well of emotional reserves is being depleted.” Most at risk are older adults who are isolated and frail, who were vulnerable to depression and anxiety even before the cialis, or who have suffered serious losses and acute grief. Watch for signs that they are withdrawing from social contact or shutting down emotionally, Olsen said.

€œWhen people start to avoid being in touch, then I become more worried,” she said. Fred Axelrod(Fred Axelrod) Fred Axelrod, 66, of Los Angeles, who’s disabled by ankylosing spondylitis, a serious form of arthritis, lost three close friends during the cialis. Two died of cancer and one of complications related to diabetes. €œYou can’t go out and replace friends like that at my age,” he told me.

Now, the only person Axelrod talks to on a regular basis is Kimmel, his therapist. €œI don’t do anything. There’s nothing to do, nowhere to go,” he complained. €œThere’s a lot of times I feel I’m just letting the clock run out.

You start thinking, ‘How much more time do I have left?. €™â€ “Older adults are thinking about mortality more than ever and asking, ‘How will we ever get out of this nightmare,’” Kimmel said. €œI tell them we all have to stay in the present moment and do our best to keep ourselves occupied and connect with other people.” Loss has also been a defining feature of the cialis for Bud Carraway, 79, of Midvale, Utah, whose wife, Virginia, died a year ago. She was a stroke survivor who had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and atrial fibrillation, an abnormal heartbeat.

The couple, who met in the Marines, had been married 55 years. €œI became depressed. Anxiety kept me awake at night. I couldn’t turn my mind off,” Carraway told me.

Those feelings and a sense of being trapped throughout the cialis “brought me pretty far down,” he said. Help came from an eight-week grief support program offered online through the University of Utah. One of the assignments was to come up with a list of strategies for cultivating well-being, which Carraway keeps on his front door. Among the items listed.

€œWalk the mall. Eat with friends. Do some volunteer work. Join a bowling league.

Go to a movie. Check out senior centers.” “I’d circle them as I accomplished each one of them. I knew I had to get up and get out and live again,” Carraway said. €œThis program, it just made a world of difference.” Kathie Supiano, an associate professor at the University of Utah College of Nursing who oversees the erectile dysfunction treatment grief groups, said older adults’ ability to bounce back from setbacks shouldn’t be discounted.

€œThis isn’t their first rodeo. Many people remember polio and the AIDs epidemic. They’ve been through a lot and know how to put things in perspective.” Alissa Ballot, 66, realized recently she can trust herself to find a way forward. After becoming extremely isolated early in the cialis, Ballot moved last November from Chicago to New York City.

There, she found a community of new friends online at Central Synagogue in Manhattan and her loneliness evaporated as she began attending events in person. With omicron’s rise in December, Ballot briefly became fearful that she’d end up alone again. But, this time, something clicked as she pondered some of her rabbi’s spiritual teachings. €œI felt paused on a precipice looking into the unknown and suddenly I thought, ‘So, we don’t know what’s going to happen next, stop worrying.’ And I relaxed.

Now I’m like, this is a blip, and I’ll get through it.” We’re eager to hear from readers about questions you’d like answered, problems you’ve been having with your care and advice you need in dealing with the health care system. Visit khn.org/columnists to submit your requests or tips. Judith Graham. khn.navigatingaging@gmail.com, @judith_graham Related Topics Contact Us Submit a Story Tip.

HANFORD, Calif buy cialis online usa. €” On May 13 of last year, the cellphones of thousands of California residents undergoing treatment for chronic pain lit up with a terse text message. €œDue to unforeseen circumstances, Lags Medical Centers will be closing effective May 19, 2021.” In a buy cialis online usa matter of days, Lags Medical, a sprawling network of privately owned pain clinics serving more than 20,000 patients throughout the state’s Central Valley and Central Coast, would shut its doors. Its patients, most of them working-class people reliant on government-funded insurance, were left without ready access to their medical records or handoffs to other physicians. Many patients were dependent on opioids to manage the pain caused by a debilitating disease or injury, according to alerts about the closures that state health officials emailed to area physicians.

They were buy cialis online usa sent off with one final 30-day prescription, and no clear path for how to handle the agony — whether from their underlying conditions or the physical dependency that accompanies long-term use of painkillers — once that prescription ran out. The closures came on the same day that the California Department of Health Care Services suspended state Medi-Cal reimbursements to 17 of Lags Medical’s 28 locations, citing without detail “potential harm to patients” and an ongoing investigation by the state Department of Justice into “credible allegations of fraud.” In the months since, the state has declined to elaborate on the concerns that prompted its investigation. Patients are still in the dark about what happened with their care and to their bodies. Even as the government remains largely silent about its investigation, interviews with former Lags Medical patients and employees, as well as KHN analyses of reams of Medicare and Medi-Cal billing data and other court and government documents, suggest the clinics operated buy cialis online usa based on a markedly high-volume and unorthodox approach to pain management. This includes regularly performing skin biopsies that industry experts describe as out of the norm for pain specialists, as well as notably high rates of other sometimes painful procedures, including nerve ablations and high-end urine tests that screen for an extensive list of drugs.

Those procedures generated millions of dollars in insurer payments in recent years for Lags Medical Centers, an affiliated network of clinics under the ownership of Dr. Francis P buy cialis online usa. Lagattuta. The clinics’ patients primarily were insured by Medicare, the federally funded program for seniors and people with disabilities, or Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program for low-income residents. Taken individually, the fees for buy cialis online usa each procedure are not eye-popping.

But when performed at high volume, they add up to millions of dollars. Take, for example, the punch biopsy, a medical procedure in which a circular blade is used buy cialis online usa to extract a sample of deep skin tissue the size of a pencil eraser. The technique is commonly used in dermatology to diagnose skin cancer but has limited use in pain management medicine, usually involving a referral to a neurologist, according to multiple experts interviewed. These experts said it would be unusual to use the procedure as part of routine pain management. In Lagattuta’s specialty — physical medicine and rehabilitation, a common pain management field — buy cialis online usa just six of the nearly 8,000 U.S.

Physicians treating Medicare patients billed for punch biopsies on more than 10 patients in 2019, the most recent year for which data was available. Four, including Lagattuta, were affiliated with Lags Medical. Medicare and Medi-Cal data are organized differently, and each provides distinct insights buy cialis online usa into Lags Medical’s billing practices. For Medicare, KHN’s findings reflect the number of procedures and actual reimbursements billed through Lagattuta’s provider number. But the Medicare figures do not encompass services and billing amounts for other providers across the chain, nor reimbursements for patients enrolled in private Medicare Advantage plans.

KHN used Medi-Cal buy cialis online usa records to assess the volume of services performed across the entire chain. But the state could not provide totals for how much Lags Medical was reimbursed because of California’s extensive use of managed-care plans, which do not make their reimbursement rates public. Where possible, KHN estimated the worth of Medi-Cal procedures based on the set rates Medi-Cal pays traditional fee-for-service plans, which are public. Lags Medical clinics performed more than 22,000 punch biopsies on Medi-Cal patients from 2016 through 2019, according to buy cialis online usa state data. Medi-Cal reimbursement rates for punch biopsies changed over time.

In 2019 the state’s reimbursement buy cialis online usa rate was more than $200 for a set of three biopsies performed on patients in fee-for-service plans. Laboratory analysis of punch biopsies was worth far more. Lags Medical clinics sent biopsies to a Lags-affiliated lab co-located at a clinic in Santa Maria, according to medical records and employee interviews. From 2016 through 2019, Lags Medical clinics and providers performed tens of thousands of pathology services associated with the preparation and examination of buy cialis online usa tissue samples from Medi-Cal patients, according to state records. The services would have been worth an estimated $3.9 million using Medi-Cal’s average fee-for-service rates during that period.

In that same period, Medicare reimbursed Lagattuta at least $5.7 million for pathology activities using those same billing codes, federal data shows. Much of the buy cialis online usa work at Lags Medical was performed by a relatively small number of nurse practitioners and physician assistants, each juggling dozens of patients a day with sporadic, often remote supervision by the medical doctors affiliated with the clinics, according to interviews with former employees. Lagattuta himself lived in Florida for more than a year while serving as medical director, according to testimony he provided as part of an ongoing malpractice lawsuit that names Lagattuta, Lags Medical, and a former employee as defendants. Former employees said they were given bonuses if they treated more than 32 patients in a day, a strategy Lagattuta confirmed in his deposition in the malpractice lawsuit. €œIf they saw over, like, 32 patients, they would buy cialis online usa get, like, $10 a patient,” Lagattuta testified.

The lawsuit, filed in Fresno County Superior Court, accuses a Lags Medical provider in Fresno of puncturing a patient’s lung during a botched injection for back pain. Lagattuta and the other named defendants have denied the incident was due to negligent treatment, saying, in part, the patient consented to the procedure knowing it carried risks. Lags Medical Centers, one of California’s largest chains buy cialis online usa of pain clinics, abruptly closed dozens of clinics, including this Hanford site, in May 2021. Nine months later, patients are still in the dark about what happened with their care. (Anna Maria Barry-Jester / KHN) Hector Sanchez, the nurse buy cialis online usa practitioner who performed the injection and is named in the lawsuit, testified in his own deposition that providers at the Lags Medical clinic in Fresno each treated from 30 to 40 patients on a typical workday.

According to Sanchez’s testimony and interviews with two additional former employees, Lags Medical clinics also offered financial bonuses to encourage providers to perform certain medical procedures, including punch biopsies and various injections. €œWe were incentivized initially to do these things with cash bonuses,” said one former employee, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution. €œThere was a lot of pressure to get those done, to talk patients into getting these done.” In his buy cialis online usa own deposition in the Fresno case, Lagattuta denied paying bonuses for specific medical procedures. Interviews with 17 former patients revealed common observations at Lags Medical clinics, such as crowded waiting rooms and an assembly-line environment. Many reported feeling pressure to consent to injections and other procedures or risk having their opioid supplies cut off.

Audrey Audelo Ramirez said she had worried for years buy cialis online usa that the care she was receiving at a Lags Medical clinic in Fresno was subpar. In the past couple of years, she said, there were sometimes so many patients waiting that the line wrapped around the building. Ramirez, 52, suffers from trigeminal neuralgia, a rare nerve disease that sends shocks of pain across the face so severe it’s known as the “suicide disease.” Over the years, Lags Medical had taken over prescribing almost all her medications. This included not only the opioids and gabapentin she relies on to endure excruciating buy cialis online usa pain, but also drugs to treat depression, anxiety, and sleep issues. Ramirez said she often felt pressured to get procedures she didn’t want.

€œThey were always just pushing injections, injections, injections,” she said. She said staffers performed painful punch biopsies on her that resulted in an additional diagnosis of small fiber neuropathy, a nerve disorder that can buy cialis online usa cause stabbing pain. She was among numerous patients who said they felt they needed to undergo the recommended procedures if they wanted continued prescriptions for their pain medications. €œIf you refuse any treatment they say they’re going to give you, you’re buy cialis online usa considered noncompliant and they stop your medication,” Ramirez said. She said she eventually agreed to an injection in her face, which she said was administered without adequate sedation.

€œIt was horrible, horrible,” she said. Still, she said, she buy cialis online usa kept going to the office because there weren’t many other options in her town. Lagattuta, through his lawyer, declined a request from KHN to respond to questions about the care provided at his clinics, citing the state investigation. €œSince there is an active investigation, Dr. Lagattuta cannot comment on it until it is completed,” attorney Matthew Brinegar wrote buy cialis online usa in an email.

Lagattuta’s license remains in good standing, and he said in his deposition in the Fresno lawsuit that he is still seeing patients in California. Experts interviewed by KHN noted that medical procedures such as injections can have a legitimate role in comprehensive pain management. But they also spoke in general terms about the emergence of a buy cialis online usa troubling pattern at U.S. Pain clinics involving the overuse of procedures. In the 1990s and early 2000s, problematic pain clinics hooked patients on opioids, then demanded cash to continue prescriptions, said Dr.

Theodore Parran, buy cialis online usa who is a professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University and has served as an expert witness in federal investigations into pain clinics. €œWhat has replaced them are troubled pain clinics that hook patients with the meds and accept insurance, but overuse procedures which really pay well,” he said. For patients, he added, the buy cialis online usa consequences are not benign. €œI mean they are painful,” he said. €œYou’re putting needles into people.” Leah Munoz and her husband, Ramon, of Tulare, California, are former Lags Medical Centers patients.

Although her pain never disappeared with treatment, Leah says, the opioids prescribed provided enough relief for her to continue doing the things she buy cialis online usa loved. €œI need it to live a halfway-normal life.” (Anna Maria Barry-Jester / KHN) ‘Knee Injections, Hip Injections, Foot Injections’ Before moving to California in 1998, Dr. Francis Lagattuta lived in Illinois and worked as a team doctor for the Chicago Bulls during its 1995-96 championship season. Out West, he opened a clinic in buy cialis online usa Santa Maria, a Latino-majority city along California’s Central Coast known for its strawberry fields, vineyards, and barbecue. From 2015 to 2020, the chain grew from a couple of clinics in Santa Barbara County to dozens throughout California, largely in rural areas, as well as far-flung locations in Washington state, Delaware, and Florida.

The California portion of the chain is organized as more than two dozen corporations and limited liability corporations owned by Lagattuta. His son, buy cialis online usa Francis P. Lagattuta II, was a manager for the company. On the Lags Medical website and in conversation with employees, the elder Lagattuta claimed he was on the vanguard of diagnosing and treating small fiber neuropathy. Much of the website has now buy cialis online usa been taken down.

But pages available via an archival site claim he had pioneered a three-pronged approach to pain management that made minimal use of opioids and surgeries, instead emphasizing testing, injections, mental health, diet, and exercise. €œIn keeping with his social justice values, Dr buy cialis online usa. Lagattuta plans to share these findings to the rest of the world, hopefully to help solve the opioid crisis, and end suffering for millions of people struggling with pain,” touted a biography once highlighted on the website. Numerous Lags Medical patients interviewed by KHN said that even when they were given punch biopsies and a subsequent diagnosis of neuropathy, their treatment plan continued to involve high doses of opioid medications. Dr.

Victor C. Wang, chief of the division of pain neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said punch biopsies are occasionally used in research but are not a standard part of pain medicine. Instead, small fiber neuropathy is usually diagnosed with a simple clinical exam. €œThe treatment is going to be the same whether you have a biopsy or not,” said Wang. €œI always tell the fellows, you can do this test or that one, but is it really going to change the management of the patient?.

€ Ruby Avila, a mother of three in Visalia, remembers having the punch biopsies done at least three times during her four years as a Lags Medical patient. €œI have scars down my leg,” she said. Each time, she said, providers removed a set of three skin specimens that were used to diagnose her with small fiber neuropathy. Avila, 37, who has lived with pain since childhood, had found it validating to finally have a diagnosis. But after learning more about how common the biopsies were at Lags Medical, she was shaken.

€œIt’s overwhelming to hear that they were doing it on a lot of people,” she said. Sanchez, the nurse practitioner named in the Fresno lawsuit, spoke of other procedures that garnered bonuses. €œTrigger point injections, knee injections, hip injections, foot injections for plantar fasciitis and elbow injections” all qualified for $10 bonuses, he said in his testimony. Two former employees, who asked not to be named, echoed Sanchez, saying they were incentivized to do certain procedures, including injections and punch biopsies. In his testimony in the Fresno case, Lagattuta denied paying bonuses for procedures.

€œIt was only for the patients,” he said. €œWe never did it based on procedures.” Incentive systems for a specific procedure are “completely unethical,” said Dr. Michael Barnett, an assistant professor of health policy at Harvard. €œIt’s like giving police officers a quota for speeding tickets. What do you think they’re going to do?.

I can’t think of any justification.” After Lags Medical Centers closed, Leah Munoz struggled to obtain her medical records and to find a doctor to refill her prescriptions, she says. As the pain surged, she says, it became hard to leave home. €œI missed a lot of bingo, a lot of grocery shopping, a lot of going to my grandkids’ birthday parties.” (Anna Maria Barry-Jester / KHN) Dr. Carl Johnson, 77, is a pathologist who directed Lags Medical’s Santa Maria lab from 2018 to 2021. Johnson said the only specimens he looked at came from punch biopsies, the first time in his long career as a pathologist that he had been asked to run such an analysis.

On an average day, he said, he examined the slides of about 40 patients, searching for signs of small fiber neuropathy. Lagattuta gave him papers to read on peripheral neuropathy and assured him they were on the cutting edge of care for pain patients. Johnson said he “never thought there was anything untoward going on” until he arrived on his last day and was told to pack up his belongings because the entire operation was shutting down. Lags Medical performed other procedures at rates that also set them apart. From 2015 through 2020 — the span for which KHN had state data — Lags Medical performed more than 24,000 nerve ablations, a procedure in which part of a nerve is destroyed to reduce pain, on Medi-Cal patients.

That’s more than 1 in 6 of all nerve ablations billed through Medi-Cal during that period. An analysis of federal data also shows Lagattuta was an outlier. For example, in 2018 he billed Medicare for nerve ablations more often than 88% of the doctors in his field who performed the procedure. Lags Medical also used the in-house lab to run drug tests on patients’ urine samples. From 2017 through 2019, Lags Medical facilities often ordered the most extensive — and expensive — set of drug tests, which check for the presence of at least 22 drugs, according to state and federal data.

For perspective, in 2019, more than 23,000 of the most extensive drug tests were ordered on Medi-Cal patients under Lagattuta’s provider number, more than double the number tied to the next highest biller. The next five top billers were all lab companies. Overall, from 2017 through 2019, nearly 60,000 of the most extensive drug tests were billed to Medicare and Medi-Cal under Lagattuta’s provider number. Medicare reimbursed Lagattuta $5.4 million for these tests during that period. Using state fee-for-service rates, the testing billed to Medi-Cal would have been worth an estimated $6.3 million.

That doesn’t include less extensive drug screens or those billed under other providers’ numbers. Pain management experts described the use of extensive screening as unnecessary in routine pain treatment. The overuse of such tests has been the subject of numerous Medicare investigations in recent years. Private pain clinics like Lags Medical are only loosely regulated and generally are not required to hold a special license from the state. But the physicians who work there are regulated by the Medical Board of California.

In December 2019, a patient who’d visited clinics in both Visalia and the Central Coast filed a complaint against Lagattuta with the medical board claiming, among other things, that she received biopsies that were not properly performed, that she underwent excessive testing, and that positive drug tests had been falsified. The medical board had another pain management doctor review more than 300 pages of documents and found “no deviations from the standard of care” and “did not find any over testing, or improperly performed biopsies.” He did, however, find some record-keeping problems, including numerous procedures in which patient consent was not documented. He also found instances in which procedures were performed and repeated without documentation that they were effective. The patient who filed the complaint was given a medial branch nerve block in November 2014, followed by a radiofrequency ablation in December, and another in February. No improvements for the patient were ever noted in the charts, the investigating doctor found.

The medical board chalked it up to a record-keeping error and fined Lagattuta $350. A Halfway-Normal Life On a warm evening in late July, Leah Munoz drove her power wheelchair around the long plastic tables at the Veterans Memorial Building in Hanford, a dusty farm town in California’s Central Valley. Senior bingo night was crowded with gray-haired players waiting for the game to begin. She found an empty spot and carefully set out $50 worth of bingo cards, alongside her collection of 14 brightly colored daubers. Munoz, 55 and a mother of six, said she has suffered from a litany of illnesses — thyroid cancer, breast cancer, lupus, osteoarthritis — that leave her in near-constant pain.

She’s been playing bingo since she was a little girl, and said it helps distract from the pain and calm her mind. She looks forward to this event all week. Munoz was a Lags Medical patient for about four years and, while her pain never disappeared, the opioids prescribed provided enough relief for her to continue doing the things she loved. €œThere’s a difference between addiction and dependence. I need it to live a halfway-normal life,” Munoz said.

After Lags Medical closed in May, her primary care doctor initially refused to refill her opioid prescriptions. She said she called the Lags Medical offices to try to get a copy of her medical records to prove her need, and even showed up in person. But she said she was unable to get them. As the pills dwindled and the pain surged, Munoz said, it became hard to leave her home. €œI missed a lot of bingo, a lot of grocery shopping, a lot of going to my grandkids’ birthday parties.

You miss out on life,” she said. Ultimately, she said, her primary care doctor referred her to another pain clinic, and she was able to resume her prescription. Leah Munoz is a regular at senior bingo nights at the Veterans Memorial Building in Hanford, California. She says bingo helps distract her from the pain wrought by a litany of illnesses she has developed over the years. (Anna Maria Barry-Jester / KHN) Gail Soto runs senior bingo events in Hanford, California.

She is among the former Lags Medical Centers patients who say they received repeated medical procedures, including injections and nerve ablations, along with opioids. (Anna Maria Barry-Jester / KHN) Even with pain medications, Munoz said, she never received true relief during her time as a patient at Lags Medical. She said she felt coerced to get several injections, none of which seemed to help. €œIf I didn’t get the procedures, I didn’t get the pain medication,” she said. Her husband, Ramon, a landscaper who was also a patient, received an injection there that he said left him with permanent stiffness in his neck.

Munoz knows at least five other people at bingo night who were former patients at Lags Medical. One of them, Rick Freeman, came over to her table to chat. He swayed back and forth as he walked, his knees, he explained, swollen after 35 years living with HIV. At Lags Medical, Freeman said, he felt pressured by staff to receive injections if he wanted to continue receiving his opioid prescriptions. €œIf you don’t cooperate with them, they would reduce your meds down,” he said.

At the front of the room, Gail Soto, who ran the event, sold bingo cards to the latecomers. Soto, 72, said she injured her back while working an administrative job at a construction company years ago and suffers from spinal stenosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and fibromyalgia. She, too, was a patient at Lags Medical for years. In addition to her opioid prescription, Soto said, she received repeated injections and three nerve ablations. At first, the ablations helped, but what staff members didn’t tell her, she said, was that the nerves they destroyed could grow back.

Ultimately, she said, the procedures left her in worse pain. Soto’s biggest concern is the spinal stimulator that she said Lags Medical surgically inserted into her back five years ago. She said the doctors told her the device would work so well that she would no longer need her pain pills. She said they didn’t explain that the device would work only two hours a day, and on one side of her body. She remained in too much pain to give up her meds, she said, and, five years later, the battery is failing.

Soto sleeps in a recliner chair in her three-bedroom mobile home in Lemoore, another small city near Hanford. It’s well kept but humble, and she and her husband keep a collection of wind chimes on the front porch that create a wave of gentle music when a breeze passes by. The couple take good care of each other and their two beloved Chihuahuas, but life has become increasingly difficult for Soto. As the battery on her spinal stimulator has started to fail, she said, she has sudden electrical pulses that shoot up her body. €œMy husband says sometimes when I sleep that my body will just jump up in the air,” she said.

But now that Lags Medical is closed, she said, she can’t find a doctor willing to remove the device. €œMost doctors are telling me right now, ‘We can’t, because we didn’t [put it in]. We don’t want nothing to do with that.’” Ramon Soto and his wife, Gail, are devoted to their two beloved Chihuahuas. Their mobile home in Lemoore, California, is well kept but humble. (Anna Maria Barry-Jester / KHN) Waitlists and Withdrawal Audrey Audelo Ramirez said she picked up her final refill from Lags Medical on June 4 and by July 4 had no meds left to treat her pain.

Ramirez said she called every pain management clinic in Fresno, but none were taking new patients. €œThey left us all high and dry,” she said. €œEverybody.” In the weeks that followed the closures, county officials throughout the Central Valley saw a flood of patients on high doses of opioids in search of new providers, they said. Patients couldn’t access their medical records, so other providers had no idea what their treatments had been. €œWe had to create a crisis response to it because there was no organized response at that time,” said Dr.

Rais Vohra, the interim health officer for Fresno County. Fresno County’s health system is already lean, Vohra said. Toss in this abrupt closure and you end up in the kind of crisis rarely seen in other fields of medicine. €œYou’d never do this with a cancer clinic,” he said. €œYou’d never abruptly stop chemo.” The state asked Dr.

Phillip Coffin, director of substance abuse research for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, to run provider training and persuade doctors to take on new patients. Many practices have rules against taking new patients on opioids, or will refuse to prescribe doses above certain thresholds. €œWe know that when you stop prescribing opioids, some people end up with death from suicide, overdose, increased illicit opioid use, pain exacerbations. It’s really important to have a continuity, and that is not really possible in the current opioid-prescribing culture,” Coffin said. The threat to patients is so severe that the FDA issued a warning in 2019 against cutting patients off from prescription opioids.

Gina, a retired nurse who asked to be identified by only her first name for fear she’d be discriminated against by other doctors, had been a Lags Medical patient for six years. She said she called every practice she could find in her Central Coast town, and was put on a waiting list at one. Suffering from a severe case of scoliosis, she started rationing the pain pills she had come to rely on. When she finally secured an appointment, she said, she was told by the doctor she was on “some very strong meds” and he would fill only one of her two prescriptions. €œYou’re like a criminal,” she said.

€œYou’re branded as ‘we don’t trust you.’” She started experiencing withdrawal symptoms — sweating, lost appetite, sleeplessness, anxiety. Worst of all, her pain “came back with a vengeance,” she said. €œI think about this, what I’d have been like if I’d never gone through pain management. I sometimes wonder if I’d be better off.” As for Ramirez, her primary care doctor finally secured an appointment for her at another pain clinic, she said. It was in the same space as the old Lags Medical clinic, and she said she recognized many of the staff members.

But now there was a new name. Central California Pain Management. From her perspective, it was as if nothing had changed. And she still doesn’t know whether she needs to worry about the care she received during more than four years at Lags Medical. The new clinic’s owner, Dr.

Ashok Parmar, said that he is leasing the space and that Lagattuta is his landlord. Parmar said he doesn’t do punch biopsies, nor does he diagnose small fiber neuropathy. After all, he said, he would treat the pain the same way, with or without the diagnosis. How We Did ThisKHN evaluated the billing practices of physicians and clinics associated with Lags Medical Centers using data from both Medicare and Medi-Cal.KHN did multiple analyses using Medicare Part B records that show, for each medical practitioner or lab, every procedure or service billed to the federal government, along with the number of times a procedure was performed, the number of Medicare beneficiaries who received specific services, and how much Medicare reimbursed. The Part B records include billings from 2015 through 2019, the most recent years available.

The records are limited to beneficiaries who have traditional fee-for-service Medicare rather than private Medicare Advantage plans. Medicare suppressed data in cases in which a provider performed a procedure on 10 or fewer beneficiaries in a year.KHN analyzed Medicare billing records for a range of specific procedures, comparing Dr. Francis P. Lagattuta’s billings with those of other practitioners who also identified themselves in the records as Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation specialists.Through a public records request, KHN also obtained data from the California Department of Health Care Services for a range of specific medical procedures performed on state Medi-Cal recipients by all California providers from 2015 through 2020, as well as every service rendered through Medi-Cal under Lagattuta’s provider number during that time. The Medi-Cal data is organized to show both the rendering and billing provider for a procedure, allowing KHN to look across the network of Lags Medical clinics.

To calculate services provided at Lags Medical Centers, KHN included services performed under Lagattuta’s provider number, as well as active provider numbers of organizations with a mailing address associated with Lags Medical clinics that listed Dr. Francis P. Lagattuta or another Lags employee as their authorized official. DHCS suppressed data for instances in which a provider performed a procedure fewer than 11 times on Medi-Cal patients in a year.The Medi-Cal data did not include reimbursement amounts for procedures, so KHN obtained historical reimbursement amounts from DHCS to calculate the value of the services based on the fee-for-service reimbursement rate in July of each year. Care received by patients with Medi-Cal is generally reimbursed by the state in one of two ways.

A fee-for-service model, in which physicians are reimbursed for services according to a set fee schedule that is public. Or a managed-care model, in which the state pays insurers a monthly fee per patient, and the insurers reimburse providers amounts that are not public. Only a small percentage of Lags Medical services were reimbursed through fee-for-service plans during the years reviewed. As a result, the values of procedures calculated by KHN are meant to convey a general estimate of their worth. All estimates are calculated using the Basic Rate.

KHN senior correspondent Jordan Rau and Phillip Reese, an assistant professor of journalism at California State University-Sacramento, contributed to this report. This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation. Anna Maria Barry-Jester. annab@kff.org, @annabarryjester Jenny Gold. jgold@kff.org, @JennyAGold Related Topics Contact Us Submit a Story TipSamantha Young, a political correspondent for California Healthline, on Feb.

15 discussed how Medi-Cal patients struggle to get their prescription drugs on KCRW’s “Press Play.” Interim Southern bureau editor Andy Miller discussed Medicare penalties for hospitals in Georgia on Georgia Public Broadcasting’s “Lawmakers” on Feb. 10. Related Topics Contact Us Submit a Story TipRory Adams did not know that Christmas in a small rural hospital in West Virginia would be the last time he saw his wife alive. She’d entered prison in early January 2021 to serve a 42-month sentence for failure to collect payroll taxes. She was supposed to return to North Carolina, their two adult children, and their quilting business this summer.

But when he saw her, she was heavily sedated. A ventilator was helping her breathe as she struggled with erectile dysfunction treatment. Rebecca “Maria” Adams, 59, died 18 days after Christmas in the same hospital bed. The cialis has proved especially deadly behind bars. Inmates are more than twice as likely to die of erectile dysfunction treatment as the general population.

And the deaths continue to pile up. Adams was the second of three women incarcerated at Alderson Federal Prison Camp to die of erectile dysfunction treatment in less than a week in January. The prison that holds fewer than 700 inmates had 50 cases as of Feb. 8. When U.S.

Case numbers surged in December because of the omicron variant, an understaffed and still underprepared federal prison system was once again swamped by erectile dysfunction treatment cases. The deaths of these three women imprisoned in West Virginia reflect a federal prison system plagued by chronic problems exacerbated by the cialis, including understaffing, inadequate medical care, and few compassionate releases. The most recent statistics from the Federal Bureau of Prisons report 284 inmates and seven staff members have died nationwide because of erectile dysfunction treatment since March 28, 2020. Medical and legal experts say those numbers are likely an undercount, but the federal prison system lacks independent oversight. Alderson, where Adams was incarcerated, was one of the first federal prisons to have a erectile dysfunction treatment outbreak in December in this latest national surge.

But as of the first week of February, 16 federal facilities had over 100 cases. More than 5,500 federal inmates and over 2,000 BOP staffers had tested positive for erectile dysfunction treatment, according to BOP data. At one prison in Yazoo City, Mississippi, over 500 inmates — almost half the prison — tested positive in late January. Including the three women from Alderson, 12 federal inmates died while sick with erectile dysfunction treatment in January. The Bureau of Prisons has come under fire in the past few months after investigations by The Associated Press and The Marshall Project alleged widespread corruption and called the agency a “hotbed of abuse.” In January, before all three Alderson inmates died, the head of the BOP, Michael Carvajal, announced his resignation, although he remains in charge until a successor takes the helm.

The criticism of the agency continued in congressional testimony in January after the deaths at Alderson. Legal and medical experts specializing in the federal system, as well as members of Congress, accused the BOP of hiding erectile dysfunction treatment deaths and cases, repeatedly failing to provide adequate health care, and failing to properly implement the compassionate release program meant to move at-risk inmates to home confinement. Five recently released inmates, two incarcerated inmates, and six family members of women incarcerated at Alderson, confirmed these allegations to KHN. The Alderson inmates and their families reported denial of medical care, a lack of erectile dysfunction treatment testing, retaliation for speaking out about conditions, understaffing, and a prison overrun by erectile dysfunction treatment. Absences by prison staff members sickened by the cialis led to cold meals, dirty clothes, and a denial of items like sanitary napkins and clean water from the commissary.

In an email, BOP spokesperson Benjamin O’Cone said the agency does not comment on what he called “anecdotal allegations.” He said the BOP follows erectile dysfunction treatment guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. O’Cone pointed to the BOP’s online dashboard about erectile dysfunction treatment statistics when asked how many inmates have died since Dec. 1 and how many had tested positive for erectile dysfunction treatment before death. A day after KHN emailed the BOP about the deaths of the three inmates from Alderson, two appeared on the dashboard and news releases were published. The women had been dead for almost a week.

All three women — Adams, Juanita Haynes, and Bree Eberbaugh — had sought compassionate releases because of preexisting medical conditions that made them more susceptible to dying from erectile dysfunction treatment, including Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, congestive heart failure, obesity, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. View note Nationwide, over 23,000 people were released from the federal system from March 2020 to October 2021, but more than 157,000 people are still imprisoned. After early cialis releases, the prison population in the U.S. Is climbing back to pre-cialis levels. Some of the early drop was due to inmate deaths, which rose 46% from 2019 to 2020, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

For people like Adams, compassionate release never came. The BOP reports that only two women have been granted compassionate release from Alderson since the outbreak began in December. One was Haynes, who was granted release while intubated. She died four days later, in the hospital. €œThey will literally be released so they don’t die in chains,” Alison Guernsey, clinical associate professor of law at the University of Iowa, said in congressional testimony in January.

She called BOP facilities “death traps,” referring to the BOP’s “inability or reticence to control the spread of erectile dysfunction treatment behind bars by engaging in aggressive evidence-based public-health measures.” Guernsey testified that the BOP death data is “suspect” because of delayed reporting, the exclusion of deaths in prisons run by private contractors, and those released just in time to “die free.” Haynes’ death, for example, is not counted in BOP data even though she got sick with erectile dysfunction treatment while incarcerated because she was freed through compassionate release right before she died in January, months after her first applications were denied. Guernsey questions the BOP’s erectile dysfunction treatment numbers because the agency does not report the number of tests administered, just the number of positive tests. €œThe BOP can hide whether low rate is due to low erectile dysfunction treatment cases or inadequate testing,” she said. All these factors mean the numbers of deaths and cases are likely “substantially” greater than reported, Guernsey said. The impact of incorrect data trickles down to the denial of compassionate release requests.

One factor that judges consider is the level of erectile dysfunction treatment cases and risk within that prison. Eberbaugh, the third inmate from Alderson to die in January, applied in March 2020 for compassionate release from her 54-month sentence, citing preexisting medical conditions. In August 2020, a court denied Eberbaugh’s motion, in part citing the lack of erectile dysfunction treatment cases in the prison. A few days later, she responded in a handwritten letter, appealing for legal counsel from the public defender’s office. €œYour honor, it is only a matter of time before it reaches here and I am in fear of my life,” she wrote.

The court denied that appeal in April 2021. Within nine months, she had died of erectile dysfunction treatment. LJ Dawson. @LJDawson0 Related Topics Contact Us Submit a Story TipLate one night in January, Jonathan Coffino, 78, turned to his wife as they sat in bed. €œI don’t know how much longer I can do this,” he said, glumly.

Coffino was referring to the caution that’s come to define his life during the erectile dysfunction treatment cialis. After two years of mostly staying at home and avoiding people, his patience is frayed and his distress is growing. €œThere’s a terrible fear that I’ll never get back my normal life,” Coffino told me, describing feelings he tries to keep at bay. €œAnd there’s an awful sense of purposelessness.” Despite recent signals that erectile dysfunction treatment’s grip on the country may be easing, many older adults are struggling with persistent malaise, heightened by the spread of the highly contagious omicron variant. Even those who adapted well initially are saying their fortitude is waning or wearing thin.

Like younger people, they’re beset by uncertainty about what the future may bring. But added to that is an especially painful feeling that opportunities that will never come again are being squandered, time is running out, and death is drawing ever nearer. €œFolks are becoming more anxious and angry and stressed and agitated because this has gone on for so long,” said Katherine Cook, chief operating officer of Monadnock Family Services in Keene, New Hampshire, which operates a community mental health center that serves older adults. €œI’ve never seen so many people who say they’re hopeless and have nothing to look forward to,” said Henry Kimmel, a clinical psychologist in Sherman Oaks, California, who focuses on older adults. To be sure, older adults have cause for concern.

Throughout the cialis, they’ve been at much higher risk of becoming seriously ill and dying than other age groups. Even seniors who are fully vaccinated and boosted remain vulnerable. More than two-thirds of vaccinated people hospitalized from June through September with breakthrough s were 65 or older. Kathleen Tate (Kathleen Tate) The constant stress of wondering “Am I going to be OK?. € and “What’s the future going to look like?.

€ has been hard for Kathleen Tate, 74, a retired nurse in Mount Vernon, Washington. She has late-onset post-polio syndrome and severe osteoarthritis. €œI guess I had the expectation that once we were vaccinated the world would open up again,” said Tate, who lives alone. Although that happened for a while last summer, she largely stopped going out as first the delta and then the omicron variants swept through her area. Now, she said she feels “a quiet desperation.” This isn’t something that Tate talks about with friends, though she’s hungry for human connection.

€œI see everybody dealing with extraordinary stresses in their lives, and I don’t want to add to that by complaining or asking to be comforted,” she said. Tate described a feeling of “flatness” and “being worn out” that saps her motivation. €œIt’s almost too much effort to reach out to people and try to pull myself out of that place,” she said, admitting she’s watching too much TV and drinking too much alcohol. €œIt’s just like I want to mellow out and go numb, instead of bucking up and trying to pull myself together.” Beth Spencer(Tillie Spencer) Beth Spencer, 73, a recently retired social worker who lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with her 90-year-old husband, is grappling with similar feelings during this typically challenging Midwestern winter. €œThe weather here is gray, the sky is gray, and my psyche is gray,” she told me.

€œI typically am an upbeat person, but I’m struggling to stay motivated.” “I can’t sort out whether what I’m going through is due to retirement or caregiver stress or erectile dysfunction treatment,” Spencer said, explaining that her husband was recently diagnosed with congestive heart failure. €œI find myself asking ‘What’s the meaning of my life right now?. €™ and I don’t have an answer.” Bonnie Olsen, a clinical psychologist at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, works extensively with older adults. €œAt the beginning of the cialis, many older adults hunkered down and used a lifetime of coping skills to get through this,” she said. €œNow, as people face this current surge, it’s as if their well of emotional reserves is being depleted.” Most at risk are older adults who are isolated and frail, who were vulnerable to depression and anxiety even before the cialis, or who have suffered serious losses and acute grief.

Watch for signs that they are withdrawing from social contact or shutting down emotionally, Olsen said. €œWhen people start to avoid being in touch, then I become more worried,” she said. Fred Axelrod(Fred Axelrod) Fred Axelrod, 66, of Los Angeles, who’s disabled by ankylosing spondylitis, a serious form of arthritis, lost three close friends during the cialis. Two died of cancer and one of complications related to diabetes. €œYou can’t go out and replace friends like that at my age,” he told me.

Now, the only person Axelrod talks to on a regular basis is Kimmel, his therapist. €œI don’t do anything. There’s nothing to do, nowhere to go,” he complained. €œThere’s a lot of times I feel I’m just letting the clock run out. You start thinking, ‘How much more time do I have left?.

€™â€ “Older adults are thinking about mortality more than ever and asking, ‘How will we ever get out of this nightmare,’” Kimmel said. €œI tell them we all have to stay in the present moment and do our best to keep ourselves occupied and connect with other people.” Loss has also been a defining feature of the cialis for Bud Carraway, 79, of Midvale, Utah, whose wife, Virginia, died a year ago. She was a stroke survivor who had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and atrial fibrillation, an abnormal heartbeat. The couple, who met in the Marines, had been married 55 years. €œI became depressed.

Anxiety kept me awake at night. I couldn’t turn my mind off,” Carraway told me. Those feelings and a sense of being trapped throughout the cialis “brought me pretty far down,” he said. Help came from an eight-week grief support program offered online through the University of Utah. One of the assignments was to come up with a list of strategies for cultivating well-being, which Carraway keeps on his front door.

Among the items listed. €œWalk the mall. Eat with friends. Do some volunteer work. Join a bowling league.

Go to a movie. Check out senior centers.” “I’d circle them as I accomplished each one of them. I knew I had to get up and get out and live again,” Carraway said. €œThis program, it just made a world of difference.” Kathie Supiano, an associate professor at the University of Utah College of Nursing who oversees the erectile dysfunction treatment grief groups, said older adults’ ability to bounce back from setbacks shouldn’t be discounted. €œThis isn’t their first rodeo.

Many people remember polio and the AIDs epidemic. They’ve been through a lot and know how to put things in perspective.” Alissa Ballot, 66, realized recently she can trust herself to find a way forward. After becoming extremely isolated early in the cialis, Ballot moved last November from Chicago to New York City. There, she found a community of new friends online at Central Synagogue in Manhattan and her loneliness evaporated as she began attending events in person. With omicron’s rise in December, Ballot briefly became fearful that she’d end up alone again.

But, this time, something clicked as she pondered some of her rabbi’s spiritual teachings. €œI felt paused on a precipice looking into the unknown and suddenly I thought, ‘So, we don’t know what’s going to happen next, stop worrying.’ And I relaxed. Now I’m like, this is a blip, and I’ll get through it.” We’re eager to hear from readers about questions you’d like answered, problems you’ve been having with your care and advice you need in dealing with the health care system. Visit khn.org/columnists to submit your requests or tips. Judith Graham.

khn.navigatingaging@gmail.com, @judith_graham Related Topics Contact Us Submit a Story Tip.

Cheapest canadian pharmacy for cialis

erectile dysfunction treatment has cheapest canadian pharmacy for cialis evolved rapidly into a cialis with global impacts. However, as the cialis has developed, it has cheapest canadian pharmacy for cialis become increasingly evident that the risks of erectile dysfunction treatment, both in terms of rates and particularly of severe complications, are not equal across all members of society. While general risk factors for hospital admission with erectile dysfunction treatment include age, male sex and specific comorbidities (eg, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and diabetes), there is increasing evidence that people identifying with Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groupsi have disproportionately higher risks of being adversely affected by erectile dysfunction treatment in the UK and the USA.

The ethnic disparities include overall numbers of cases, as well cheapest canadian pharmacy for cialis as the relative numbers of critical care admissions and deaths.1In the area of mental health, for people from BAME groups, even before the current cialis there were already significant mental health inequalities.2 These inequalities have been increased by the cialis in several ways. The constraints of quarantine have made access to traditional face-to-face support from mental health services more difficult in general. This difficulty will increase pre-existing inequalities where cheapest canadian pharmacy for cialis there are challenges to engaging people in care and in providing early access to services.

The restrictions may also reduce the flexibility of care offers, given the need for social isolation, limiting non-essential travel and closure of routine clinics. The service cheapest canadian pharmacy for cialis impacts are compounded by constraints on the use of non-traditional or alternative routes to care and support.In addition, there is growing evidence of specific mental health consequences from significant erectile dysfunction treatment , with increased rates of not only post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression, but also specific neuropsychiatric symptoms.3 Given the higher risks of mental illnesses and complex care needs among ethnic minorities and also in deprived inner city areas, erectile dysfunction treatment seems to deliver a double blow. Physical and mental health vulnerabilities are inextricably linked, especially as a significant proportion of healthcare workers (including in mental health services) in the UK are from BAME groups.Focusing on mental health, there is very little erectile dysfunction treatment-specific guidance on the needs of patients in the BAME group.

The risk to staff in general healthcare (including mental healthcare) is a particular concern, and in response, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and NHS England have produced a report on the impact of erectile dysfunction treatment on BAME staff in mental healthcare settings, with guidance on assessment and management of risk using cheapest canadian pharmacy for cialis an associated risk assessment tool for staff.4 5However, there is little formal guidance for the busy clinician in balancing different risks for individual mental health patients and treating appropriately. Thus, for example, an inpatient clinician may want to know whether a patient who is older, has additional comorbidities and is from an ethnic background, should be started on one antipsychotic medication or another, or whether treatments such as vitamin D prophylaxis or treatment and venous thromboembolism prevention should be started earlier in the context of the erectile dysfunction treatment cialis. While syntheses cheapest canadian pharmacy for cialis of the existing guidelines are available about erectile dysfunction treatment and mental health,6 7 there is nothing specific about the healthcare needs of patients from ethnic minorities during the cialis.To fill this gap, we propose three core actions that may help:Ensure good information and psychoeducation packages are made available to those with English as a second language, and ensure health beliefs and knowledge are based on the best evidence available.

Address culturally grounded explanatory models and illness perceptions to allay fears and worry, and ensure timely access to testing and care if needed.Maintain levels of cheapest canadian pharmacy for cialis service, flexibility in care packages, and personal relationships with patients and carers from ethnic minority backgrounds in order to continue existing care and to identify changes needed to respond to worsening of mental health.Consider modifications to existing interventions such as psychological therapies and pharmacotherapy. Have a high index of suspicion to take into account emerging physical health problems and the greater risk of serious consequences of erectile dysfunction treatment in ethnic minority people with pre-existing chronic conditions and vulnerability factors.These actions are based on clinical common sense, but guidance in this area should be provided on the basis of good evidence. There has already been a call for urgent research in the area of erectile dysfunction treatment and mental health8 and cheapest canadian pharmacy for cialis also a clear need for specific research focusing on the post-erectile dysfunction treatment mental health needs of people from the BAME group.

Research also needs to recognise the diverse range of different people, with different needs and vulnerabilities, who are grouped under the multidimensional term BAME, including people from different generations, first-time migrants, people from Africa, India, the Caribbean and, more recently, migrants from Eastern Europe. Application of a race equality impact assessment to all research questions and methodology has recently been proposed as a first step in this process.2 At this early stage, the guidance for assessing risks of erectile dysfunction treatment for health professionals is also useful for patients, until more refined decision cheapest canadian pharmacy for cialis support and prediction tools are developed. A recent Public Health England report on ethnic minorities and erectile dysfunction treatment9 recommends better recording of ethnicity data in health and social care, and goes further to suggest this should also apply to death certificates.

Furthermore, the report recommends more participatory and experience-based research to understand causes and consequences cheapest canadian pharmacy for cialis of pre-existing multimorbidity and erectile dysfunction treatment , integrated care systems that work well for susceptible and marginalised groups, culturally competent health promotion, prevention and occupational risk assessments, and recovery strategies to mitigate the risks of widening inequalities as we come out of restrictions.Primary data collection will need to cover not only hospital admissions but also data from primary care, linking information on mental health, erectile dysfunction treatment and ethnicity. We already have research and specific guidance emerging on other risk factors, such as age and gender. Now we cheapest canadian pharmacy for cialis also need to focus on an equally important aspect of vulnerability.

As clinicians, we need to balance the relative risks for each of our patients, so that we can act promptly and proactively in response to their individual needs.10 For this, we need evidence-based guidance to ensure we are balancing every risk appropriately and without bias.Footnotei While we have used the term ‘people identifying with BAME groups’, we recognise that this is a multidimensional group and includes vast differences in culture, identity, heritage and histories contained within this abbreviated term..

erectile dysfunction treatment has evolved http://checkmarkphotography.com/is-it-safe-to-buy-cialis-online/ rapidly into buy cialis online usa a cialis with global impacts. However, as the cialis has developed, it has buy cialis online usa become increasingly evident that the risks of erectile dysfunction treatment, both in terms of rates and particularly of severe complications, are not equal across all members of society. While general risk factors for hospital admission with erectile dysfunction treatment include age, male sex and specific comorbidities (eg, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and diabetes), there is increasing evidence that people identifying with Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groupsi have disproportionately higher risks of being adversely affected by erectile dysfunction treatment in the UK and the USA. The ethnic disparities include overall numbers of cases, as well as the relative numbers of critical care admissions and deaths.1In the area of mental health, for people from BAME groups, even before the current cialis there were already significant buy cialis online usa mental health inequalities.2 These inequalities have been increased by the cialis in several ways. The constraints of quarantine have made access to traditional face-to-face support from mental health services more difficult in general.

This difficulty will increase buy cialis online usa pre-existing inequalities where there are challenges to engaging people in care and in providing early access to services. The restrictions may also reduce the flexibility of care offers, given the need for social isolation, limiting non-essential travel and closure of routine clinics. The service impacts are compounded by constraints on the use of non-traditional or alternative routes to care and support.In addition, there is growing evidence of specific mental health consequences from significant erectile dysfunction treatment , with increased rates of not only post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression, but also specific neuropsychiatric symptoms.3 Given the higher risks of mental illnesses and complex care needs among ethnic minorities and also in deprived inner city areas, erectile dysfunction treatment seems to deliver a buy cialis online usa double blow. Physical and mental health vulnerabilities are inextricably linked, especially as a significant proportion of healthcare workers (including in mental health services) in the UK are from BAME groups.Focusing on mental health, there is very little erectile dysfunction treatment-specific guidance on the needs of patients in the BAME group. The risk to staff in general healthcare (including mental healthcare) is a particular concern, and in response, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and NHS England have produced a report on the impact of erectile dysfunction treatment on BAME staff in mental healthcare settings, with buy cialis online usa guidance on assessment and management of risk using an associated risk assessment tool for staff.4 5However, there is little formal guidance for the busy clinician in balancing different risks for individual mental health patients and treating appropriately.

Thus, for example, an inpatient clinician may want to know whether a patient who is older, has additional comorbidities and is from an ethnic background, should be started on one antipsychotic medication or another, or whether treatments such as vitamin D prophylaxis or treatment and venous thromboembolism prevention should be started earlier in the context of the erectile dysfunction treatment cialis. While syntheses of the existing guidelines are available about erectile dysfunction treatment and mental health,6 7 there is nothing specific about the healthcare needs of buy cialis online usa patients from ethnic minorities during the cialis.To fill this gap, we propose three core actions that may help:Ensure good information and psychoeducation packages are made available to those with English as a second language, and ensure health beliefs and knowledge are based on the best evidence available. Address culturally grounded explanatory models and illness perceptions to allay fears and buy cialis online usa worry, and ensure timely access to testing and care if needed.Maintain levels of service, flexibility in care packages, and personal relationships with patients and carers from ethnic minority backgrounds in order to continue existing care and to identify changes needed to respond to worsening of mental health.Consider modifications to existing interventions such as psychological therapies and pharmacotherapy. Have a high index of suspicion to take into account emerging physical health problems and the greater risk of serious consequences of erectile dysfunction treatment in ethnic minority people with pre-existing chronic conditions and vulnerability factors.These actions are based on clinical common sense, but guidance in this area should be provided on the basis of good evidence. There has already been a call for urgent research in the area of erectile dysfunction treatment and mental buy cialis online usa health8 and also a clear need for specific research focusing on the post-erectile dysfunction treatment mental health needs of people from the BAME group.

Research also needs to recognise the diverse range of different people, with different needs and vulnerabilities, who are grouped under the multidimensional term BAME, including people from different generations, first-time migrants, people from Africa, India, the Caribbean and, more recently, migrants from Eastern Europe. Application of a race equality impact assessment to all research questions and methodology buy cialis online usa has recently been proposed as a first step in this process.2 At this early stage, the guidance for assessing risks of erectile dysfunction treatment for health professionals is also useful for patients, until more refined decision support and prediction tools are developed. A recent Public Health England report on ethnic minorities and erectile dysfunction treatment9 recommends better recording of ethnicity data in health and social care, and goes further to suggest this should also apply to death certificates. Furthermore, the report recommends more participatory and experience-based research to understand causes and consequences of pre-existing multimorbidity and erectile dysfunction treatment , integrated care systems that work well for susceptible and marginalised groups, culturally competent health promotion, prevention and occupational risk assessments, and recovery strategies to mitigate the risks buy cialis online usa of widening inequalities as we come out of restrictions.Primary data collection will need to cover not only hospital admissions but also data from primary care, linking information on mental health, erectile dysfunction treatment and ethnicity. We already have research and specific guidance emerging on other risk factors, such as age and gender.

Now we also need to focus on an equally important aspect of vulnerability buy cialis online usa. As clinicians, we need to balance the relative risks for each of our patients, so that we can act promptly and proactively in response to their individual needs.10 For this, we need evidence-based guidance to ensure we are balancing every risk appropriately and without bias.Footnotei While we have used the term ‘people identifying with BAME groups’, we recognise that this is a multidimensional group and includes vast differences in culture, identity, heritage and histories contained within this abbreviated term..

What makes you harder viagra or cialis

Credit look at here now what makes you harder viagra or cialis. IStock Share Fast Facts New @HopkinsMedicine study finds African-American women with common form of hair loss at increased risk of uterine fibroids - Click to Tweet New study in @JAMADerm shows most common form of alopecia (hair loss) in African-American women associated with higher risks of uterine fibroids - Click to Tweet In a study of medical records gathered on hundreds of thousands of African-American women, Johns Hopkins researchers say they have evidence that women with a common form of hair loss have an increased chance of developing uterine leiomyomas, or fibroids.In a report on the research, published in the December 27 issue of JAMA Dermatology, the researchers call on physicians who treat women with central centrifugal cicatricial alopecia (CCCA) to make patients aware that they may be at increased risk for fibroids and should be screened for the condition, particularly if they have symptoms such as heavy bleeding and pain. CCCA predominantly affects black women and is the most common form what makes you harder viagra or cialis of permanent alopecia in this population. The excess scar tissue that forms as a result of this type of hair loss may also explain the higher risk for uterine fibroids, which are characterized by fibrous growths in the lining of the womb.

Crystal Aguh, M.D., assistant professor of dermatology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, what makes you harder viagra or cialis says the scarring associated with CCCA is similar to the scarring associated with excess fibrous tissue elsewhere in the body, a situation that may explain why women with this type of hair loss are at a higher risk for fibroids.People of African descent, she notes, are more prone to develop other disorders of abnormal scarring, termed fibroproliferative disorders, such as keloids (a type of raised scar after trauma), scleroderma (an autoimmune disorder marked by thickening of the skin as well as internal organs), some types of lupus and clogged arteries. During a four-year period from 2013-2017, the researchers analyzed patient data from the Johns Hopkins electronic medical record system (Epic) of 487,104 black women ages 18 and over. The prevalence of what makes you harder viagra or cialis those with fibroids was compared in patients with and without CCCA. Overall, the researchers found that 13.9 percent of women with CCCA also had a history of uterine fibroids compared to only 3.3 percent of black women without the condition.

In absolute numbers, out of the 486,000 women who were reviewed, 16,212 had fibroids.Within that population, 447 had CCCA, of which 62 had fibroids. The findings translate to a fivefold increased risk of uterine what makes you harder viagra or cialis fibroids in women with CCCA, compared to age, sex and race matched controls. Aguh cautions that their study does not suggest any cause and effect relationship, or prove a common cause for both conditions. €œThe cause of the link between the two conditions remains what makes you harder viagra or cialis unclear,” she says.

However, the association was strong enough, she adds, to recommend that physicians and patients be made aware of it. Women with this type what makes you harder viagra or cialis of scarring alopecia should be screened not only for fibroids, but also for other disorders associated with excess fibrous tissue, Aguh says. An estimated 70 percent of white women and between 80 and 90 percent of African-American women will develop fibroids by age 50, according to the NIH, and while CCCA is likely underdiagnosed, some estimates report a prevalence of rates as high as 17 percent of black women having this condition. The other authors on this what makes you harder viagra or cialis paper were Ginette A.

Okoye, M.D. Of Johns Hopkins and Yemisi Dina of Meharry Medical College.Credit. The New England Journal of Medicine Share Fast Facts This what makes you harder viagra or cialis study clears up how big an effect the mutational burden has on outcomes to immune checkpoint inhibitors across many different cancer types. - Click to Tweet The number of mutations in a tumor’s DNA is a good predictor of whether it will respond to a class of cancer immunotherapy drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors.

- Click to Tweet The “mutational burden,” or the number of mutations present in a tumor’s DNA, is a good predictor of whether that cancer type will respond to a class of cancer immunotherapy what makes you harder viagra or cialis drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors, a new study led by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers shows. The finding, published in the Dec. 21 New England Journal of Medicine, could be what makes you harder viagra or cialis used to guide future clinical trials for these drugs. Checkpoint inhibitors are a relatively new class of drug that helps the immune system recognize cancer by interfering with mechanisms cancer cells use to hide from immune cells.

As a result, the drugs cause the immune system to fight cancer in the same way that it would can you get cialis over the counter fight an . These medicines have had remarkable success in treating some what makes you harder viagra or cialis types of cancers that historically have had poor prognoses, such as advanced melanoma and lung cancer. However, these therapies have had little effect on other deadly cancer types, such as pancreatic cancer and glioblastoma. The mutational burden of certain tumor types has previously what makes you harder viagra or cialis been proposed as an explanation for why certain cancers respond better than others to immune checkpoint inhibitors says study leader Mark Yarchoan, M.D., chief medical oncology fellow.

Work by Dung Le, M.D., associate professor of oncology, and other researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and its Bloomberg~Kimmel Cancer Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy showed that colon cancers that carry a high number of mutations are more likely to respond to checkpoint inhibitors than those that have fewer mutations. However, exactly how big an effect the mutational burden has on outcomes to immune checkpoint inhibitors across many different cancer what makes you harder viagra or cialis types was unclear. To investigate this question, Yarchoan and colleagues Alexander Hopkins, Ph.D., research fellow, and Elizabeth Jaffee, M.D., co-director of the Skip Viragh Center for Pancreas Cancer Clinical Research and Patient Care and associate director of the Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute, combed the medical literature for the results of clinical trials using checkpoint inhibitors on various different types of cancer. They combined what makes you harder viagra or cialis these findings with data on the mutational burden of thousands of tumor samples from patients with different tumor types.

Analyzing 27 different cancer types for which both pieces of information were available, the researchers found a strong correlation. The higher a cancer type’s mutational burden tends to be, the more likely it is to respond to checkpoint inhibitors. More than half of the differences in how well what makes you harder viagra or cialis cancers responded to immune checkpoint inhibitors could be explained by the mutational burden of that cancer. €œThe idea that a tumor type with more mutations might be easier to treat than one with fewer sounds a little counterintuitive.

It’s one of those what makes you harder viagra or cialis things that doesn’t sound right when you hear it,” says Hopkins. €œBut with immunotherapy, the more mutations you have, the more chances the immune system has to recognize the tumor.” Although this finding held true for the vast majority of cancer types they studied, there were some outliers in their analysis, says Yarchoan. For example, Merkel cell cancer, what makes you harder viagra or cialis a rare and highly aggressive skin cancer, tends to have a moderate number of mutations yet responds extremely well to checkpoint inhibitors. However, he explains, this cancer type is often caused by a cialis, which seems to encourage a strong immune response despite the cancer’s lower mutational burden.

In contrast, the most common type of colorectal cancer has moderate mutational burden, yet responds poorly to checkpoint inhibitors for reasons that are still unclear. Yarchoan notes that these what makes you harder viagra or cialis findings could help guide clinical trials to test checkpoint inhibitors on cancer types for which these drugs haven’t yet been tried. Future studies might also focus on finding ways to prompt cancers with low mutational burdens to behave like those with higher mutational burdens so that they will respond better to these therapies. He and his colleagues plan to extend this line of research by investigating whether mutational burden might be a good predictor of whether cancers in individual patients might respond what makes you harder viagra or cialis well to this class of immunotherapy drugs.

€œThe end goal is precision medicine—moving beyond what’s true for big groups of patients to see whether we can use this information to help any given patient,” he says. Yarchoan receives funding what makes you harder viagra or cialis from the Norman &. Ruth Rales Foundation and the Conquer Cancer Foundation. Through a licensing agreement with Aduro Biotech, Jaffee has the potential to receive royalties in the future..

Credit. IStock Share Fast Facts New @HopkinsMedicine study finds African-American women with common form of hair loss at increased risk of uterine fibroids - Click to Tweet New study in @JAMADerm shows most common form of alopecia (hair loss) in African-American women associated with higher risks of uterine fibroids - Click to Tweet In a study of medical records gathered on hundreds of thousands of African-American women, Johns Hopkins researchers say they have evidence that women with a common form of hair loss have an increased chance of developing uterine leiomyomas, or fibroids.In a report on the research, published in the December 27 issue of JAMA Dermatology, the researchers call on physicians who treat women with central centrifugal cicatricial alopecia (CCCA) to make patients aware that they may be at increased risk for fibroids and should be screened for the condition, particularly if they have symptoms such as heavy bleeding and pain. CCCA predominantly affects black women and is the most common form of permanent alopecia in this population.

The excess scar tissue that forms as a result of this type of hair loss may also explain the higher risk for uterine fibroids, which are characterized by fibrous growths in the lining of the womb. Crystal Aguh, M.D., assistant professor of dermatology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, says the scarring associated with CCCA is similar to the scarring associated with excess fibrous tissue elsewhere in the body, a situation that may explain why women with this type of hair loss are at a higher risk for fibroids.People of African descent, she notes, are more prone to develop other disorders of abnormal scarring, termed fibroproliferative disorders, such as keloids (a type of raised scar after trauma), scleroderma (an autoimmune disorder marked by thickening of the skin as well as internal organs), some types of lupus and clogged arteries. During a four-year period from 2013-2017, the researchers analyzed patient data from the Johns Hopkins electronic medical record system (Epic) of 487,104 black women ages 18 and over.

The prevalence of those with fibroids was compared in patients with and without CCCA. Overall, the researchers found that 13.9 percent of women with CCCA also had a history of uterine fibroids compared to only 3.3 percent of black women without the condition. In absolute numbers, out of the 486,000 women who were reviewed, 16,212 had fibroids.Within that population, 447 had CCCA, of which 62 had fibroids.

The findings translate to a fivefold increased risk of uterine fibroids in women with CCCA, compared to age, sex and race matched controls. Aguh cautions that their study does not suggest any cause and effect relationship, or prove a common cause for both conditions. €œThe cause of the link between the two conditions remains unclear,” she says.

However, the association was strong enough, she adds, to recommend that physicians and patients be made aware of it. Women with this type of scarring alopecia should be screened not only for fibroids, but also for other disorders associated with excess fibrous tissue, Aguh says. An estimated 70 percent of white women and between 80 and 90 percent of African-American women will develop fibroids by age 50, according to the NIH, and while CCCA is likely underdiagnosed, some estimates report a prevalence of rates as high as 17 percent of black women having this condition.

The other authors on this paper were Ginette A. Okoye, M.D. Of Johns Hopkins and Yemisi Dina of Meharry Medical College.Credit.

The New England Journal of Medicine Share Fast Facts This study clears up how big an effect the mutational burden has on outcomes to immune checkpoint inhibitors across many different cancer types. - Click to Tweet The number of mutations in a tumor’s DNA is a good predictor of whether it will respond to a class of cancer immunotherapy drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors. - Click to Tweet The “mutational burden,” or the number of mutations present in a tumor’s DNA, is a good predictor of whether that cancer type will respond to a class of cancer immunotherapy drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors, a new study led by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers shows.

The finding, published in the Dec. 21 New England Journal of Medicine, could be used to guide future clinical trials for these drugs. Checkpoint inhibitors are a relatively new class of drug that helps the immune system recognize cancer by interfering with mechanisms cancer cells use to hide from immune cells.

As a result, the drugs cause the immune system to fight cancer in the same way that it would fight an . These medicines have had remarkable success in treating some types of cancers that historically have had poor prognoses, such as advanced melanoma and lung cancer. However, these therapies have had little effect on other deadly cancer types, such as pancreatic cancer and glioblastoma.

The mutational burden of certain tumor types has previously been proposed as an explanation for why certain cancers respond better than others to immune checkpoint inhibitors says study leader Mark Yarchoan, M.D., chief medical oncology fellow. Work by Dung Le, M.D., associate professor of oncology, and other researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and its Bloomberg~Kimmel Cancer Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy showed that colon cancers that carry a high number of mutations are more likely to respond to checkpoint inhibitors than those that have fewer mutations. However, exactly how big an effect the mutational burden has on outcomes to immune checkpoint inhibitors across many different cancer types was unclear.

To investigate this question, Yarchoan and colleagues Alexander Hopkins, Ph.D., research fellow, and Elizabeth Jaffee, M.D., co-director of the Skip Viragh Center for Pancreas Cancer Clinical Research and Patient Care and associate director of the Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute, combed the medical literature for the results of clinical trials using checkpoint inhibitors on various different types of cancer. They combined these findings with data on the mutational burden of thousands of tumor samples from patients with different tumor types. Analyzing 27 different cancer types for which both pieces of information were available, the researchers found a strong correlation.

The higher a cancer type’s mutational burden tends to be, the more likely it is to respond to checkpoint inhibitors. More than half of the differences in how well cancers responded to immune checkpoint inhibitors could be explained by the mutational burden of that cancer. €œThe idea that a tumor type with more mutations might be easier to treat than one with fewer sounds a little counterintuitive.

It’s one of those things that doesn’t sound right when you hear it,” says Hopkins. €œBut with immunotherapy, the more mutations you have, the more chances the immune system has to recognize the tumor.” Although this finding held true for the vast majority of cancer types they studied, there were some outliers in their analysis, says Yarchoan. For example, Merkel cell cancer, a rare and highly aggressive skin cancer, tends to have a moderate number of mutations yet responds extremely well to checkpoint inhibitors.

However, he explains, this cancer type is often caused by a cialis, which seems to encourage a strong immune response despite the cancer’s lower mutational burden. In contrast, the most common type of colorectal cancer has moderate mutational burden, yet responds poorly to checkpoint inhibitors for reasons that are still unclear. Yarchoan notes that these findings could help guide clinical trials to test checkpoint inhibitors on cancer types for which these drugs haven’t yet been tried.

Future studies might also focus on finding ways to prompt cancers with low mutational burdens to behave like those with higher mutational burdens so that they will respond better to these therapies. He and his colleagues plan to extend this line of research by investigating whether mutational burden might be a good predictor of whether cancers in individual patients might respond well to this class of immunotherapy drugs. €œThe end goal is precision medicine—moving beyond what’s true for big groups of patients to see whether we can use this information to help any given patient,” he says.

Yarchoan receives funding from the Norman &. Ruth Rales Foundation and the Conquer Cancer Foundation. Through a licensing agreement with Aduro Biotech, Jaffee has the potential to receive royalties in the future..

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The finding suggests that physicians could consider treating does cialis have shelf life male patients with stomach inflammation differently than female patients with the same condition. The study was published in Gastroenterology.Researchers at NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) made the discovery after removing adrenal glands from mice of both sexes. Adrenal glands produce glucocorticoids, hormones that have several functions, one does cialis have shelf life of them being suppressing inflammation.

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He said eight out of 10 individuals with autoimmune disease are women, and his long-term does cialis have shelf life goal is to figure out how glucocorticoids and androgens affect stomach cancer, which is induced by chronic inflammation.The current research focused on stomach glands called pits, which are embedded in the lining of the stomach.Busada said the study showed that glucocorticoids and androgens act like brake pedals on the immune system and are essential for regulating stomach inflammation. In his analogy, glucocorticoids are the primary brakes and androgens are the emergency brakes."Females only have one layer of protection, so if you remove glucocorticoids, they develop stomach inflammation and a pre-cancerous condition in the stomach called spasmolytic polypeptide-expressing metaplasia (SPEM)," Busada said. "Males have redundancy built in, so if something cuts the glucocorticoid brake line, it is okay, because the androgens can pick up the slack."The research also offered a possible mechanism does cialis have shelf life — or biological process — behind this phenomenon.

In healthy stomach glands, the presence of glucocorticoids and androgens inhibit special immune cells called type 2 innate lymphoid cells does cialis have shelf life (ILC2s). But in diseased stomach glands, the hormones are missing. As a result, ILC2s may act like a fire alarm, directing other immune cells called macrophages to promote inflammation and damage gastric glands leading to SPEM and ultimately cancer."ILC2s are the only immune cells that does cialis have shelf life contain androgen receptors and could be a potential therapeutic target," Cidlowski said.This press release describes a basic research finding.

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Glucocorticoids and androgens protect from gastric metaplasia by does cialis have shelf life suppressing group 2 innate lymphoid cell activation. Gastroenterology. Doi.

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With no glucocorticoids, the female mice soon developed stomach inflammation. The males did not buy cialis online usa. However, after removing androgens from the males, they exhibited the same stomach inflammation seen in the females."The fact that androgens are regulating inflammation is a novel idea," said co-corresponding author John Cidlowski, Ph.D., deputy chief of the NIEHS Laboratory of Signal Transduction and buy cialis online usa head of the Molecular Endocrinology Group.

"Along with glucocorticoids, androgens offer a new way to control immune function in humans."While this study provides insight into how inflammation is being regulated in males, Cidlowski said additional research is underway to understand the process in females. The scientist handling this phase of research is co-corresponding author Jonathan Busada, Ph.D., assistant professor at West Virginia University School of Medicine in buy cialis online usa Morgantown. When Busada started the project several years ago, he was a postdoctoral fellow working in Cidlowski’s group.Whether inflammation is inside the stomach or elsewhere in the body, Busada said rates of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases vary depending on sex.

He said eight out of 10 individuals with autoimmune disease are women, and his long-term goal is to figure out how glucocorticoids and androgens affect stomach cancer, which is induced by chronic inflammation.The buy cialis online usa current research focused on stomach glands called pits, which are embedded in the lining of the stomach.Busada said the study showed that glucocorticoids and androgens act like brake pedals on the immune system and are essential for regulating stomach inflammation. In his analogy, glucocorticoids are the primary brakes and androgens are the emergency brakes."Females only have one layer of protection, so if you remove glucocorticoids, they develop stomach inflammation and a pre-cancerous condition in the stomach called spasmolytic polypeptide-expressing metaplasia (SPEM)," Busada said. "Males have redundancy built in, so if something cuts the glucocorticoid brake buy cialis online usa line, it is okay, because the androgens can pick up the slack."The research also offered a possible mechanism — or biological process — behind this phenomenon.

In healthy stomach glands, the presence of glucocorticoids and androgens inhibit special immune cells buy cialis online usa called type 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s). But in diseased stomach glands, the hormones are missing. As a result, ILC2s may act like a fire alarm, directing other immune cells called macrophages to promote inflammation and damage gastric glands leading to SPEM and ultimately cancer."ILC2s are the only immune cells that contain androgen receptors and could buy cialis online usa be a potential therapeutic target," Cidlowski said.This press release describes a basic research finding.

Basic research increases our understanding of human behavior and biology, which is foundational to advancing new and better ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease. Science is buy cialis online usa an unpredictable and incremental process — each research advance builds on past discoveries, often in unexpected ways. Most clinical advances would not be possible without the knowledge of fundamental basic research.

To learn more about buy cialis online usa basic research, visit Basic Research – Digital Media Kit.Grant Numbers:ZIAES090057Fi2GM123974P20GM103434P20GM121322U54GM104942P30GM103488 Reference. Busada JT, Peterson KN, Khadka S, Xu, X, Oakley RH, Cook DN, Cidlowski JA buy cialis online usa. 2021.

Glucocorticoids and androgens buy cialis online usa protect from gastric metaplasia by suppressing group 2 innate lymphoid cell activation. Gastroenterology. Doi.

10.1053/j.gastro.2021.04.075 [Online 7 May 2021]..