identify as many as you can the linking verbs and helping verbs in those texts.
THURSDAY, July 30, 2009 (HealthDay News) — Though its reputation doesn't rank down there with the appendix, the spleen isn't exactly known as a vital organ. In fact, plenty of people do fine without it.
But new research suggests the spleen plays a bigger role in the immune system than previously thought.
In mice, scientists found, the spleen serves as a home for a type of white blood cell that scavenges dead tissue and helps produce inflammation, which contributes to healing. In particular, the researchers discovered that the spleen helps the heart recover from disease. "While the spleen may not be essential for your survival, it plays a crucial role once you are sick," said study author Filip K. Swirski, an immunology instructor at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.
The findings could lead to a better understanding of the immune system, including its response to cancer, Swirski said. And it definitely improves the profile of a little-understood organ.
It's much more obscure than, say, the liver or kidneys, but the spleen still takes up a lot of space. In humans, it's about the size of a large eggplant and shaped like a kidney, Swirski said.
Scientists have known that the spleen recycles red blood cells and scans the blood for germs. "It serves as a filtering system," Swirski said. "It captures viruses or bacteria, and can elicit an inflammatory response."
Inflammation — think of the redness around a wound — indicates that the immune system is rushing in to defend the body.
But people often do just fine without their spleens. Traumatic injuries, such as those sustained in traffic accidents, often result in surgery to remove the spleen. And surgeons remove spleens from people with some medical conditions, including non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
In their study, the researchers examined mice to see if having a spleen helped the mice recover from induced heart disease. A 1977 study of veterans who'd had their spleens removed suggested they had twice the risk of dying of heart disease, Swirski said.
They found that the spleen did indeed appear to help the heart, through white-blood cells known as monocytes. The spleen served as a home for many of the cells, Swirski said.
A report on the study appears in the July 31 issue of Science.
"This just adds another function to the spleen," Swirski said. "It's not only a place where blood cells come to die and where the immune system screens for infection. It's relevant to how the immune system is mobilized."
Future research could explore how to boost the spleen's role in the immune system's response or keep it from being hijacked by germs, he added.
In a commentary accompanying the study, two doctors from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City suggest the spleen is still as "dispensable," despite the new findings. But, they wrote, the spleen does seem "a bit more purposeful and deserving of recognition."
More information;
The Journal of the American Medical Association has more about the spleen.
SOURCE: Filip K. Swirski, Ph.D., instructor, immunology, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston; July 31, 2009, Science
Last Updated: Jul 30, 2009
Copyright © 2009 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.
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W. Douglas Piercey See All Contributors
Associate Professor of Hospital Administration, University of Toronto, 1954–65. Executive Director, Canadian Hospital Association, Toronto; Editor, The Canadian Hospital Journal, 1954–65.
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Hospital, an institution that is built, staffed, and equipped for the diagnosis of disease; for the treatment, both medical and surgical, of the sick and the injured; and for their housing during this process. The modern hospital also often serves as a centre for investigation and for teaching.
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Riverside campus of The Ottawa Hospital, Ottawa, Ont., Can.
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Hospital
KEY PEOPLE
Erich Mendelsohn
Sister Mary Joseph Dempsey
Susan Augusta Fenimore Cooper
James Buchanan Brady
Dominique-Jean, Baron Larrey
Thomas Guy
Charles William Mayo
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To better serve the wide-ranging needs of the community, the modern hospital has often developed outpatient facilities, as well as emergency, psychiatric, and rehabilitation services. In addition, “bedless hospitals” provide strictly ambulatory (outpatient) care and day surgery. Patients arrive at the facility for short appointments. They may also stay for treatment in surgical or medical units for part of a day or for a full day, after which they are discharged for follow-up by a primary care health provider.
Hospitals have long existed in most countries. Developing countries, which contain a large proportion of the world’s population, generally do not have enough hospitals, equipment, and trained staff to handle the volume of persons who need care. Thus, people in these countries do not always receive the benefits of modern medicine, public health measures, or hospital care, and they generally have lower life expectancies.
In developed countries the hospital as an institution is complex, and it is made more so as modern technology increases the range of diagnostic capabilities and expands the possibilities for treatment. As a result of the greater range of services and the more-involved treatments and surgeries available, a more highly trained staff is required. A combination of medical research, engineering, and biotechnology has produced a vast array of new treatments and instrumentation, much of which requires specialized training and facilities for its use. Hospitals thus have become more expensive to operate, and health service managers are increasingly concerned with questions of quality, cost, effectiveness, and efficiency.
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History Of Hospitals
As early as 4000 BCE, religions identified certain of their deities with healing. The temples of Saturn, and later of Asclepius in Asia Minor, were recognized as healing centres. Brahmanic hospitals were established in Sri Lanka as early as 431 BCE, and King Ashoka established a chain of hospitals in Hindustan about 230 BCE. Around 100 BCE the Romans established hospitals (valetudinaria) for the treatment of their sick and injured soldiers; their care was important because it was upon the integrity of the legions that the power of ancient Rome was based.
Ruins of the sanctuary of Asclepius at Cos, Greece
Ruins of the sanctuary of Asclepius at Cos, Greece
Charles Walker
It can be said, however, that the modern concept of a hospital dates from 331 CE when Roman emperor Constantine I (Constantine the Great), having been converted to Christianity, abolished all pagan hospitals and thus created the opportunity for a new start. Until that time disease had isolated the sufferer from the community. The Christian tradition emphasized the close relationship of the sufferer to the members of the community, upon whom rested the obligation for care. Illness thus became a matter for the Christian church.
About 370 CE St. Basil the Great established a religious foundation in Cappadocia that included a hospital, an isolation unit for those suffering from leprosy, and buildings to house the poor, the elderly, and the sick. Following this example, similar hospitals were later built in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. Another notable foundation was that of St. Benedict of Nursia at Montecassino, founded early in the 6th century, where the care of the sick was placed above and before every other Christian duty. It was from this beginning that one of the first medical schools in Europe ultimately grew at Salerno and was of high repute by the 11th century. This example led to the establishment of similar monastic infirmaries in the western part of the empire.