CANCER - GENERAL |
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Cancer is a class of diseases or disorders characterized by uncontrolled division of cells and the ability of these cells to invade other tissues, either by direct growth into adjacent tissue through invasion or by implantation into distant sites by metastasis. This unregulated growth is caused by damage to DNA, resulting in mutations to genes that encode for proteins controlling cell division. Many mutation events may be required to transform a normal cell into a malignant cell. These mutations can be caused by chemicals or physical agents called carcinogens, by close exposure to radioactive materials, or by certain viruses that can insert their DNA into the human genome. Mutations occur spontaneously, or are passed down generations as a result of germ line mutations.
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CRITICAL CARE |
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Intensive Care Medicine or critical care medicine is concerned with providing greater than ordinary medical care and observation to people in a critical or unstable condition.
People requiring intensive care include those after major surgery, with severe head trauma, life-threatening acute illness, respiratory insufficiency, coma, haemodynamic insufficiency, severe fluid imbalance or with the failure of one or more of the major organ systems (life-critical systems or others).
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URGENT / EMERGENCY CARE |
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Urgent care is the delivery of ambulatory care in a facility dedicated to the delivery of unscheduled, walk-in care outside of a hospital emergency department. The initial urgent care centers opened in the 1970s. Since then this sector of the healthcare industry has rapidly expanded to an approximately 17,000 centers. Many of these centers have been started by entrepreneurial physicians who have responded to the public need for convenient access to unscheduled medical care. Other centers have been opened by hospital systems, seeking to attract patients. Much of the growth of these centers has been fueled by the significant savings that urgent care centers provide over the care in a hospital emergency department. Many managed care organizations (MCOs) now encourage their customers to utilize the urgent care option.
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