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Just wanted to touch base with anyone that has had open heart surgery and what I can expect post surgery. I understand they want to replace my aortic valve, have had a heart murmur for many years and I guess it has gotten worse. Bless the VA because there is no way I could afford this any other way.

Despite assurances from President Joe Biden’s administration, the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) new rule for healthcare providers could end up forcing religious hospitals and doctors to perform child sex-change procedures, legal experts told the DCNF. The rule, which HHS issued on April 26 under the Affordable Care Act, bars healthcare and insurance providers who receive federal funding from denying care due to a patient’s gender identity or sexual orientation. While HHS claimed that the rule “respects” federal protections for religious freedom, legal experts told the DCNF that the rule will likely force religious healthcare providers to choose...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled against two state-level health policies that exclude so-called “gender-affirming” treatments, teeing up potential review by the U.S. Supreme Court...Judge Roger Gregory, an appointee of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, wrote in his majority opinion that the policies’ exclusion of surgeries such as vaginoplasties for certain diagnoses violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.“The coverage exclusions facially discriminate on the basis of sex and gender identity, and are not substantially related to an important government interest,” he said.The 8–6 decision affirmed lower court decisions against West Virginia’s...

Eight Democrat-nominated judges shoved transgender surgery closer to becoming a constitutional right via their decision Monday in a federal appeals court. No Democrat-nominated judges voted with the six Republican-nominated judges who strenuously denounced the court’s decision, further demonstrating how transgenderism has quickly become a litmus test for ambitious progressives in the Democratic Party. The majority decision in the Fourth Circuit federal appeals court said existing constitutional rules forbidding sexual discrimination also forbid denials of transgender surgeries in state-run healthcare programs. Any denial of the surgeries cannot be enforced without first deciding if the patient is male or female by checking...

A common practice of shoulder surgeons may be impairing the success of rotator cuff surgery, a study from orthopedic scientists and biomedical engineers suggests. During the surgery, surgeons often remove a tissue called the bursa while repairing torn tendons in the shoulder joint, but the study suggests that the small tissue plays a role in helping the shoulder heal. The bursa is a thin, fluid-filled sac originally thought to protect the tendons by providing a cushion between the tendons and adjacent bones. The bursa often becomes inflamed, sometimes concurrently, when underlying tendons are injured, and surgeons often remove the tissue...

A married woman with kids thanked Dr. Ben Carson at a Texas A&M university event last night for saving her life decades earlier. Dr. Carson, a former pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center who later served in the Trump administration as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, spoke at the Turning Point USA event. “God truly had his hands in this miracle,” Sara Bowker said. She was born with craniosynostosis, a condition where the skull improperly fuses together, according to Bowker. “You gave me the opportunity to graduate high school, college, and start graduate school, play competitive sports,...

A study shows that a non-invasive imaging test can help identify patients with coronary artery blockage or narrowing who need a revascularization procedure. Doctors use coronary CT angiography (CTA) to diagnose narrowed or blocked arteries in the heart. A CTA exam receives a score from mild (0–1) to severe (4–5). Patients with scores above 3 typically require medical treatments. Doctors have traditionally relied on invasive coronary angiography to image vessels and more recently have added fractional flow reserve (FFR) to identify and assess significant blockages. To assess CT-FFR, Dr. Randhawa conducted a retrospective study of patients who underwent coronary CTA...

SNIP “I had to make some changes because when COVID hit, in the words of Richard Pryor, ‘I went in the House,'” he continued. He explained that he “had a lot of the dangerous” high-risk conditions, telling Live, “When they made that list of, you know, ‘overweight, Type 2 diabetes, smoker, asthma,’ I’m like check, check, bingo.” After Consuelos deemed it a “wake-up call,” Gardell added, “I said to my wife, I said, ‘If they just find some medicine where this thing won’t kill us, I’m going to change everything.'” “And as soon as they did, I went and got...

The average pain trajectories after shoulder surgery vary with different analgesic interventions, according to research. Sheila Gokul, M.D. and colleagues examined average pain trajectories with different analgesic interventions for 48 hours after shoulder surgery in a systematic review of randomized controlled trials and cohort studies assessing pain scores according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. Data were included from 74 studies, with 4,676 patients. The researchers identified three main treatment groups: continuous nerve block (CNB), single shot nerve block (SSNB), and conventional analgesia (CA). At 12 hours postoperatively after all shoulder surgeries, pain scores differed...

A New York ballot initiative, the Equal Rights Amendment, is facing fierce backlash over its vague language that would reportedly prevent parents from signing off on their child undergoing gender reassignment surgery. "Any decent lawyer will take one look at the Proposition One language and say, ‘you’ve got to be kidding me," Greg Garvey, the executive director of the Coalition to Protect Kids - New York, a group "dedicated to defeating the so-called Equal Rights Amendment," said in a press statement provided to Fox News Digital. "This ballot initiative is written so broadly and so poorly that it could cause...

Attempted suicide rates among people who identified as transgender more than doubled after receiving a vaginoplasty, according to a peer-reviewed study published in The Journal of Urology.The study analyzed the rates of psychiatric emergencies before and after gender-altering surgery among 869 males who underwent vaginoplasty and 357 females who underwent phalloplasty in California from 2012 to 2018.Researchers found the rates of psychiatric emergencies were high both before and after gender-altering surgery, with similar overall rates in both groups. However, suicide attempts were markedly higher in those who received vaginoplasties.“In fact, our observed rate of suicide attempts in the phalloplasty group...

A new study demonstrates the use of a simple pre-surgical infection prevention protocol to prevent dangerous post-surgical infections. Surgical site infections (SSIs) are a type of health care-associated infection with deadly consequences for some patients. These infections lead to a high rate of morbidity and mortality, with a patient's estimated risk of death as much as 11 times higher than normal. Researchers aimed to evaluate the results of a protocol designed to reduce SSIs through a particular focus on the Staphylococcus aureus pathogen. The approach involved a pre-surgical intranasal application of povidone-iodine and skin antisepsis using chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG). The...

According to leaked documents, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health is pushing hormonal and surgical transitions for minors. Getty Images Newly leaked files from the world’s leading transgender health-care organization reveal it is pushing hormonal and surgical transitions for minors, including stomach-wrenching experimental procedures designed to create sexless bodies that resemble department-store mannequins. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health documents demonstrate it’s controlled by gender ideologues who push aside concerns about whether children and adolescents can consent to medical treatments that WPATH members privately acknowledge often have devastating and permanent side effects. Yet the US government, American doctors...

Researchers have learned that by preserving large superficial leg veins intended for coronary bypass grafting in a mixture of the anticoagulant heparin and blood, rather than heparin and saline, the veins were better protected from cell and tissue damage. In severe cases of coronary artery disease, blood flow to the heart is impeded. Surgeons improve blood flow by using veins from the leg to reroute the blood flow in the heart. During these procedures, surgeons remove a section of vein and typically preserve it in a saline solution for two to four hours until it's needed. A decade or more...

CONCERN has mounted over Russia’s central bank governor after she suddenly cancelled an appearance at an exhibition without explanation. It comes amid circulating rumours that Elvira Nabiullina, 60, has undergone an unspecified surgery at the Kremlin. Russia's central bank has declined to comment on the rumours, Reuters reported. The Kremlin has also refused to comment on the surgery rumours, appearing annoyed at the question. “I do not consider this question appropriate at our conference call,” Putin’s spokesman told journalists today. "This is absolutely personal information about health and we have neither the scope nor the desire to comment on it."

For patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty (TKA), treatment with diosmin—a flavonoid supplement derived from citrus fruits—reduced swelling of the knee and leg and some measures of associated pain can be achieved, reports a clinical trial. Swelling is a common problem in patients undergoing TKA, and one that contributes to pain and patient dissatisfaction. Currently, there are no effective medication choices to reduce swelling after TKA. Diosmin—often in combination with a related flavonoid called hesperidin—has been used to reduce swelling of the limbs in patients with venous disorders. The exploratory study included 330 patients undergoing TKA at 13 university-affiliated hospitals. Patients...

Calling all FR Prayer warriors.... .... dear DollyCali is scheduled for surgery on the morning of Friday, Oct 27th. She needs our prayers for a successful surgery, for her docs/nurses and healthcare team, and, for a speedy recovery. She has been dealing with this issue, for some time, and, can now have the necessary surgery to hopefully bring her back to good health. Dolly's message, "I am due for surgery on Friday for an ongoing condition it’s basically a hiatal hernia that’s gone very very bad. My entire digestive system is up wrapped around my lungs and heart so that’s...

Tennessee can move forward with a ban on gender-transition treatment for minors, according to a federal court ruling from September 28. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rejected an appeal from families of transgender children, stating that the laws do not discriminate based on age or sex. The ruling, which prohibits treatments such as puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries, applies to both Tennessee and Kentucky.

Luka Hein, who is now 21 years old, is suing the doctors who allegedly rushed her into transgender surgery at the age of 16, removing both her breasts. Hein spoke with the Daily Mail, telling the outlet the surgery has left her with daily pain. They also pumped her full of hormone treatments that could possibly rob her of being a mother one day. During her teens, Hein’s parents went through a bitter divorce. A series of events after that led to doctors convincing her parents that if they didn’t push her to become transgender she would commit suicide. The...

CREDIT: Screenshot/NBC News Over the weekend we covered the heartbreaking story of a child whose medical "transition" was captured on video. One clip that was posted to X/Twitter, which is from a 2012 NBC News story, shows an 11-year-old child who was a biological boy preparing to have hormone blockers implanted. In one clip the child, whose name had been legally changed from Joseph to Josie, asks his mother, "Sometimes I think I’m a boy kinda.. Will you love me if I’m a boy?" In another, filmed at the doctor's office, shows Josie crying and clearly uncomfortable as the...