Dr. Josyann Abisaab

Diagnosing and Treating Lyme Disease: Dr. Josyann Abisaab

Lyme disease diagnosis can be very difficult, and emergency room doctors like Dr. Josyann Abisaab will often have to use their own discretion and skills to deem if Lyme disease testing is necessary.  Certainly, if a patient exhibits symptoms of Lyme disease, shows physical signs like the bulls-eye rash, or has a recent history of a tick bite, the doctor will do testing to see if it’s Lyme disease. The problem is that many patients don’t remember getting a tick bite and they don’t show symptoms that are easily recognizable as Lyme disease symptoms.

When Lyme disease testing is done, an ELISA (enzyme-linked immunoassay) or IFA (immunofluorescent assay) antibody test is usually done first. If one of these tests is positive, then a Western blot test for IgM and/or IgG Lyme disease antibodies is performed.

Treatment for Lyme disease usually includes antibiotics. The type of antibiotic and the length of treatment will depend on the length of time that patient has had Lyme disease and the severity of the situation.

Good Healthy News for the Elderly

It seems like every day we hear another story of an elderly person fracturing a hip.  But today, it looks like this statistic is actually declining.  The study came from epidemiologists assessing a government survey of patients who had been hospitalized between 1990 and 2006.  The study found noteworthy decreases among men over 85 and women over 75.  This is extremely positive since what often happens with hip breaks is that the patient needs to be moved to a nursing home for at least a year to heal.  As well, such a fracture – if not cared for adequately – can result in many future visits to the ER. 

No one really knows what has caused this decline or if the trend is likely to continue in the future.  It could be the fact that there has been improved treatment for osteoporosis but that cannot be proved.  It could also be that since older people are generally in better shape, they are not falling as often. “Then there’s the cohort explanation. The older women who broke hips in the early 1990s — 1997 was the year that fracture rates peaked — were young during the Depression.” This might have been due to food shortages and malnutrition which meant they never developed sufficient bone density.  This news definitely takes off the pressure from doctors working in the ER like Dr. Josyann Abisaab who works at NY Presbyterian Hospital who can often be somewhat overwhelmed by individuals with breaks who need urgent care.

University of Rochester Medical Center Research

As well as being a top institution at which to study medicine, the University of Rochester Medical Center has also been making significant strides in its research progress.  But this is not just theory; the research undertaken has been perhaps most importantly – affecting “lives of patients around the globe.”  The institute has a strong financial backing for this, of $232 million (which is growing) and has impacted “nearly every area of medicine imaginable.”  Most notably the university has been involved in developing three vaccines that are popular around the world, protecting people from ear infections, cervical cancer, meningitis and pneumonia.  They will reduce the need for intervention on all levels of medical care, whether in the emergency room, intensive care, or recovery.

Hepatitis A in Brief

Infectious diseases of the liver fall into the following categories:  

•    Viral infections

•    Pyogenic liver abscess

•    Fungal and mycobacterial infections

•    Parasitic infections

 Out of those about 100 deaths are caused by fulminant hepatitis failure each year in the U.S. 

In 15% of the cases the illness develops into a lingering or relapsing disease. Hepatitis A accounts for from one fifth to one quarter of clinical hepatitis and most frequently affects children between the ages of 5 and 14 years old. The most common way in which hepatitis A is transmitted is through the fecal-oral route, through contaminated food and/or water.

There are several risk factors for hepatitis A which people should be aware of:

•    Contact with an infected person, the closer the contact the higher the risk.

•    Daycare centers or young children where workers handle diapers and then prepare meals.

•    Travel, especially internationally.

•    Raw oysters and clams can transmit water borne hepatitis A.

•    Intravenous drug use and in rare cases transfusions can increase risk.

Most cases of hepatitis A, and especially in the case of children, are asymptomatic, but when symptoms do present the patient will feel nausea, fatigue, myalgia, fever and jaundice. Adults usually have more severe symptoms than children. Aside from the less than 1% of patients that develop fulminant liver failure, almost all the rest experience complete recoveries.

Brief History of Emergency Medicine

The idea of having a specialized type of care called emergency medicine was begun in the year 1911 at the University of Louisville Hospital, located in Louisville, Kentucky. The renowned surgeon Arnold Griswold developed this revolutionary, but life-saving innovation further during the 1930s. Dr. Griswold also equipped police cars and fire trucks with medical supplies in addition to training police officers in emergency care so that the injured and/or ill could receive medical attention even while on route to the hospital.

This type of care has been developed and refined and is now known as emergency medicine. Today we have specialized vehicles called ambulances, which can transport people to the hospital while simultaneously administering the critical care a patient may need immediately in order to save his/her life. Dr. Josyann Abisaad is one of those doctors that must make the kind of quick decisions and give the appropriate care within seconds, and can mean the difference between life and death.

When to Visit the Emergency Room

 Approximately 300,000 Americans visit the emergency room each year. There is a huge variety of reasons to go, and according to experts in the field, it is better to be cautious and go even if you are not sure you really need to. The American College of Emergency Physicians has created a list of what doctors consider a potential medical emergency requiring a visit to the emergency room.

Included in this list are the following:

•    Difficulty breathing, shortness of breath

•    Chest or upper abdominal pain or pressure

•    Fainting, sudden dizziness, weakness

•    Changes in vision

•    Confusion or changes in mental status

•    Any sudden or severe pain

•    Uncontrolled bleeding

•    Severe or persistent vomiting or diarrhea

•    Coughing or vomiting blood

•    Suicidal feelings

•    Difficulty speaking

Dr. Josyann Abisaab is a good source for more information about when to visit the emergency room.

Rochester Medical School Pioneer in Education

In 1989 Josyann Abisaab earned her medical degree from the University Of Rochester School Of Medicine. The school of medicine and dentistry in Rochester has a fascinating history. In 1921 Nobel Prize winner Dr. George Hoyt Whipple arrived in Rochester with a revolutionary idea which was able to put into practice as the medical school’s first Dean. Dr. Whipple supervised the construction of the school from beginning to end, including the design of the building, and the staffing. The new idea was to integrate within the walls of one building and under one roof clinical practice serving patients along with instruction in basic science. At the time, 1921, this was considered a new practice which was based on a new framework which had been developed and advanced by the famed medical school pioneer Abraham Flexner.

The idea of integrating patient care with excellent academic instruction in one cooperative environment has been an outstanding success and is still going strong today, almost 100 years later. Dr. Josyann Abisaab was able to benefit from this excellent approach to medical education, and exercises her great skills in her role as Assistant Attending Physician in the emergency room at New York Presbyterian Hospital.

Josyann Abisaab Emergency Room Doctor

Since 1992 Josyann Abisaab has been working in the Emergency Department at New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, where she is an Assistant Attending Physician. Emergency room medicine is a specialized field in which a doctor will come across a wide range of injuries and illnesses, in many cases those can be life threatening, requiring the instant attention of a doctor.

It is common for emergency rooms in the United States to be quite busy places. Some of the types of emergencies which are handled in emergency rooms include, heart attacks; trauma, such as injuries from car accidents or other types of accidents; mental illness, which sometimes means police bringing people to the emergency room against their will if they seem to be a danger to themselves or others; asthma attacks or COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) can also bring people into the emergency room due to difficulty to breath; plus a large assortment of other illnesses and situations.