What are the most significant advances in medicine

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ipod01

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Hi guys, I have to give a presentation to my class.

What do you guys think are the 3 or 4 most significant advances in medicine?

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Antibiotics
ARVs
Genetic screening
Vaccines
 
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contraceptives. all of them.

VictorianPostcard.jpg
 
Modern Sanitation
Aseptic Surgery (Lister)
Handwashing (Simmelweiss)
Anaesthesia
Antibiotics
 
I'd say CT/MRI, vaccines, and minimally invasive surgery (including robot-assisted).

Probably not the most significant, but up there.
 
Modern Sanitation
Aseptic Surgery (Lister)
Handwashing (Simmelweiss)
Anaesthesia
Antibiotics

:thumbup::thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:

These are by far the most important advances in medicine to date. I'd also add immunizations.
 
-Diagnostic equipment: MRI, US, CT, ....
-Advancement in Preventive Medicine: vaccines, handwashing, healthy lifestyle,....
-Drug Therapy and cocktails
-Robotics
-Medical School Tuition,...
 
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I'd say CT/MRI, vaccines, and minimally invasive surgery (including robot-assisted).

Probably not the most significant, but up there.

Definitely not CT/MRI and minimally invasive surgery. These have saved relatively few lives. Antibiotics and vaccines save millions if not billions. Think about the fact that pertussis, measles etc. are rarely seen.
 
Definitely not CT/MRI and minimally invasive surgery. These have saved relatively few lives. Antibiotics and vaccines save millions if not billions. Think about the fact that pertussis, measles etc. are rarely seen.

I dunno man....I would definitely put imaging up there on my list. Maybe hasnt saved the lives of millions worldwide and in underdeveloped areas; but it significantly increases diagnostic ability/accuracy/speed.....especially in really emergent situations.
 
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Diagnostic imaging IDK about. A decent neurologist can localize a lesion in the brain without ever using an MRI. Good orthos know if the bone is broken. Imaging is more often than not a crutch and a substitute for a thorough exam and history.

My revised ranking is
1. Public Sanitation, by not taking a dump where we drink there is less cholera
2. Vaccines, dramatic decrease of death in childhood
3. Antibiotics
4. Aseptic Surgery/Improved Obstetrics, decreased death in childbirth, no more infections
5. Anaesthesia It doesn't in and of itself save lives but anaesthesia and analgesia make surgery tolerable
 
  • Water treatment
  • Vaccines
  • Antibiotics
  • Contraceptives
 
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rate my professors
food
water
 
I'd say CT/MRI, vaccines, and minimally invasive surgery (including robot-assisted).

Probably not the most significant, but up there.

Yea. Those advances have defiantly saved a lot of lives... lol The only one worth mentioning is the vaccine.

Sanitation
Vaccines
Antibiotics

Simple enough. I hope you cite SDN on this essay that you are writing.
 
Making strides towards making physicians socially competent and steering them away from being socially *****ic tools that are full of themselves and from seeing themselves as all-knowing, omnipotent gods.

More work still needs to be done in this area. :thumbup:
 
My revised ranking is
1. Public Sanitation, by not taking a dump where we drink there is less cholera
2. Vaccines, dramatic decrease of death in childhood
3. Antibiotics
4. Aseptic Surgery/Improved Obstetrics, decreased death in childbirth, no more infections
5. Anaesthesia It doesn't in and of itself save lives but anaesthesia and analgesia make surgery tolerable

The first two on this list are more in the realm of public health than medicine.
 
The first two on this list are more in the realm of public health than medicine.
:thumbup:

Definitely agree. I wouldn't say that public sanitation, hand washing, and vaccination are in the realm of medicine. They belong to public health, not medicine, IMO. Medicine really deals with the individual, not a population.
 
The rise of agriculture was actually the largest tragedy human kind has ever suffered. Agriculture facilitated overpopulation, and the pseudo-nutrients provided by agriculture caused human stature and physical vigor to diminish once those nutrients were relied upon.

Lastly, and most importantly if you ask me, agriculture is the main reason humans went from being the best of the pack animals to a bunch of shaven ape hive workers.

Farming is the antichrist. If it had a face, I would most definitely punch it. Most importantly for the purposes of this topic though is that farming and animal domestication seriously diminished the robustness of humanity, and actually facilitated the rise of all of the major health problems that modern medicine has spent the last several hundred years attempting to cure.

So you're saying that without the Neolithic Revolution, we wouldn't have jobs, eh? Sounds like an advance in modern medicine to me ;)
 
:thumbup:

Definitely agree. I wouldn't say that public sanitation, hand washing, and vaccination are in the realm of medicine. They belong to public health, not medicine, IMO. Medicine really deals with the individual, not a population.

I don't think the demarcation line is that clear. For example, without public sanitation, hand washing, and vaccination, we would have many more sick and dying individuals requiring medical care.
 
Antibiotics
Vaccines (Polio really comes to mind)
Anti-retroviral therapy for HIV patients
 
The rise of agriculture was actually the largest tragedy human kind has ever suffered. Agriculture facilitated overpopulation, and the pseudo-nutrients provided by agriculture caused human stature and physical vigor to diminish once those nutrients were relied upon.

Lastly, and most importantly if you ask me, agriculture is the main reason humans went from being the best of the pack animals to a bunch of shaven ape hive workers.

Farming is the antichrist. If it had a face, I would most definitely punch it. Most importantly for the purposes of this topic though is that farming and animal domestication seriously diminished the robustness of humanity, and actually facilitated the rise of all of the major health problems that modern medicine has spent the last several hundred years attempting to cure.
You would like Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.
 
The rise of agriculture was actually the largest tragedy human kind has ever suffered. Agriculture facilitated overpopulation, and the pseudo-nutrients provided by agriculture caused human stature and physical vigor to diminish once those nutrients were relied upon.

Lastly, and most importantly if you ask me, agriculture is the main reason humans went from being the best of the pack animals to a bunch of shaven ape hive workers.

Farming is the antichrist. If it had a face, I would most definitely punch it. Most importantly for the purposes of this topic though is that farming and animal domestication seriously diminished the robustness of humanity, and actually facilitated the rise of all of the major health problems that modern medicine has spent the last several hundred years attempting to cure.

Damn dude. I usually like your posts, but you lost me here. What proof do you have of the relative "robustness of humanity" of some pre-historical time and how do you quantify that it was objectively better? I think that you might need to set down your dog-eared copy of The Population Bomb and slowly step away..
 
1. Chuck Norris
2. Knowledge that Chuck Norris exists.
3. The 2010 and 2012 elections.
 
Damn dude. I usually like your posts, but you lost me here. What proof do you have of the relative "robustness of humanity" of some pre-historical time and how do you quantify that it was objectively better? I think that you might need to set down your dog-eared copy of The Population Bomb and slowly step away..

I think the main point was that rates of disease and malnutrition went sky high after the development of agriculture. From a public health vantage point, this is bad, but you are correct in saying that it isn't objective.
 
Antibiotics
Genetic screening/Understanding of genetics
Vaccinations
Aseptic technique/infection control
 
The Germ Theory of Disease, discovered by Pasteur. All the rest, like sanitation, antiseptic, etc. were widely adopted based on the germ theory. People had been hinting at cleanliness for thousands of years until Pasteur showed the world why.
 
Surgical anesthesia (the 2nd greatest invention/discovery of the past millennium, the 1st being the printing press

Vaccines
Antibiotics
Safe and effective birth control
 
A lot of the thing being listed seem to be advances that were made by scientists in the fields of biology and chemistry. The field of medicine and physicians then take advantage of those advances. I would say that advances in medicine mostly come in the form of procedures and advanced diagnostics. Someone already stated organ transplantation.

I would also mention a lot of the stuff that plastics does such as facial reconstruction of people who were disfigured and, as someone else already mention, boob jobs. =]
 
Just thought of another one, though ILikeDrugs touched on it. The development of imaging techniques.
 
I think organ transplantation is one of medicine's greatest achievements.

This is definitely a good response along with the work on immunology that has allowed for drugs for immunosuppresion once the transplant has taken place so as not to kill the person from immune attack on foreign cells.
 
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