Pregnant women who have more exposure to higher pollution areas are at Essay

Pregnant women who have more exposure to higher pollution areas are at more of risk for having children with autism - Essay Example This is the most recent in several similar studies to suggest this although it is the first national study. The suspect agents include diesel exhaust, mercury, manganese, lead, methylene chloride and nickel. Pollutants of this nature present in the atmosphere pose a higher risk to mothers in these areas for giving birth to children with autism. Mercury and diesel exhaust were found to pose the highest risk. Other researchers argue that there is a higher risk of autistic children being born to mothers living in areas polluted with several industrial pollutants. Windham et al. (2006), suggested that a potential association exists between autism and other elements of environmental pollution such as metal particles and possible solvents in the atmosphere. Pregnant women who lived near San Francisco bay and exposed to environmental pollutants were susceptible to autism spectrum disorders. This is due to the particulate matter in air and vaporization of mercury from asphalt during hot weather causing increased exposure to higher than normal levels of contamination. Windham et al. (2006) suggested that areas with increased concentrations of hazardous pollutants are at more risk of experiencing autism disorders. This also occurs along the west coast where there are increased ambient levels of particulate pollutants blown in from Asian countries that are the largest producers of these pollutant s from coal burning in power production plants. These pollutants are neurotoxins that cross the placental barrier to the baby during development in the womb and cause genetic changes leading to defective genes. These genes disrupt brain development by causing a breakdown in the process in the fetus and cause autism. According to Kalkbrenner et al., (2014), this may also be by retarding natural nervous system development or by hindering immune cells from assisting more efficient neuron

Do the ICU Nurses Experiences Help in Evolving Medical Futility Research Paper

Do the ICU Nurses Experiences Help in Evolving Medical Futility Guidelines - Research Paper Example Findings: - when the contents of the literature are viewed through the glasses of the three extracted views, it is found that experiences of nurses form a great volume of the database. Nurse's perception of medical futility is not given due place in decision making by physicians. Terming the utility behind the medical system and its care oriented activities, as futility is an oxymoron. Treatments that do not fetch results/goals are considered as medical futility. If this can be taken as a rule, then any stage of treatment towards the curative goal can also be rejected as medical futility, because the stages of treatment may not land immediately on the anticipated results. The interactive gap between doctors and patients or their families worsens the situations in many decision-making junctures. Critical situations like withdrawal of life support systems and stoppage of ineffective medical interventions are to be managed in consensus with the patients and families. To achieve this consensus more than five sittings of negotiations are needed at times. Lack of skill in maneuvering the negotiations in the interest of patients on the part of doctors and physicians of entry-level forms the crux of the problem. The term futility is associated with the target-missed. When maintaining the quality of life of the patient is the target, the medical futility makes no sense. Only when life-saving is the issue, medical futility works; that too because of the occurrence of death, which is never in the hands of us. Thus keeping a negative target-- that is death-- as a measure to judge the medical interventions seems quite irrelevant. During the last decade of the 20th Century, medical futility guidelines began to emerge at different levels in many institutions. The role of the nursing community in ICU and their perception of medical futility were unfortunately given less importance in evolving the guidelines.  Ã‚