Obesity medicine is a subspecialty focused on the treatment of obesity and its contributing genetic, biologic, environmental, social, and behavioral factors. The term obesity refers to a body weight that is greater than the predetermined healthy weight for a person’s height, according to the...
Patients who have degenerative disc disease that causes pain and makes it difficult to do everyday activities may find relief through nonsurgical treatment. Those who require alternative treatment methods have two options for back surgery: spinal fusion and artificial disc replacement (ADR).
The authorized boards of the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) began to offer the certification examination for sleep medicine in 2007. Since then, the ABMS has recognized sleep medicine as a medical subspecialty of family medicine, internal medicine, otolaryngology, pediatrics,...
Pain medicine is the multidisciplinary subspecialty that concentrates on the management of patients suffering from acute or chronic pain, or pain in patients requiring palliative care, according to the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).
Neurological surgery, also called neurosurgery, is a medical discipline and surgical specialty that provides care for adult and pediatric patients in the treatment of pain or pathological processes that may modify the function or activity of the central nervous system (e.g., brain, hypophysis,...
Surgical critical care is a subspecialty of surgery that manages complex surgical and medical problems in critically ill surgical patients. The education of surgeons in the practice of surgical critical care encompasses didactic instruction in the basic and clinical sciences of surgical diseases...
Biofeedback is the process through which an individual learns how to change his or her physiological activity for the purposes of improving health and performance. In biofeedback, precise instruments measure physiological activity and report or “feed back” information to the individual. These...
Transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) is a noninvasive diagnostic procedure that uses ultra-high-frequency sound waves to record cardiac structures and blood flow velocities within the heart; this procedure is primarily performed on adult patients and is also referred to as adult TTE. During TTE...
Laparoscopic supracervical hysterectomy (LSH) is a minimally invasive procedure in which a surgeon removes the uterus while keeping the cervix in place. This procedure improved upon the radical hysterectomy or total abdominal hysterectomy, total laparoscopic hysterectomy, or laparoscopically...
Cardiac catheterization is a procedure used to diagnose and treat cardiovascular conditions. The procedure begins by inserting a catheter tube through a blood vessel in one of three regions—the arm, groin, or neck—and threading the tube through the heart. Live x-rays are used as a guide as the...
