Dynamic Medicine

Statistical Methods for Dynamic Treatment Regimes shares state of the art of statistical methods developed to address questions of estimation and inference for dynamic treatment regimes, a branch of personalized medicine. This volume demonstrates these methods with their conceptual underpinnings and illustration through analysis of real and simulated data. These methods are immediately applicable to the practice of personalized medicine, which is a medical paradigm that emphasizes the systematic use of individual patient information to optimize patient health care. This is the first single source to provide an overview of methodology and results gathered from journals, proceedings, and technical reports with the goal of orienting researchers to the field. The first chapter establishes context for the statistical reader in the landscape of personalized medicine. Readers need only have familiarity with elementary calculus, linear algebra, and basic large-sample theory to use this text. Throughout the text, authors direct readers to available code or packages in different statistical languages to facilitate implementation. In cases where code does not already exist, the authors provide analytic approaches in sufficient detail that any researcher with knowledge of statistical programming could implement the methods from scratch. This will be an important volume for a wide range of researchers, including statisticians, epidemiologists, medical researchers, and machine learning researchers interested in medical applications. Advanced graduate students in statistics and biostatistics will also find material in Statistical Methods for Dynamic Treatment Regimes to be a critical part of their studies.

Dynamic Treatment Regimes: Statistical Methods for Precision Medicine provides a comprehensive introduction to statistical methodology for the evaluation and discovery of dynamic treatment regimes from data. Researchers and graduate students in statistics, data science, and related quantitative disciplines with a background in probability and statistical inference and popular statistical modeling techniques will be prepared for further study of this rapidly evolving field. A dynamic treatment regime is a set of sequential decision rules, each corresponding to a key decision point in a disease or disorder process, where each rule takes as input patient information and returns the treatment option he or she should receive. Thus, a treatment regime formalizes how a clinician synthesizes patient information and selects treatments in practice. Treatment regimes are of obvious relevance to precision medicine, which involves tailoring treatment selection to patient characteristics in an evidence-based way. Of critical importance to precision medicine is estimation of an optimal treatment regime, one that, if used to select treatments for the patient population, would lead to the most beneficial outcome on average. Key methods for estimation of an optimal treatment regime from data are motivated and described in detail. A dedicated companion website presents full accounts of application of the methods using a comprehensive R package developed by the authors. The authors’ website www.dtr-book.com includes updates, corrections, new papers, and links to useful websites.

Finally, a book about homeopathy written from a homeopath's perspective! An insider's no-nonsense guide to the mysteries of homeopathy and the lessons it teaches about health, illness, and the dynamic nature of true energy healing. A sophisticated overview suitable for all readers. DynMed will change the way you think about homeopathy.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.

Human biological liquids contain numerous low- and high-molecular weight surfactants. The human organism contains interfaces with enormous surfaces. The physicochemical and biochemical processes taking place at these interfaces are extremely important for the vital functions of the organism as a whole, and the interfacial properties may reflect peculiarities of age and sex, health and disease. The present book is the first attempt to systematically present the results of dynamic and equilibrium surface tensions measurements of serum and urine samples that were obtained from healthy humans of various sex and age, and to compare these results with measurements of biological liquids obtained from patients suffering from various diseases or with measurements of amniotic fluid obtained from women at various stages of pregnancy. Pulmonary medicine, especially neonatology, has systematically used interfacial tensiometry for studying pulmonary surfactant. In this particular area, significant progress was achieved in the treatment of diseases related to alterations of the lung surfactant system. We believe that, similar to the progress in pulmonary medicine attributed to surface chemical studies of lung surfactant, progress in other medical branches could be expected through studies of interfacial characteristics of other human biological liquids. For several years the authors of this book have been engaged in studies aimed at the improvement of the maximum bubble pressure method, resulting in the development of computer controlled tensiometers which are capable of measuring dynamic surface tensions within a wide range of surface lifetime. In addition to the measurement techniques, a correct interpretation and analysis of the tensiometric data obtained is extremely important. The kinetic theory of adsorption from solutions, and the theory of equilibrium adsorption layers of surfactant/protein mixtures provide the basis for both the choice of the most characteristic parameters of tensiograms and the analysis of the results. Some theoretical models describing the adsorption of proteins are presented in Chapter 1. The main theoretical and experimental issues related to the maximum bubble pressure technique as applied to biological liquids are presented in Chapter 2. A more detailed discussion of the differences of the various methods in use for measuring dynamic surface tension of biological fluids is provided in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 gives data from patients with kidney disease, Chapter 5 from patients with rheumatic diseases, Chapter 6 with pulmonary diseases, Chapter 7 with diseases of the central nervous system, and Chapter 8 with neoplasms. Dynamic interface tensiometry of human biological liquids is a fascinating new method which deserves a broad use for prospective studies of various diseases.

According to Dr. Larry Malerba, modern medicine has perfected the short-term technical repair of the physical body at the expense of the long-term psychological and spiritual well-being of the whole person. In Green Medicine he examines this issue and provides a realistic blueprint for wellness and a valuable guide for those seeking deeper and more lasting healing. Written in an accessible style, the book draws on a rich range of fields—physics, philosophy, Jungian thought, shamanism, alchemy, Eastern thought, Western esotericism, sustainability, orthodox medicine—to create a green medical paradigm that represents a powerful integrative medical perspective. Dr. Malerba interweaves case histories from his own practice with innovative concepts from alternative and Western medicine in order to address a number of crucial questions: • What are the personal and environmental costs to the overuse of pharmaceutical drugs? • Is conventional medicine as scientific as it claims to be? • How can conventional doctors and alternative healers begin to work together? • How can individuals transform medicine and become participants in their own healthcare? Green Medicine offers a practical and philosophical basis for building a viable green alternative that draws on the inherent unity of body, heart, mind, soul, and nature.