Dusty Foot Acupuncture Clinic
Definitions
Acupuncturist is a healthcare professional who is qualified or professionally engaged in the practice of acupuncture.
Oriental medicine includes:
- Traditional Chinese medicine
- Traditional Korean medicine
- Kampo (Japanese medicine)
Traditional Chinese medicine, also known as TCM, includes a range of traditional medical practices originating in China. Although well accepted in the mainstream of medical care throughout East Asia, it is considered an alternative medical system in much of the western world. TCM practices include such treatments as herbal medicine, acupuncture, dietary therapy, and both Tui na and Shiatsu massage. Qigong and Taijiquan are also closely associated with TCM. Chinese medicine is based on a pre-scientific paradigm of medicine that developed over several thousand years.
Traditional Korean medicine developed with the influence of other traditional medicine. Its techniques in treatment and diagnosis are both similar and unique to other traditional medicine.
Kampô medicine is the Japanese study and adaptation of Traditional Chinese medicine. Kampo uses most of the Chinese medical system including acupuncture and moxibustion but is primarily concerned with the study of herbs.
Medical Technologist (MT) is a healthcare professional who performs chemical, hematological, immunologic, microscopic, and bacteriological diagnostic analyses on body fluids such as blood, urine, sputum, stool, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), peritoneal fluid, pericardial fluid, and synovial fluid, as well as other specimens. Medical technologists work in clinical laboratories at hospitals, doctor's offices, reference labs, and biotechnology labs.
Microbiology is the study of microorganisms, which are unicellular or cell-cluster microscopic organisms. This includes eukaryotes such as fungi and protists, and prokaryotes, which are bacteria and archaea. Viruses, though not strictly classed as living organisms, are also studied. In short; microbiology refers to the study of life and organisms that are too small to be seen with the naked eye. Microbiology is a broad term which includes virology, mycology, parasitology, bacteriology and other branches. A microbiologist is a specialist in microbiology.
Serology is the scientific study of blood serum. In practice, the term usually refers to the diagnostic identification of antibodies in the serum. Such antibodies are typically formed in response to an infection (against a given microorganism), against other foreign proteins (in response, for example, to a mismatched blood transfusion), or to one's own proteins (in instances of autoimmune disease). Serological tests may be performed for diagnostic purposes when an infection is suspected, in rheumatic illnesses, and in many other situations, such as checking an individual's blood type. Serology blood tests help to diagnose patients with certain immune deficiencies associated with the lack of antibodies, such as X-linked agammaglobulinemia. In such cases, tests for antibodies will be consistently negative.
Clinical chemistry (also known as clinical biochemistry, chemical pathology, medical biochemistry or pure blood chemistry) is the area of pathology that is generally concerned with analysis of bodily fluids.
All biochemical tests come under chemical pathology. These are performed on any kind of body fluid, but mostly on serum or plasma. Serum is the yellow watery part of blood that is left after blood has been allowed to clot and all blood cells have been removed. This is most easily done by centrifugation which packs the denser blood cells and platelets to the bottom of the centrifuge tube, leaving the liquid serum fraction resting above the packed cells. Plasma is essentially the same as serum, but is obtained by centrifuging the blood without clotting. Plasma therefore contains all of the clotting factors, including fibrinogen.
This large array of tests can be further sub-categorised into sub-specialities of:
- General or routine chemistry
- Endocrinology - the study of hormones
- Immunology - the study of the immune system and antibodies
- Pharmacology or Toxicology - the study of drugs
Hematology, also spelled haematology, is the branch of biology (physiology), pathology, clinical laboratory, internal medicine, and pediatrics that is concerned with the study of blood, the blood-forming organs, and blood diseases. Hematology includes the study of etiology, diagnosis, treatment, prognosis, and prevention of blood diseases.
Physicians specialized in hematology are known as hematologists. Their routine work mainly includes the care and treatment of patients with hematological diseases, although some may also work at the haematology laboratory viewing blood films and bone marrow slides under the microscope, interpreting various haematological test results. In some institutions, haematologists also manage the haematology laboratory. Physicians who work in haematology laboratories, and most commonly manage them, are pathologists specialized in the diagnosis of haematological diseases, referred to as haematopathologists. Haematologists and haematopathologists generally work in conjunction to formulate a diagnosis and deliver the most appropriate therapy if needed. Haematology is a distinct subspecialty of internal medicine, separate from but overlapping with the subspecialty of medical oncology. Haematologists may specialise further or have special interests, for example in:
- treating bleeding disorders such as hemophilia and idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura
- treating haematological malignacies such as lymphoma and leukemia (onco haematology)
- treating haemoglobinopathies
- in the science of blood transfusion and the work of a blood bank
- in bone marrow and stem cell transplantation
only some blood disorders can be cured.
Immunohematology is a branch of hematology which studies antigen-antibody reactions and analogous phenomena as they relate to the pathogenesis and clinical manifestations of blood disorders. A person employed in this field is referred to as an immunohematologist. Their day to day duties include blood typing, cross-matching and antibody identification
Molecular pathology is an emerging discipline within pathology which is focused in the study and diagnosis of disease through the examination of molecules within organs, tissues or bodily fluids. Molecular pathology shares some aspects of practice with both anatomic pathology and clinical pathology, molecular biology, biochemistry, proteomics and genetics, and is sometimes considered a "crossover" discipline. It is multi-disciplinary in nature and focuses mainly on the sub-microscopic aspects of disease.
It is a scientific discipline that encompasses the development of molecular and genetic approaches to the diagnosis and classification of human tumours, the design and validation of predictive biomarkers for treatment response and disease progression, the susceptibility of individuals of different genetic constitution to develop cancer and the environmental and lifestyle factors implicated in carcinogenesis.
