Academic literature on the topic 'Mouth-washing'

Examination of the skin can provide information about cutaneous or systemic diseases. As always, examination of the skin is best performed in correlation with the available medical history. Even if the examination is conducted in a different order, you should have a systematic method of presenting the findings. Examination comprises inspection and palpation of skin and skin appendages (hair, nails, teeth, and mucous membranes) and is performed in one of two scenarios. 1. The skin may be sequentially examined alongside the examination of other systems (e.g. neurocutaneous syndromes, which are disorders with neurological features, characteristics lesions on the skin, and tumours in different parts of the body) (table 14.1). 2. A dedicated examination of the skin may need to be carried out when it is the suspected primary involved organ and includes evaluation of the hair, nails, teeth, and mucous membranes of the mouth and genitalia. Key competence skills required in examination of the skin are given in table 14.2. Some of the clinical features of common paediatric dermatoses are given in table 14.3. These steps are repeated in every system to reiterate their importance and to help you recollect the initial approach of any clinical exam. Also refer to chapter 4. • On entering the examination room, demonstrate strict adherence to infection control measures by washing your hands or by using alcohol rub. • Introduce yourself both to the parents and the child. • Talk slowly and clearly with a smile on your face. • Establish rapport with the child and parents. • Expose adequately while ensuring their privacy. • Positioning: the patient must be undressed adequately to carry out a complete examination. Inadequate skin exposure with the cloth pushed to one side or lifted momentarily often casts shadows on the skin and is not conducive for proper examination. Infants and very young children should be undressed completely. The younger child is examined preferably on the parent’s lap. Older children can lie down except for the examination of back, which can be examined in the sitting position.

One term that has acquired a particular air of consumer suspicion in recent years is “processed food. ” Processing is seen as being something that is used to make food less fresh, less natural, and so more suspicious. However, even though we say we don’t want processed food, every food product, before it gets to your mouth, has been subjected to some form of processing and treatment that has a scientific basis. Even washing an apple, chilling sushi, or peeling a banana are forms of food processing, while the bag of salad we buy in a shop or market isn’t full of air as we might expect. All of these phenomena I will discuss in coming chapters. Before dealing with the science of food processing, it is worth discussing what exactly that highly loaded term means. To a food scientist (well, me anyway), food processing means subjecting foods or raw materials to external forces designed to cause a desirable change in the food, typically in terms of its safety and stability, and also in many cases its flavor, texture, and color. In many cases, the primary target of food processing is the resident population of contaminating microorganisms that, if not dealt with, might otherwise cause the food to spoil, or else spoil the day of consumers who finds themselves with a range of symptoms of food poisoning, up to the most lethal. The force most commonly applied in processing is temperature, whether low (refrigeration), very low (freezing), high (for example, pasteurization or cooking), or very high (canning or sterilization). Temperature is indeed probably the key physical variable of significance to food, as almost everything that happens in and to food is influenced by temperature, and most changes take place optimally in a relatively narrow band around body temperature (37 °C). If temperature is pictured as a line scale, the zone of greatest danger and likelihood is centered around that point, but food processors look far below and above that zone and have come to understand how we can work around the optimum temperatures for various reactions and biological changes in order to make our food safer and more stable.