Cystic Fibrosis

Paper Summary:

The paper shows that the field of pediatric nursing is a particularly large one in which its members may find themselves having to counsel both young patients and their families suffering from a myriad of diseases. Cystic fibrosis (CF), in particular, is a debilitating disease that strikes many young people. The paper discusses how, in the first years following its discovery, many children could not expect to make it to their teen years. Today, with advances in the management and care of this disease, patients are living into their 40s and it is even possible that there will one day be a cure. This paper will look at CF from a historical perspective. The timeline of its discovery and research are briefly presented, as are a few of the significant "milestones" in the history of the treatment of CF and what these mean for people battling this disease.

From the Paper:

"Perhaps the most exciting advent in the history of the treatment of CF, as well as the most controversial, is the use of gene therapy. The idea behind gene therapy is to treat an illness by addressing and correcting its genetic cause. With the identification of the gene that actually causes CF, noting that it is a defect of sorts in the gene that causes the disease, it was only a matter of time before gene therapy was applied to CF. In 2000, an advanced experiment was performed in North Carolina. The idea was to give patients currently suffering from CF a healthy gene and hope that it will fix what is wrong with the unhealthy gene, even replace it, thereby curing the patient. Results and future applications of this procedure remain to be seen."

More papers on Cystic Fibrosis:

• Term Paper # 145135 : "An Overview of Cystic Fibrosis and Efforts to Identify a Cure"
• Descriptive Essay # 133313 : "Nursing - Cystic Fibrosis"
• Research Paper # 115084 : "Cystic Fibrosis in the Modern Era"
• Research Paper # 7895 : "Cystic Fibrosis"

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