A Scottsdale, Arizona-based physician with a medical career that has spanned two decades, Dr. Jonathan "Jon" Komar serves as a physician consultant at OptiMed Solutions, a boutique consultancy that he established in 2018. An accomplished medical researcher, Jon Komar, MD, co-authored the research paper Scheuermann's Kyphosis Following Cervical Spinal Cord Injury.
Kyphosis is a condition defined by excess curvature in the thoracic region of the spine. In a healthy spine, the vertebrae align in a pattern that forms a curve, but the curve is minimal (less than 40 degrees). A person can be diagnosed with kyphosis if the curvature is greater than 45 degrees. The most prevalent symptom of kyphosis is a rounded back, sometimes called a hunchback. If the curvature is not severe, a patient may experience no further symptoms. However, in many cases, kyphosis presents with symptoms such as back pain and stiffness, tenderness of the spine, and a low capacity to perform daily activities. The back pain could be a result of musculoskeletal tension in the region of the abnormal curvature. Adults are also more prone to complications from severe kyphosis. These include persistent pain that does not improve with medication. Breathing difficulty occurs if there is compression of the lungs and/or airway. In some cases, there may also be compression of certain nerves that run through the spinal cord in the affected region. When this happens, the nerves become damaged. In the case of severe damage, control or feeling in that part of the body is lost. Some complications include weakness or numbness in the extremities, poor coordination due to a lack of sense of balance, and loss of bladder control. These severe cases of kyphosis require more invasive treatment -- typically, surgery.
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The founder and physician consultant at OptiMed Solutions in Scottsdale, Arizona, Dr. Jonathan “Jon” Komar possesses over two decades of medical experience. He earned his MD from the Wayne State University School of Medicine. In his free time, Dr. Jon Komar enjoys nature, especially geocaching alongside his family. Together, they have found over 300 geocaches around the country, in states including Texas, Mississippi, and Hawaii.
An adventure game for GPS users, geocaching combines hiking with tech-aided treasure hunting. Individuals participating in the hobby determine the location of caches by entering coordinates into GPS units. After finding the cache, they enjoy different rewards, such as a logbook with information about nearby attractions, maps, pictures, jewelry, or antiques. The game comes with several rules. When placing caches, people must keep them far away from railroad crossings and road traffic so that searchers are safe. Finding a cache cannot require swimming, nor can individuals bury caches in the ground or place them at historic sites or on private property. In addition, those seeking caches follow a certain etiquette. Once a cache is found, individuals may carefully remove the cache and examine the contents without tipping off others to its location. Further, each person who finds the cache must sign the included logbook and, if they take an item, must replace it with one of equal or higher value. Should the cache contain a trackable item, the discoverer must move that item to a new cache. Scottsdale, Arizona-based physician Jonathan (Jon) Komar, MD, has been working in the healthcare industry for upwards of 20 years. Now in the field of electronic health record consulting, he guides OptiMed Solutions, which he founded. Dr. Jon Komar also finds biologics interesting, particularly the technology that makes stem cell harvesting from bone marrow possible.
A soft, spongy tissue, bone marrow produces hematopoietic stem cells. These develop into white blood cells, platelets, and red blood cells. Each of these components aids in normal body function. Red blood cells, for example, carry oxygen throughout the body, while platelets stop bleeding by forming clots. Patients with leukemia, lymphoma, and some other types of cancer do not have healthy blood cells, since they are either cancerous or damaged by cancer treatments. Stem cells replace these damaged cells in a patient's body. For this reason, some patients will undergo a bone marrow or stem cell transplant. This procedure takes healthy stem cells from the bone marrow of a donor and transplants them in the patient following chemotherapy or radiation therapy. Such transplants are also possible using the patient's own stem cells, as long as intensive cancer treatments do not damage them. |
AuthorJonathan Komar, MD, has involved himself as an active voice in the medical community throughout his career. Archives
March 2022
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