adminNew Delhi, March 20, 2018
Morning Health Talk
1. Colorectal Cancer a silent killer: Screening with fecal tests, colonoscopies in people with normal risk @ age 50 or earlier in Crohns Disease or family history. Cancer is highly treatable in early stages.
2. A high-level, azithromycin-resistant gonorrhea strain that was first detected during an outbreak that began in England in 2014 has been circulating throughout the country for years. [PLoS]
3. Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration is planning to bring ayurveda medicine sale under its ambit
4. Pharmabiz: With bionic kidneys expected to enter into market to cater to the needs of patients suffering from renal diseases, healthcare experts have expressed apprehensions that these bionic kidneys may not give the intended results and needs to undergo more human clinical trials before introducing them into the market.
5. A bionic kidney is an electronic equipment that mimics the functions of a natural kidney by filtering the impure blood and producing hormones and vitamin D needed for a human body similar to that of a normal human kidney.
6. Business Standard: More than one in seven Indian women did not receive antenatal care during their last pregnancy–nearly half of them because their husband or family did not think it was necessary
Deccan Chronicle: A medical surgery was performed with the help of flashlights in Sadar Hospital in Saharsa due to lack of electricity in the hospital.
Pharmabiz: Online sale of drugs using scanned prescription may not fulfill all the critical rules of existing laws of the land as scanned signature is not valid even as per IT Act. Now
7. The Quint: Three AIIMS doctors, two of them women, died early on Sunday, 18 March, and four others of the same institute were injured in an accident on the Yamuna Expressway near Agra
8. A concern for global health security, the US CDC have issued an alarm about a surge in cases of monkeypox. In its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the CDC notes a “recent apparent increase in human monkeypox cases across a wide geographic area”.
9. Fresno surgeon Pervaiz Chaudhry will have to pay $55.6 million to the family of a man who was left in a coma following a heart surgery six years ago at Community Regional Medical Center [jury in Fresno Superior Court : freshnobee]
10. The same jury will also determine how much money in punitive damages Chaudhry, must pay to deter his conduct for leaving the operating room while his patient’s chest remained opened. The jury found Chaudhry’s leaving to be malicious, oppressive or fraudulent. Punitive damages are often many times greater than the actual damages.
11. The General Medical Councils review into gross negligence manslaughter charges against doctors will look at why there are fewer cases involving healthcare organisations compared with individuals.
12. The review was announced following the case of Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba, who was struck off the medical register after the GMC appealed against its own tribunal, after this ruled she could continue to practise despite a court conviction for gross negligence manslaughter.
13. GMC will also look at whether enough consideration is given to ‘system pressures, errors or failures’ surrounding the doctor at the time of the patient’s death.
14. Indian liver transplant surgeon Dr Subhash Gupta is set to visit Karachi with his team this month to perform liver transplants at the Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS).
15. NIH Scientists have discovered a human antibody that protected mice from infection with the deadliest malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. The research team isolated the antibody, called CIS43, from the blood of a volunteer who had received an experimental vaccine made from whole, weakened malaria parasites (PfSPZ Vaccine-Sanaria). The volunteer was later exposed to infectious malaria-carrying mosquitoes under carefully controlled conditions and did not become infected.
16. An investigational oral synthetic androgen, dimethandrolone undecanoate, that is converted to dimethandrolone, which binds to both androgen and progesterone receptors, shows promise as a possible male contraceptive pill [ENDO 2018: The Endocrine Society Annual Meeting]
17. At the meeting of FOMA stakeholders called today at IMA HQs, New Delhi, it was decided to dedicate ourselves to make the Doctors’ Mahapanchayat a huge success as a mark of our solidarity against the NMC Bill.
18. IMA has requested FOMA members to urgently issue a letter of support to the Doctors’ Mahapanchayat and reaffirm their protest against the NMC Bill and send the same to IMA HQs.
19. A study of young Germans drinking beer showed higher heart rate as blood alcohol climbed, with no threshold. (ESCardio.org)
20. A novel smartphone device measured blood pressure without a cuff with accuracy nearly as good as an upper arm cuff, according to a study in Science Translational Medicine
21. Culture first: The presence of gram-positive bacilli in the absence of white cells should raise suspicion for gas gangrene.
