Medical talks in India – part 3

The trip is wonderful thus far and very interesting. Yesterday and today we are in Hyderabad in southern India. Hyderabad has a large IT presence and is famous for its biryana which we had for dinner last night. It was outstanding. Some observations thus far: 1. Internists throughout the world treat mostly the same diseases and have the same concerns. 2. Infectious diseases are decreasing in India with improved public health – cholera has become much less common. 3. Non-communicable chrnoic diseases – diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, etc are increasing rapidly in India. They have significant numbers of CKD and cirrhosis. 4. Medical care in India includes the same highly specialized treatments that we use in the US – transplantation, ECMO, emergency dialysis, interventional cardiology etc. 5. Professors worry that learners are not as good at taking a history and doing a physical examination as were trainees 20 years ago. 6. Residents work much harder here than in the US – the types of hours we worked back in the 1970s. 7. Each talk is well received with the same types of questions that a US audience would ask. 8. Medications are much less expensive, giving the physicians the ability to use meds that some of our patients cannot afford. 9. Likely health care has greater disparities (based on socio-economic factors) than we do in the US. We have visited both government and private hospitals – and the clientele and atmosphere have major dif...
Source: DB's Medical Rants - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Tags: Medical Rants Source Type: blogs