The Lie of Precision Medicine
My next blog post will be entitled " The Lie of Precision Medicine "— sarcastic_f (@sarcastic_f)June 23, 2018This post will be my own personalized rant about the false promises of personalized medicine. It will not be about neurological or psychiatric diseases, the typical topics for this blog. It will be about oncology, for very personal reasons: misery, frustration, and grief. After seven months of research on immunotherapy clinical trials, I couldn ' t find a single [acceptable] one1 in either Canada or the US that would enroll my partner with stage 4 cancer. For arbitrary reasons, for financial reasons, because ...
Source: The Neurocritic - June 24, 2018 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs
Tropical Travel Trouble 007 Mega Malaria Extravaganza
LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency medicine and critical care medical education blog
aka Tropical Travel Trouble 007
When you think tropical medicine, malaria has to be near the top. It can be fairly complex and fortunately treatment has become a lot simpler. This post is designed to walk you through the basic principals with links to more in depth teaching if your niche is travel medicine, laboratory diagnostics or management of severe or cerebral malaria. If you stubbled on this post while drinking a cup of tea or sitting on the throne and want a few basi...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - April 5, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Neil Long Tags: Clinical Cases Tropical Medicine malaria Plasmodium plasmodium falciparum plasmodium knowles plasmodium malariae plasmodium ovale plasmodium vivax Source Type: blogs
Uncontrollable itching – the denouement
The emergency department ordered a CT scan that showed a dilated common bile duct, no pancreatic masses, a mass in the duct – stone versus other.
Twelve hours after admission, he developed a temperature of 101 and a repeat CBC showed an elevated WBC with left shift.
Therefore, GI did an ERCP the next day – revealing a large gallstone – not easily removable. The placed a stent and drained pus.
So this man had painless jaundice from a common duct stone.
As an intern in 1976 I had a patient with ascending cholangitis. His internist told me that he had pancreatic cancer, but had declined surgery. In 197...
Source: DB's Medical Rants - March 21, 2018 Category: Internal Medicine Authors: rcentor Tags: Medical Rants Source Type: blogs
Uncontrollable itching – part II
As we heard the history we stopped, prior to hearing the exam and labs, and developed a differential diagnosis. With the combination of itching, probable jaundice and pale stools we assume either intrahepatic or extrahepatic obstruction. Our differential diagnosis with commentary:
Primary biliary cirrhosis – much more common in women then men – but does often present at this age with uncontrollable itching
Primary sclerosing cholangitis – no history of ulcerative colitis or diarrhea symptoms, but still possible
Gallstone – not all common duct stones cause pain
Cholangiocarcinoma – ...
Source: DB's Medical Rants - March 20, 2018 Category: Internal Medicine Authors: rcentor Tags: Medical Rants Source Type: blogs
Tropical Travel Trouble 005 RUQ Pain and Jaundice
LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency medicine and critical care medical education blog
aka Tropical Travel Trouble 005
Guest Post: Dr Branden Skarpiak – Global Health Fellow, Department of Emergency Medicine. UT Health San Antonio
A 35 year old male presents to your emergency room for right upper quadrant pain that has gotten worse over the last 2-3 days. He also describes associated nausea, vomiting, and fevers. He denies other abdominal pain, or change in his bowel or bladder habits. His wife notes that he has started to “look more yellow” recent...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - March 19, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Neil Long Tags: Clinical Cases Tropical Medicine amebic amoeba amoebiasis amoebic dysentery amoebic liver abscess bloody diarrhoea e.dispar e.histolytica entamoeba histolytica Source Type: blogs
It’s in the Urine
"I just put a young woman in her mid-30s back in room 9," the triage nurse said. I made a mental note that that was the GYN room. The nurse continued, "She feels bad, fatigued, and just not right in her stomach." The obvious question flew from my mouth. "Is she pregnant?""I have the urine, but the quality controls are being run now, so it will be a few minutes."I glanced at the EMR before heading back to the room: normal vitals, no fever, no medications, a couple of kids, no surgeries, last period three weeks before. Not much there to go on, but I could see her while waitin...
Source: Lions and Tigers and Bears - February 28, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs
Knitted Fabric Delivers Laser Light to Treat Skin Conditions
A number of diseases are treated using light therapy. These include acne, actinic keratosis, jaundice, Paget’s disease, and psoriasis. Modern light blankets use arrays of LEDs to produce illumination, but light emitted by LEDs can be quite weak compared to light produced by a laser. Photodynamic therapy light lamps, on the other hand, can create painful therapy sessions because of their indiscriminate and intense light.
Texinov Medical Textiles, a company based outside of Lyon, France, with help from the European health consortium PHOS-ISTOS, has announced developing a knitted soft fabric called FLUXMEDICARE that ...
Source: Medgadget - February 20, 2018 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Dermatology Source Type: blogs
A new anti-myeloma substance: andrographolide
Discussion: andrographolide also inhibits angiogenesis, which is so important for the survival and wellbeing of myeloma cells, so that’s good to know, too.
Now we get to the above-mentioned importance of the TLR4 protein. TLR4 is apparently involved, not in a good way!!!, with a tumor’s microenvironment and has a lot of power over immune cells. So, if its activity can be blocked, that’s very good news. With andrographolide, this can be accomplished…
I mentioned TLR4 in one of my earliest posts, written in 2007: TLRs, or toll-like receptors, play a key role in the immune system. Back then, I was interested i...
Source: Margaret's Corner - February 13, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: Margaret Tags: Blogroll andrographolide anti-myeloma extract Source Type: blogs
8 Digital Health Mergers That Help Prepare for 2018
A lot of interesting acquisitions and mergers took place in 2017. Pharmaceutical, health insurance, medical technology and digital technology companies took brave steps to strengthen their position with more or less success. Here are the most exciting ones.
Last year’s business moves on the digital health market suggest that producing drugs alone without added digital services is not enough anymore for pharma companies; medical websites are becoming huge media outlets; and that Apple is seriously moving into healthcare. Check out the descriptions of the 8 most interesting mergers below.
1) Internet Brands & WebMD, th...
Source: The Medical Futurist - January 11, 2018 Category: Information Technology Authors: nora Tags: Future of Medicine acquisitions business digital health Healthcare healthcare companies healthcare market Innovation M&A mergers technology Source Type: blogs
Medgadget ’s Best Medical Technologies of 2017
We reported a surge in the use of augmented reality in healthcare at the end of 2016, with the trend continuing in 2017. Notably, Microsoft’s HoloLens was successfully used for spinal surgery applications by a surgical navigation company named Scopis. There are several advantages to this system including reduced radiation exposure of patients, improved screw placement accuracy, and decreased surgery times.
It has been an exciting year for healthcare with many advances in how diseases are diagnosed, treated, and cured. Medical devices are constantly becoming smaller, smarter, cheaper, more precise and user friendly...
Source: Medgadget - December 26, 2017 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Exclusive Source Type: blogs
During the holidays, we should take time to be a little kinder
As I walked into the room, I see my patient lying in bed, eyes closed. His wife of 50-plus years sat in the recliner next to him grasping his right hand. The holiday season was upon us. My patient has spent the better part of the last month in the hospital.
His wife was staring at the pretty scenery outside with her weary, tired eyes. It had started snowing this morning. Tiny snowflakes were falling onto the ground creating a delightful pattern all around.
It was not so nice inside. My patient lay on the bed with a gaunt look on his cheeks and evidence of his 60-pound weight loss the past three months visible on his light ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - December 25, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/foreign-bornmd" rel="tag" > Foreign BornMD < /a > Tags: Physician Emergency Medicine Hospital-Based Medicine Source Type: blogs
BiliSpec, Tested in Malawi, Diagnoses Jaundice in Children for Cheap
A cheap and easy to use device invented by students at Rice University has shown, in a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that it can detect jaundice from a small blood sample. Currently, lab equipment and disposable cartridges are used to detect jaundice early and accurately, but this is often too expensive and difficult to maintain in many places around the world. The BiliSpec device quantifies the level of bilirubin present in the sample similar to how diabetics currently use glucometers to measure their blood sugar levels, which doesn’t require much technical skill, can be perfo...
Source: Medgadget - December 7, 2017 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Diagnostics GI Pediatrics Public Health Source Type: blogs
MKSAP: 25-year-old man positive for hepatitis B surface antigen
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians.
A 25-year-old man is evaluated in follow-up after recently testing positive for hepatitis B surface antigen. He underwent testing as part of the immigration process from Somalia. Two other siblings also have hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection.
On physical examination, he is a young, healthy-appearing man. Vital signs are normal. No jaundice is noted, and the abdominal examination is unremarkable.
Laboratory studies:
Alanine aminotransferase
Normal
Aspartate aminotransferase
Normal
α-Fetoprotein
Normal
H...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - December 2, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/mksap" rel="tag" > mksap < /a > Tags: Conditions Gastroenterology Oncology/Hematology Source Type: blogs
We need to accept our failure as doctors
Why do we want to become doctors? What was our main motivation that we have written in our motivation letters and repeated in our interviews? Regardless of the specific incident or the general motivation, it can be all summarized in one sentence: We are here to save lives. After all, this is what the physicians do, isn’t it?
Preventing deaths is actually hinted to by the original Hippocratic Oath, written between the third and fifth century B.C. through the following: “Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so … Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion.” According to...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - November 16, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/samer-bou-karroum" rel="tag" > Samer Bou Karroum < /a > Tags: Physician Hospital-Based Medicine Palliative Care Primary Care Source Type: blogs
