Encephalitis kills four more in Bihar, toll 204 |  |
- Encephalitis kills four more in Bihar, toll 204
- Awake brain surgery cures Kolkata girl's tumor
- Infants can't distinguish between large and small groups
- Notre Dame health IT expert says electronic medical records finally catching on
- Assessing Olympic terrorism threats
- Paddle vs. propeller: Which competitive swimming stroke is superior?
| Encephalitis kills four more in Bihar, toll 204 Posted: 19 Jun 2012 10:52 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Patna, June 19 - Four more children died of acute encephalitis syndrome - Tuesday in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district, taking the death toll from the disease to 204 in the last one month, officials said. Additional Secretary - R.P. Ojha said that out of 527 children detected with AES symptoms, 204 have died till date. The rest have been discharged after treatment. Ojha told reporters here that AES, a mosquito-borne disease, has claimed the lives of 141 children so far in Muzaffarpur district alone - the highest figure in the state. Most of these children died at the Sri Krishna Memorial College and Hospital and the Kejriwal Charitable Hospital. As many as 48 children have died at the Patna Medical College Hospital - and 11 at Gaya's Anugrah Narain Medical College Hospital. Besides, two children each have died in Vaishali and Sitamarhi districts. State health officials said they had identified 10 districts where the disease had spread. In the last two days, the number of fresh cases of AES has reduced, an official said. The worst affected districts include Patna, Gaya, Muzaffarpur, Sitamarhi, East Champaran and Vaishali. Health Minister Ashwani Kumar Choubey asked the striking junior doctors of the PMCH to resume work. We have cancelled leaves of doctors in the all the affected districts and alerted hospitals to provide prompt treatment, Choubey said. All medical colleges and hospitals have been directed to provide free medicines to patients having AES symptoms, said Health Secretary Vayasji. Bihar is yet to officially declare AES an epidemic, which is mostly killing children from poor families. http://www.rxpgnews.com |
| Awake brain surgery cures Kolkata girl's tumor Posted: 19 Jun 2012 09:27 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Kolkata, June 19 - Awake Craniotomy, a rare surgery performed by keeping the patient awake, has cured 18-year old Moubani Karmakar here of her brain tumor. Awake Craniotomy is performed in the same manner as conventional head surgery, except the patient stays awake during the entire operation. The technique is mostly used to remove lesions close to, or involving, major regions of the brain that control faculties like of speech and movement. The operation is done rarely because it requires the patient to be utmostly cooperative. It also needs good coordination between the anesthesia team and the surgeon, said Amitabha Chanda, consultant neurosurgeon, Fortis Hospital. Karmakar suffered a seizure in July 2011 and tests revealed a tumor in the motor area on the left side of the brain, that controls movement of the right side of the body. We realised that a conventional operation would paralyse the patient on her right side. So we decided to perform this procedure -. We used local anesthesia and some sedation so that Moubani could interact with the surgeon during the operation and tell us if she felt any problem or discomfort, said Chanda. After the patient's brain was exposed sedation was lightened furthur to help her remain awake. During the operation we regularly asked Moubani to count to one hundred, and also move her limbs, which confirmed that no blood vessels were damaged during the procedure, Chanda said. http://www.rxpgnews.com |
| Infants can't distinguish between large and small groups Posted: 19 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Human brains process large and small numbers of objects using two different mechanisms, but infants have not yet developed the ability to make those two processes work together, according to new research from the University of Missouri. This research was the first to show the inability of infants in a single age group to discriminate large and small sets in a single task, said Kristy vanMarle, assistant professor of psychological sciences in the College of Arts and Science. Understanding how infants develop the ability to represent and compare numbers could be used to improve early education programs. The MU study found that infants consistently chose the larger of two groups of food items when both sets were larger or smaller than four, just as an adult would. Unlike adults, the infants showed no preference for the larger group when choosing between one large and one small set. The results suggest that at age one infants have not yet integrated the two mental functions: one being the ability to estimate numbers of items at a glance and the other being the ability to visually track small sets of objects. In vanMarle's study, 10- to 12-month-old infants were presented with two opaque cups. Different numbers of pieces of breakfast cereal were hidden in each cup, while the infants observed, and then the infants were allowed to choose a cup. Four comparisons were tested between different combinations of large and small sets. Infants consistently chose two food items over one and eight items over four, but chose randomly when asked to compare two versus four and two versus eight. Being unable to determine that eight is larger than two would put an organism at a serious disadvantage, vanMarle said. However, ongoing studies in my lab suggest that the capacity to compare small and large sets seems to develop before age two. The ability to make judgments about the relative number of objects in a group has old... http://www.rxpgnews.com |
| Notre Dame health IT expert says electronic medical records finally catching on Posted: 19 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The U.S. Olympic Committee is converting to electronic medical records (EMRs) this month for hundreds of athletes who will be competing in London, as well as thousands of other athletes who have been seen by Olympic Committee doctors in recent years. EMRs also are catching on nationwide as the federal government encourages health care providers with financial incentives, and Corey Angst, assistant professor of management in the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business and an expert on health information technology, says Policy makers seemed to have listened and are not just insisting on EMR adoption, but more importantly, they are mandating that the systems be used in a meaningful way. There are specific things that must be measured and reported for hospitals and doctors to receive the incentives. Angst conducts research on the transformational effect of IT, technology usage and IT value. A proponent of national digitization of health record information, he believes EMRs standardize processes, increase efficiencies and greatly diminish the potential for medical errors. There still continue to be barriers, and the biggest one seems to be convincing doctors that there is value in using EMRs, Angst says. Some have embraced them, while others remain very resistant, stating that EMRs are not intuitive, don't map well onto their preferred workflow, and are generally difficult and slow to use. Another barrier is privacy. Small but vocal anti-EMR groups and individuals worry that electronic systems can be breached and that simply by digitizing personal information, we are making it much easier for people--authorized and unauthorized-- to access our records, Angst says. Both are legitimate concerns, but I personally believe we can safeguard against some of these issues and that overall the benefits do outweigh the costs. I think it is fantastic that the U.S. Olympic Committee is finally going digital, Angst says.... http://www.rxpgnews.com |
| Assessing Olympic terrorism threats Posted: 19 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The former Head of Department of Asymmetric Threats at the Joint Military Intelligence Division of Hellenic National Defense General Staff, in Athens, Greece, Ioannis Galatas suggests that the 2012 Olympic Games to be held in London in July and August represent a potential terrorist threat as the successor to the late Osama bin Laden and a medical doctor himself, struggles to regain face amongst extremists opposing the West. There have been numerous terrorist attacks since New York's 9/11 but none quite matching its scale and impact. One might imagine that terrorist networks have not launched a subsequent attack with equally devastating effects and perhaps this has been a matter of disruption, deterrence and, most disturbingly, patience. However, Brigadier General Galatas (retired) suggests that such attacks have been thwarted by national security measures and intelligence. However, the threat of a CBRN, (pronounced C-burn) attack, referring to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear, is ever present and it might also be the wild card that the terrorist networks, and Al Qaeda in particular are holding back. It is possible that Al-Qaeda's success with the September 11 attacks has set the bar too high for its current CBRN capabilities. Al-Qaeda may be concerned that a CBRN attack that 'only' kills dozens of people would be perceived as a relative failure and demonstrate its weakened position relative to its pre-9/11 stature, he explains. Galatas adds that there is no indication that Al Qaeda has abandoned its pursuit of CBRN weapons, including so-called dirty bombs. The possibility of a patient Al Qaeda is a disturbing possibility worth remembering, he adds. Galatas' assessment of the terrorist threat during the forthcoming Olympic Games will be published in the International Journal of Emergency Management. He suggests that such an attack might potentially be directed directly against London, other Olympic cities, or... http://www.rxpgnews.com |
| Paddle vs. propeller: Which competitive swimming stroke is superior? Posted: 19 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Two swimming strokes -- one that pulls through the water like a boat paddle and another that whirls to the side like a propeller -- are commonly used by athletes training for the Olympic Games. But elite swimmers and their coaches have long argued over which arm motion is more likely to propel an aquatic star toward a medal. A university research study has picked a winner. A team supervised by a Johns Hopkins fluid dynamics expert has found that the deep catch stroke, resembling a paddle, has the edge over sculling, the bent-arm, propeller-inspired motion. This is a result that is simple but sweet, which is something we usually struggle to arrive at in research, said Rajat Mittal, a mechanical engineering professor at Johns Hopkins' Whiting School of Engineering. The deep catch stroke is more efficient and effective than the sculling stroke. To obtain this result, Mittal's team started with high-precision laser scans and underwater videos of elite swimmers. The researchers then used animation software to bend and otherwise change the shape of the static arm in such a way as to match the video sequence. This software allowed the researcher to insert a joint into the arm so that the limb could be moved in a realistic manner. The team then ran computer simulations to study the flow of fluid around the arm and the forces that acted upon the limb. Each simulation involved about 4 million degrees of freedom and required thousands of hours of computer processing time. The findings concerning the deep catch and sculling strokes were featured in the doctoral thesis of Alfred von Loebbecke, who studied under Mittal, and in a report by Loebbecke and Mittal that has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Biomechanical Engineering. Mittal, a recreational swimmer, joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 2009. His research into motion through water began almost a decade ago when, while based at George Washington University, he was... http://www.rxpgnews.com |
| You are subscribed to email updates from RxPG News : Latest Medical, Healthcare and Research News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
Post a Comment