In Lucknow, doctors write out anti-graft message |  |
- In Lucknow, doctors write out anti-graft message
- Indian doctors among the best in world: Ansari
- Hyderabad hospital performs rare kidney transplant
- HIV/AIDS bill still pending: Azad
- Researchers on the trail of a treatment for cancer of the immune system
- The grass is always greener
- Medical aid for Hazare's supporters at Ramlila ground
- Dengue toll rises to 16 in Orissa
- Study raises doubts about value of heart ultrasound before elective surgery
| In Lucknow, doctors write out anti-graft message Posted: 20 Aug 2011 12:28 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Lucknow, Aug 20 - Doctors in this Uttar Pradesh capital are expressing solidarity with social activist Anna Hazare in a novel way - they are printing pro-Anna messages on their prescriptions and diagnostic reports. Under the banner of Lucknow Association of Practicing Pathologists and Microbiologists -, doctors in the city have been getting messages like 'We support Anna Hazare, we support Jan Lokpal Bill' printed at the bottom of their prescriptions and reports. 'Hundreds of private doctors attached with the association and also those working with nursing homes in the city have taken up the unique way to support Hazare and his anti-graft campaign,' LAPPM president P.K. Gupta told reporters Saturday. 'Doctors too want to vent ire against corruption and support Anna Hazare. However, considering the nature of our job, we cannot boycott work or participate in sit-ins for a long period as it would adversely affect our patients. Therefore, the association has come up with a way that enables the doctors to lend support to Hazare without hampering their work,' he added. LAPPM members are of the view that the messages printed in support of Hazare on prescriptions will sensitise people against corruption. 'We believe that the messages on prescriptions and reports would not only be read by the patients but also by their families. Therefore, with a single message several people would get connected with our drive,' said Gupta. 'We would continue with the drive till we get an assurance from the central government about implementing the civil society's version of the Lokpal bill,' he added. LAPPM members have also initiated SMS campaigns to solicit support for Hazare's crusade against corruption. Meanwhile, people from various walks of life continued to converge on the Jhulelal Park - the main site in Lucknow for holding programmes in support of Hazare. 'Be it kids, youths or elders, people across various age groups have been assembling... http://www.rxpgnews.com    |
| Indian doctors among the best in world: Ansari Posted: 19 Aug 2011 10:13 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, Aug 19 - Indian doctors, especially those from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, are among the best in the world as far as delivery of health care and research is concerned, Vice President Hamid Ansari said Friday. Delivering an inaugural address at the 'Conference on Current Concepts in Arthroplasty-2011 & 1st Indo-British Knee Meeting' organised by AIIMS, Ansari said: 'The dedication and selfless devotion of the doctors working at this institute is unparalleled.' Talking about joint replacement surgeries, Ansari said that 'nearly 45,000 total knee replacements surgeries and an almost equal number of hip replacements surgeries are being performed every year in India'. Ansari said the importance of such surgeries were rising with 'increasing life expectancy, aspiration for an active and economically productive lifestyle even in advanced age, and rise in lifestyle diseases'. It is estimated that there are five million people with activity-limiting knee arthritis in India, he said. http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Hyderabad hospital performs rare kidney transplant Posted: 19 Aug 2011 07:51 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Hyderabad, Aug 19 - For the first time in the country, a hospital in Hyderabad has successfully performed kidney transplant between non-matching blood groups. Kamineni Hospitals doctors transplanted the kidney of an A+ donor - to an O+ patient - which was earlier believed to be impossible. Kamineni Hospitals CEO B. Shashidhar Reddy told reporters Friday that a team of doctors comprising nephrologist Kamal Kiran and transplant surgeon Srinivas Guttha performed the operation on July 19. Kamal Kiran said this would bring hope to patients suffering from renal failure who have no compatible donors in the family. He pointed out that cadaver - waiting list is long. Though an ABO incompatible transplant costs around Rs.8 lakh, compared to Rs.3 lakh for an ABO-matched transplant, waiting on the cadaver list costs Rs.4 lakh every year. He said the ABO kidney transplant is a rare procedure, but if protocols were implemented to transplant across blood-group barriers, it is estimated that an additional 1,500 live donor kidney transplants could be performed each year in India. According to Srinivas Guttha, kidney disease affects one out of 10 people. Kidney failure requiring dialysis affects 2-3 lakh people in the country every year. About 17,000 patients receive some form of dialysis. Only 3,000 go through transplantation. Fifty percent patients on dialysis die in three years and 90 percent in five years. If 100 patients undergo transplant, 85 of them live for 10 years and beyond. http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| HIV/AIDS bill still pending: Azad Posted: 19 Aug 2011 06:40 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, Aug 19 - The HIV/AIDS bill, which aims to protect the rights of people living with the dreaded disease, is yet to be introduced in parliament, Health and Family Welfare Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said Friday. Azad said the 'contents of the bill' are being examined. 'Representations have been received, primarily from NGOs and networks of people living with HIV, for introduction of the Bill in parliament,' he said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha. He said that at the moment the 'draft of the bill is being examined by the department of AIDS control.' The department is under his ministry. The health ministry had prepared the bill in August 2007. It was then sent to the law ministry, which cleared it in March 2010. Since then, the bill is pending with the health ministry. For the last five years, groups working in the field of HIV, including the HIV- positive people, have been demanding early passage of the bill. http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Researchers on the trail of a treatment for cancer of the immune system Posted: 19 Aug 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Infection with Epstein Barr means that the B cells, which are the primary memory cells of the immune system, are hi-jacked. When the virus has penetrated, researchers observe an excess of a special bio-antenna, a receptor known as EB12, suddenly sprouting from the surface of the B cells. But why they do so remains a mystery. The receptors are a vital component of the way cells communicate with their surroundings via hormones and other bio-molecules, for example, but in a body consisting of millions of cells and transmitters it can be hard to determine the part each molecule plays. It is possible that the large numbers of EB12 receptors could actually be the B cells response to the virus and an attempt to combat the infection. Another possibility is that the EB virus reprogrammes the cell for this explosive growth in the number of EB12 receptors. What we know for certain is that more EB12 receptors assist the B cell infected by the EB virus to multiply more rapidly thus spreading the infection faster, says postdoc Tau Benned-Jensen from the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Copenhagen. No fewer than 95 per cent of us carry the Epstein Barr Herpes virus. We often encounter it as kids and it is normally harmless. Are we infected later in life EB virus may cause mononucleosis, and it seems to play a part in some forms of cancer, just as HPV affects the risk of cervical cancer. But we have no drugs to combat the Epstein Barr virus, and no vaccines for it. Under normal circumstances our immune systems can keep the EB virus infection in a latent state and a truce or stand-off may arise between the immune system and the virus, explains Mette Rosenkilde, professor of pharmacology at the Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology, University of Copenhagen. We cannot dispense with the infection and we carry it all life long, but to most of us it is harmless. For people whose immune systems do not function due to disease... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Posted: 19 Aug 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) As biodiversity declines worldwide, there is concern that this will lead to declines in the services that ecosystems provide for people, such as food production, carbon storage, and water purification. But until now it has been unclear, whether just a few or in fact a large number of the species in an ecosystem are needed to provide ecosystem services. By combining data from 17 of the largest and longest-running biodiversity experiments, scientists from universities across North America and Europe have found that previous studies have underestimated the importance of biodiversity for maintaining multiple ecosystem services across many years and places. Most previous studies considered only the number of species needed to provide one service under one set of environmental conditions, says Prof. Michel Loreau from McGill University's biology department who supervised the study. These studies found that many species appeared redundant. That is, it appeared that the extinction of many species would not affect the functioning of the ecosystem because other species could compensate for their loss. Now, by looking at grassland plant species, investigators have found that most of the studied species were important at least once for the maintenance of ecosystem services, because different sets of species were important during different years, at different places, for different services, and under different global change (e.g., climate or land-use change) scenarios. Furthermore, the species needed to provide one service during multiple years were not the same as those needed to provide multiple services during one year. This means that biodiversity is even more important for maintaining ecosystem services than was previously thought, says Dr. Forest Isbell, the lead author and investigator of this study. Our results indicate that many species are needed to maintain ecosystem services at multiple times and places in a changing world, and... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Medical aid for Hazare's supporters at Ramlila ground Posted: 18 Aug 2011 03:27 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, Aug 18 - A team of doctors from the Delhi Medical Association - would provide medical help to thousands of people who will fast with Anna Hazare at Ramlila ground where the Gandhian would continue his indefinite strike from Friday. 'We will be taking position at Ramlila ground once Anna Hazare reaches there. The aim is not just to help the supporters but also support the movement against corruption,' DMA president Vinod Khetarpal told IANS Thursday. DMA, with over 12,000 doctors affiliated to it, also provided medical aid to supporters who were fasting with Hazare during his protest at Jantar Mantar in April. 'Our doctors will be sporting black ribbons. We will make sure that no services are hit at the hospitals,' Khetarpal added. 'A team of 4-5 doctors will be there to monitor on an hourly basis.' Anna Hazare has been on indefinite since Tuesday, protesting against the government's version of the Lokpal Bill. http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Dengue toll rises to 16 in Orissa Posted: 18 Aug 2011 02:55 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Bhubaneswar, Aug 18 - One more person died of dengue at a private hospital here Thursday, taking the death toll in the outbreak of the infectious disease in Orissa to 16 this month, officials said. The man who died in Apollo Hospital was in his 50s and belonged to Angul district which has been worst hit by the mosquito-borne virus. As many as 53 new patients were tested positive for the virus till Wednesday evening, taking the total cases in the state to 295, an official of the state health control room told IANS. The latest cases were 52 in Sriram Chandra Bhanj Medical College and Hospital at Cuttack and one in Maharaja Krishna Chandra Gajapati Medical College and Hospital at Berhampur, he said. The official said dengue cases have been reported from 19 of Orissa's 30 districts and of them highest 175 were tested positive in Angul where the disease was mainly concentrated and most deaths have taken place. http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Study raises doubts about value of heart ultrasound before elective surgery Posted: 18 Aug 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) TORONTO, Ont., Aug. 18, 2011_A new study has found no evidence that patients who had a heart ultrasound known as an echocardiogram before major surgery had improved survival rates one month or one year after their operation. Some groups of patients actually had worse survival rates, according to Dr. Duminda Wijeysundera, a scientist at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael's Hospital and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. His study, published in the British Medical Journal, adds to a growing body of evidence that echocardiograms may not be helpful in predicting which patients are likely to have complications after major surgery and therefore require more specialized care. These findings have important implications, especially since thousands of people undergo surgery around the world every day, said Dr. Wijeysundera, who is also an anesthesiologist at Toronto General Hospital. Given that echocardiography may actually cause harm, physicians should reconsider its role for patients undergoing elective surgery. This study also highlights the importance of rigorously evaluating how tests are used in medicine and the fact that more testing is not always better. An echocardiogram (ECHO) uses sound waves to create a picture of the heart, showing the shape, texture and movement of heart valves as well as the size of the heart chambers and how well they are working. Dr. Wijeysundera found that 15 per cent of the almost 265,000 Ontario residents who underwent major surgery between 1999 and 2008 had echocardiograms beforehand. That makes the echocardiogram one of the most commonly ordered pre-operative tests. Despite its common use, there was no evidence that the patients who had echocardiograms had improved survival at one month or one year after surgery. Some groups of patients appear to do worse if they had undergone echocardiography. If a patient had two or fewer risk factors for postoperative cardiac... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
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