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New Delhi, October 11,2018 :
Zika Update. A Zika outbreak has been reported in India. The virus has been detected in 22 people in Jaipur. The state of Bihar is also on alert as one person diagnosed in Jaipur is a native of Siwan district in the northern province and had recently visited home. Zika had first broken out in the western state of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu in the south in 2017. This year, the first case in Jaipur was reported on Sept. 22. The Zika virus, passed by the Aedes mosquito, caused the 2015 epidemic in Brazil and later spread to South America and North America. For Zika the first case in the community means a focal outbreak and needs intensive surgical strike to contain the disease.
Dr Dog: A trained dog can distinguish between malignant and benign pulmonary nodules in exhaled breath samples from patients with and those without pulmonary nodules virtually 100% of the time as per Angela Guirao, MD, a thoracic surgeon from the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona in Spain. All dogs can be trained to detect volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are contained in exhaled breath samples from patients with malignant pulmonary nodules.
The dog achieved successful results with a 97% sensitivity, a 99% specificity, a 97% positive predictive value, and a 99% negative predictive value. It takes an experienced dog trainer about 5 months to teach a dog how to distinguish breath samples from a patient with lung cancer from those from a patient without cancer, she noted. The new data were presented at the recent International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) 19th World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC) held in Toronto.
Dilemmas we often face
- Short visits: Doctors are under enormous pressure to see as many patients as possible. The standard amount or time allotted for each patients is 10-12 minutes. Short visits force many doctors to concentrate on immediate biomedical issues, such as dealing with a high blood-pressure reading, rather than exploring psychosocial aspects of the patient’s life.
- Pressure to refer to in-house could deny patients better care
- Reducing opioid dosages could leave patients suffering
- Worry that providing telehealth services might create inferior care
- Giving genetic test results while being unsure of how to interpret them
Start nurturing your mental health ‘at an early age’ urges UN chief. “Poor mental health during adolescence has an impact on educational achievement and increases the risk of alcohol and substance use and violent behavior,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres, in a statement, stressing that many children and teenagers caught up in conflicts and disasters worldwide, are particularly at risk of psychological distress. “A great deal of mental health conditions are both preventable and treatable, especially if we start looking after our mental health at an early age,” said Mr. Guterres… (WHO)
China has approved 17 anti-cancer drugs for inclusion in its national health insurance system, the government said on Wednesday, part of its efforts to make cancer treatment more affordable as the number of cases increases, as reported in ET Healthworld, Oct.10, 2018. China’s State Medical Insurance Administration has been in negotiations with domestic and overseas pharmaceutical companies to lower prices and put more cancer drugs on the list of medicines eligible for reimbursement. The administration said in a notice that the negotiations were a major part of the government’s strategy to make cancer drugs more affordable to the general public. The 17 drugs, which include azacitidine, will remain eligible until Nov. 30, 2020…All countries in Asia should follow suit.
Mammosphere has launched “Where’s My Mammogram?” a public service campaign to help women obtain copies of prior diagnostic breast images from their physicians. The campaign is intended to empower women to become active participants in their breast health, and to improve clinical outcomes of regular breast cancer screening for women over 40. Under current federal law, women can request copies of their mammograms from their doctors, who are obligated to provide them in whatever format patients request at a reasonable expense, and within 30 days. Having prior images and health history available to clinicians at the time of diagnosis has long been shown to significantly improve clinical outcomes and save lives. When doctors have immediate access to prior breast images, false positives are reduced by 40-60%; 30% of actual cancers are caught earlier, and diagnosis of breast cancer that has spread to the lymph nodes is reduced by 12%, according to clinical studies… (Business Wire)
Video to watch: TEDx Video: Doctor-patient relationship www.youtube(dot)com/ watch?v=i9ml1vKK2DQ
Dr KK Aggarwal
Padma Shri Awardee
President Elect CMAAO
President Heart Care Foundation of India
HealthySoch
