July 19th, 2009 — News
The Tamil Nadu government announced a stipend hike for house-surgeons and postgraduate medical students on Friday.The Medicos were on strike for 16 days.The health Minister of Tamil Nadu M R K Panneerselvam , announced this decision,a day after the medicos called off their strike.
In a statement in the state Assembly, the health minister said that house-surgeons would get Rs 7,000 a month, first-year PG medicos Rs 15,000, second-year students Rs 16,000, and third-year students Rs 17,000 each.
July 18th, 2009 — HFMD
What is HFMD?
Hand-foot-and-mouth disease (HFMD) is an acute viral illness that presents as a vesicular eruption in the mouth. HFMD can also involve the hands, feet, buttocks, and/or genitalia.
Viruses
Children younger than 10 years are most commonly affected.
Skin lesions, which present as tender macules or vesicles on an erythematous base, develop in approximately 75% of patients with hand-foot-and-mouth disease (HFMD).
Severe oral ulcerations can create painful stomatitis. This may interfere with oral intake and cause dehydration, the most common complication of HFMD. Rarely, aseptic meningitis accompanies coxsackievirus-induced HFMD
Atypical clinical features
HFMD -EV71
HFMD caused by EV-71 has a higher incidence of neurologic involvement,
Poliolike syndrome, aseptic meningitis, encephalitis, encephalomyelitis, acute cerebellar ataxia, acute transverse myelitis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, opsomyoclonus syndrome, and benign intracranial hypertension. These neurological complications have been attributed to either immunopathology or virus-induced damage to gray matter.
Diagnosis of hand-foot-and-mouth disease (HFMD) is typically based on clinical grounds. Laboratory studies are usually unnecessary
Treatment
Prognosis
Prognosis is excellent. The vast majority of patients are expected to recover fully.
There has been an increase in the incidence of HFMD in many parts of Kerala.The disease which was prevalent in Calicut has now spread to Kottayam district.Cases of Chikungunya and HFMD are on the rise as Monsoon has begun.Better personal hygeine and Environmental hygeine will help in reducing the number of cases and spread.
July 18th, 2009 — Pain relief
Abdominal pain falls into three categories:
Visceral Pain
Localisation of Visceral Pain
Parietal Pain
Referred Pain
July 14th, 2009 — Lifestyle diseases
Heavy drinking may increase prostrate cancer risk.
Researchers led by Dr. Zhihong Gong, of the University of California at San Francisco, report the findings in the journal Cancer.
The drug finasteride, which can help lower a man’s risk of the disease, appears unable to undo the damage of heavy drinking.
The findings come from a clinical trial of nearly 11,000 men looking at whether finasteride lowered the risk of prostate cancer over seven years. Of the men, 2,219 were diagnosed with prostate cancer, and 8,791 remained cancer-free throughout the study.
The researchers found that men who drank heavily
were twice as likely as non-drinkers to develop aggressive prostate tumors.
Less aggressive, slower-growing prostate tumors, finasteride cut non-drinkers’ and moderate drinkers’ risk by 43 percent.
Risk factors
Non Modifiable- older age, African-American race and family history of the disease.
Modifiable -obesity, smoking and a high intake of animal fat
Heavy drinking may need to be added to that short list
Limiting drinks to 2 or 3 per day may help men on finasteride to lower their risk for prostrate cancer.
July 14th, 2009 — Drug library, Uncategorized
Statins are drugs which help in reducing the cholesterol level by blocking the enzyme, HMG CoA Reductace, which is an important component in lipid metabolism.Statins are prescribed in all patients attending hospital with acute coronary syndromes and are given to people who are at high risk for coronary events.
Statins reduce significantly the incidence of coronary events, being the most efficient hypolipidemic compounds that have
reduced the rate of mortality in coronary patients.
Decrease in LDL cholesterol>>>>antiatherosclerotic effects>>>>Prevent acute coronary syndromes.
Statins act by inhibiting HMG-CoA reductase, which is vital in Cholesterol synthesis. They can exert antiatherosclerotic effects independently of their hypolipidemic action.
Other Advantages
Mevalonate, the product of HMG CoA reductase reaction, is the precursor not
only for cholesterol, but also for many other nonsteroidal
isoprenoidic compounds, inhibition of this
key enzyme may result in pleiotropic effects.
Actions of Statins
Cholesterol Biosynthesis
In preventing acute coronary syndromes
plaque and internal hemorrhage, are characteristics
of the plaques with numerous lipid deposits and
macrophages in the cap
human macrophages in culture.
Others
How statins are Obtained
Some of the statins are obtained after fungal
fermentation: lovastatin , pravastatin
and simvastatin others
by synthesis: fluvastatin , atorvastatin
, and cerivastatin.
Five statins are, at this moment, in
clinical use: lovastatin, simvastatin, pravastatin,
atorvastatin and fluvastatin.
Adverse effects of statin therapy
The most important adverse effects are liver and muscle
involvement. Myopathy can occur if
cytochrom P450 or other inhibitors of statins
metabolism are co-administered with statins,
Azole antifungals
Fibrates and niacin enhance myopathy risk
Other risk factors are: liver
damage, renal insufficiency, hypothyroidism.
July 2nd, 2009 — Random thoughts
People say Twitter is growing day by day. Twitter is the best web application available etc etc. Why do people give so much importance to twitter? I think twitter got much attention, because of the campaign held by web masters in favor of it.
When somebody says, you can increase the readership of your blog, just by posting a tweet, won’t you do it? I would take up such an opportunity, because there is nothing to lose. It is free and easy to use. What I don’t understand is, why people send so many tweets a day. Some have more than 1000 tweets a day. When ever they have a thought or feeling, they just feel amused and posts it in twitter. It is a new for of addiction. In India, twitter is not much a favorite. The favorite here is Orkut. I too was an orkut addict, I spent many hours trying to figure out how to browse orkut, from our college, where orkut is blocked. But once I had my own internet connection and no body to block me from browsing Orkut, I lost the thrill and Orkut is no longer an adiction in my case.
Some say, twitter helps in getting close to friends, read new posts from bloggers and so on. But What I think is , twitter is clutterng our thoughts. Being so simple, we are lured to twitter. If twitter helps an introvert to open his mind, or a marketer to get his idea acroos his customers it is doing something worthwhile.But one shouldn’t be adicted to anything, however tempting it maybe.
March 10th, 2009 — Uncategorized
After a long interval, the blog is going to be back on track. I have always thought of posting regularly, but was never commiktted to posting every day. So I made a commitment, I will be posting atleast twice in a week from now on.
See you twice a week from now on, have a great day!
January 11th, 2009 — Random thoughts
Every day, I see TV channels and newspapers crying out loud, ” Teen pregnancies on the rise”. So what should we do? kill all the teens?
Every day I see, children watching movies which depict teen sex as sacred. How do they know it is not sacred unless someone tell them?
Everyday, I see violence shown live. How do we expect children from doing the same.
I learned smoking and drinking is essential for social status from the advertisements and from movies, do we expect our teens to be of low social status?
I heard sex relieves tension, do we want them to be tensed all day long?
Unless we eradicate the root causes of evil there will be teen pregancies, smoking kids, killing teens.
“There is no use pruning the branches of a full grown oak tree, you have to prune it when it is young.”
January 11th, 2009 — Random thoughts
Given below are some observations which I made during my course of journey through different specialities in medicine,working as an intern.
Whenever we are introduced to a new place, we will have to comply to the rules there. Most of these are so absurd that the people are forced to follow them. Sometimes the person who made these rules at the first place( for his own vested interests) may be long gone, but the people in his organization maybe following them even if these rules are just un necessary.
The fear factor
Fear of seniors is the main thing which keeps us from breaking those useless rules which are forced on us. Most of the time the fear is just uncalled for.There is no place for fear in a revolutionary’s life. In a way you are protecting the rights of your co workers, and improving their way of life. If we are willing to face the consequences, there will be nothing keeping us from doing the needful.
Be your self
Most people who are very aggressive in tackling problems just become worn out as time passes. This occurs because there is no one to support or help them. Most of the time the person who is trying to break the rules maybe working by self. The reward will be the happiness which he sees on the faces of his friends.
How to overcome fear
Since there is no remedy for death so far, it will be better to die as a rule breaker, rather than somebody who died as a coward, fearing everything which came across.
There are many manupulators out there, who tries to bend every rule. But our case should be an exception because we are not trying to be a manupulator, but someone who uplifts a community.
“Think different, be different” has alwas been my rule. Though I have broken it many times, I still believe in it. As the prayer goes
” Lord give me the power to change things which ought to be changed, the courage to accept things which cannot be changed and the wisdom to differentiate between them”
To be Contd…
A journey through different departments in medicine
January 10th, 2009 — Random thoughts
When we think of relatives, the first thing that crosses our mind will be a close family relative, who is willing to help in our hard times. Those who have helped in a real on will be seen as good relatives. There are many such relatives who have helped me.
But the relative I am talking about is Just relative. If someone says that their Job is real hard or the exam was hard, it is a relative. Easy and hard are two relatives. If the exam was relatively hard, I wouldn’nt worry much about it, because there are many others for whom the exam was as hard as it was for me or there are others for whom the exam was harder.Thus a relatively hard exam is easier to pass than a relatively easy exam.
Don’t bother much about life, meet everything the way they come. Don’t wait in painful anticipation and ruin your life.Get the maximum out of life and live it at the edge.