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Showing posts from June, 2015

The Indian Medical Association demands strict action against Ramdev

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The Indian Medical Association has demanded strict and immediate action against yoga guru Baba Ramdev stating that his claims to cure heart diseases, diabetes and cancer were false. “His claims are in violation of the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisement Act), 1954, which prohibits quackery. Baba Ramdev has a large fan following and though we appreciate his propagating yoga and its benefits, we will not allow anyone to make claims about helping cure cancer, diabetes and heart diseases,” said IMA joint secretary Dr. Anil Bansal. “This is not the first time that we have complained against Baba Ramdev and his claims about offering cure. However, no action has been taken against him or his group so far. We now appeal to the Drug Controller of India and the Union Health Ministry to take action against Baba Ramdev,” added Dr. Bansal. IMA has noted that Baba Ramdev’s action was in clear violation of the law. “Baba Ramdev has advertised claiming to offer cure for

DNB CET Strategy

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Guest article by Dr. Ramgopal I assume that almost everyone of you reading this is going to be writing the upcoming DNB CET exam in another week's time.  That is coz the DNB CET is conducted by the NBE.....the same NBE which conduts the the Nov session of DNB CET (which has more seats) and of course the AIPGE (the mother of all PG entrance exams). Some 'repeats' from this exam maybe there in these two 'later' exams but more importantly this DNB CET will give you an idea of the type of que stions to expect in these future exams. Time wise - 300 qns in 3 hours is do-able...so far the DNB-CET has not had a history of "paragraph type" long questions ....its usually short questions with one word/one line answers. So it should be possible to complete the 300 qns. Images are usually straightforward, where the image itself is obvious or the options below the questions should give a clue to the image. The level of difficulty in DNB CET is

Assam CM Tarun Gogoi orders recovery of Rs 20 lakh each from 244 PG doctors for not serving state govt

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The Assam government has initiated legal action to recover Rs 20 lakh each from as many as 244 doctors who had obtained their post-graduate medical degree in 2014 for violating a commitment for serving at least 10 years under the state government, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi said in Guwahati on Thursday. The chief minister also directed the state health and family welfare department to immediately initiate strict legal action against those PG doctors who have violated the terms and conditions of the agreement they had signed at the time of their admission. Such cases of violation would also be taken up with the Medical Council of India, an official press release quoting the chief minister said. Gogoi, who took the matter seriously, said these 244 post-graduate doctors had, prior to admission in the state’s medical colleges, committed to serve the state government for 10 years, for default of which they had also agreed to repay Rs 20 lakh each as compensation.  Accord

Kejriwal requests striking doctors to return, vows harsh steps if patients continue to suffer

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Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal has once again appealed to the doctors on strike to return to work as all their demands were accepted by the Delhi government yesterday itself. Kejriwal took to Twitter and tweeted the following Earlier in the day, Delhi government imposed ESMA act on resident doctors on strike, who failed to resume work by 11 am as ordered by the government. On Monday evening, the Delhi government accepted all the demands of the resident doctors in the city who had called for an indefinite strike. Earlier on Monday, more than 2,000 doctors from 20 hospitals in the national capital, including Safdarjung Hospital, Lady Hardinge Medical College, Maulana Azad Medical College and Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital went on an indefinite strike. Several issues have been highlighted by the striking doctors, including adequate life saving and generic drugs. The other demands include security at workplace, drinking water supply and timely payment of their salaries. Acc

Top 10 Benefits of Yoga in daily Life

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Weight loss, a strong and flexible body, glowing beautiful skin, peaceful mind, good health – whatever you may be looking for, yoga has it on offer. However, very often, yoga is only partially understood as being limited to asanas (yoga poses). As such, its benefits are only perceived to be at the body level and we fail to realize the immense benefits yoga offers in uniting the body, mind and breath. When you are in harmony, the journey through life is calmer, happier and more fulfilling. With all this and much more to offer, the benefits of yoga are felt in a profound yet subtle manner. Here, we look at the top 10 benefits of yoga practice. 1. All-round fitness. You are truly healthy when you are not just physically fit but also mentally and emotionally balanced. As Sri Sri Ravi Shankar puts it, “Health is not a mere absence of disease. It is a dynamic expression of life – in terms of how joyful, loving and enthusiastic you are.” This is where yoga helps: postures, pranayama

Yoga set to get WHO stamp of approval

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After United Nations, now the World Health Organization (WHO) is set to endorse yoga. The international public health organization plans to incorporate yoga into universal health care approaches. This would mean that yoga would become part of various public health programmes commissioned by WHO not just in India but in several other countries. WHO is working with many Indian centres of yoga to device a common and standardized practice of yoga, which can also be part of the curricula of medical practitioners. "Yoga is used in many settings in which the health challenges are being addressed and it has a very prominent place in the holistic approach through prevention and control of health disorders," said Nata Menabde, executive director, WHO office to the UN. Menabde said the ancient Vedic gift of India to the world needs to be studied and supported by scientific evidence and then incorporated in to approaches to universal healthcare. "Yoga is a key sym

Chaos over medical graduates' compulsory rural service

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With the President giving assent to the curiously (and confusingly?) titled Karnataka Compulsory Service Training By Candidates Completed Medical Courses Bill, 2012, the stage is set for a period of uncertainty for the new medical graduates, both undergraduate and post graduate. What does this mean? Simply stated, all graduates and post graduates in medical sciences, after passing the university examinations (and after completing the Compulsory Rotating Internship in case of MBBS graduates), will have to undertake one year of Compulsory Rural Service before they are given their degree certificates. While some have welcomed this move stating that the graduates owe it to the government which has spent on their education, need for social commitment and such other reasons, we have to examine whether this legislative action has been clearly thought out. It has not been.  The government is thinking that every year, 5,000 medical graduates and post graduates will be available for rural

IMA opposes MBBS exit exam

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The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has written to the ministry expressing reservation regarding an exit exam for MBBS graduates, even if it is voluntary. Instead, IMA is mulling over proposing that the health ministry and the MCI adopt a single exit exam for all medical students which could replace the final year MBBS exam conducted by various colleges and universities. Senior doctors and officials pointed out that proposing something that was not doable often led to the proposal being scuttle such as the proposal to combine a licensing exam with the final year MBBS exam. Many countries including the US, the UK, Australia, China and Thailand have licensing exams which are separate from the final exams for a medical student to become a graduate.  To address concerns regarding the quality of doctors being produced, the ministry had proposed a common exit exam for students of private and government medical colleges, at a meeting with representatives from the IMA as well as

WHO declares India free of Neonatal Tetanus

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In yet another achievement, India was declared to be free of maternal and neonatal tetanus by the World Health Organisation (WHO). This dreaded disease has been one of the major killers of new born babies and mothers for long. In 1988, nearly 787,000 babies are known to have died with neonatal tetanus. 73% of the developing world’s deaths of neonatal tetanus occurred in 8 countries of which India contributed a large chunk. This bacterial infection affected the nervous system of babies and resulted in spasms and paralysis. Today India has been certified to be free of this dreaded disease. It is a bacterial disease which affects babies through unhygienic delivery practices. Unclean deliveries and dirty umbilical cord stumps are known to be grounds for developing neonatal tetanus. The Government has since taken immunisation of mothers during pregnancy as a top priority. All pregnant mothers compulsorily received two doses of the tetanus toxoid as a vaccine which prevented them f

New imaging technique could make brain tumor removal safer, more effective, study suggests

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Brain surgery is famously difficult for good reason: When removing a tumor, for example, neurosurgeons walk a tightrope as they try to take out as much of the cancer as possible while keeping crucial brain tissue intact -- and visually distinguishing the two is often impossible. Now Johns Hopkins researchers report they have developed an imaging technology that could provide surgeons with a color-coded map of a patient's brain showing which areas are and are not cancer. A summary of the research appears June 17 in  Science Translational Medicine . "As a neurosurgeon, I'm in agony when I'm taking out a tumor. If I take out too little, the cancer could come back; too much, and the patient can be permanently disabled," says Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa, M.D., a professor of neurosurgery, neuroscience and oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the clinical leader of the research team. "We think optical coherence tomography has str

Emphysematous Cholecystitis

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Emphysematous Cholecystitis • Emphysematous cholecystitis caused by proliferation of gas-forming organisms e.g., Clostridium perfringens (commonest- MCQ), Escherichia coli after vascular compromise of the gallbladder. • It is characterized by gas accumulation in the gallbladder lumen, wall, or pericholecystic tissue a rare but serious manifestation of acute cholecystitis.  • It is most common in older patients with diabetes • A diagnosis of emphysematous cholecystitis can be  confirmed with plain radiography, ultrasonography, or CT. Plain radiography may be sufficient but has low sensitivity early in the disease. Ultrasound findings suggestive of the condition depend on the amount and location of the gas. • CT is the most definitive modality when findings on plain radiography or ultrasonography are equivocal. • Emphysematous cholecystitis requires immediate cholecystectomy and broad-spectrum antibiotic therapy (Has a mortality rate of 15%). • If patient is unfit then urgent CT or U

Rampant fraud at medical schools leaves Indian healthcare in crisis

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Last December, Dilshad Chaudhry travelled with about 100 of his fellow villagers by bus to a local Indian medical-school hospital. They'd been told that foreign doctors were coming to tour the facility, and check-ups would be free. There was nothing wrong with Chaudhry; he was accompanying his brother, who had a back problem. But "every person was told to lie in a bed even if they're not sick," he said. The 20-year-old electrician said he never saw any foreign physicians that day, but the hospital's Indian doctors kept checking that the phony patients were in bed. "They wanted to make sure no one escaped," he said. That was the same month government inspectors visited the hospital, which is at Muzaffarnagar Medical College, 80 miles northeast of New Delhi. The inspectors checked, among other things, whether there were enough patients to provide students with adequate clinical experience. They determined there were. But a year earlier, inspector

মেধা থাকলেই ভাল ডাক্তার হয় না

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দেশের বেশির ভাগ মানুষের জীবনের সমস্যা শোনার ও বোঝার ক্ষমতা এবং ইচ্ছা যদি চিকিৎসকদের না থাকে, তা হলে চিকিৎসাশিক্ষার ব্যবস্থা সমাজের প্রয়োজন মেটাবে না। অভিজিৎ চৌধুরী মে-জুন মেধার মধুমাস। পরীক্ষার দাঁড়িপাল্লায় সাফল্যের ভার মেপে উল্লাসে ফেটে পড়া, স্বপ্নে বিভোর হওয়ার সময়। পাশাপাশি, ব্যর্থতার হিসেবনিকেশ, হা-হুতাশ, গাঢ় ধূসর ক্যানভাস তৈরি করে আলোর ছবিটাকে আরও উজ্জ্বল করে। ঝুড়ি-ঝুড়ি বইপত্তর, নাক-মুখ গুঁজে টিউটর-এর টোলে ‘নম্বর’ তোলার বড়ি গেলা, নিশ্চিত সাফল্যের ঢাকঢোলে মুগ্ধ হয়ে কোন পাঠশালায় নাম লেখানো বেশি ফলদায়ী, তা নিয়ে চূড়ান্ত অনিশ্চয়তা, সবই এই বছর দুয়েকের ঘোড়দৌড়ের গীতিকথার অংশ। ‘শিয়োর সাকসেস’ প্রকাশনীর সঙ্গে আইপিএল গোছের বাণিজ্যিক চুক্তি সম্পাদন আর তার পর ভো-কাট্টা উল্লাসে মেডিক্যাল কলেজে ঢুকে পড়া— সবই নতুন ছায়াছবির অংশ। ছেলের প্রতিপত্তি হবে সমাজে, আর তার সঙ্গে টাকাপয়সা। ডাক্তারি পড়াটা তাই হালফিল মেধাবী ছেলেপুলেদের ‘ঈশ্বর কণা’ অনুসন্ধানের একমাত্র পথ। স্টেথো দুলিয়ে, এপ্রন চাপিয়ে বছর চারেক সময় কাটানো, তার পর আর পায় কে! চিকিৎসাশিক্ষায় ভাল ছেলেমেয়েরা চিরকালই এসে থাকেন। ন