PG Times

The Supreme Court on Thursday asked search engines such as Google and Yahoo to adopt in-house mechanisms to identify and block content relating to pre-natal sex determination. “The sex ratio is going down and this is likely to affect the prospect of human race,” the court observed orally. A bench headed by justice Dipak Misra also directed the centre to constitute a nodal agency empowered to take action on any TV, radio and newspaper advertisements for pre-natal sex determination. “Any content in contravention with the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act (PNDT), 1994 cannot be permitted,” the court said. However, search engines opposed the court’s directive to filter content suggesting that it would open a pandora’s box. The court’s order asking search engine companies to regulate content on the web is seen by free speech activists as a move allowing censorship by private parties. The PNDT Act prescribes three-year jail for advertisements relating to ...

Peter Mansfield, who won the medicine Nobel prize in 2003 for developing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), has died aged 83. The scanning technology he pioneered in the 1970s is now routinely used for diagnosing illnesses and injury – nowadays virtually every hospital has a MRI machine. Sir Peter Mansfield, who laid the scientific foundations of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), failed his 11-plus exams but blossomed into one of the UK’s leading medical technologists and a Nobel Prize winner. Mansfield, who died this week at the age of 83, was the son of a London gas fitter and grew up in Camberwell, south London. After leaving his secondary modern school at 15, he worked first as a printer’s assistant and then as a technician at the government’s Rocket Propulsion Establishment in Westcott, Buckinghamshire. His academic aptitude emerged there when he did A-levels part-time. He went on to study physics at Queen Mary University of London, where he worked on nuclear magn...

Exactly a month ago, Dr Mitu Khurana lost a 11-year-old court battle. This gutsy mother of twin daughters was the first woman in India to file a case under the Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act - the great legal tool which is supposed to protect the lives of our unborn daughters.  Her lengthy battle came to end in just five minutes when the Supreme Court dismissed it on a technicality. Representational image. AFP/File photo Dr Khurana's case is a well documented one and has been covered quite extensively by the Indian and foreign press. She is a doctor, married into a family of doctors, and more importantly - a strong and determined woman who never gave up. She had said that in 2005 when she was under heavy sedation, her in-laws had got an illegal sex determination test done in a high-end clinic in Jaipur. She had proof that this was an unregistered clinic and that the crucial Form F which records the woman's consent to have an ultraso...

Rising crime against women is one of the most visible outcomes of sex-selection. India realised the problem and formulated the Pre conception Pre Natal diagnostic Techniques Act in 1994. The implementation of the act could begin at the turn of century. Sixteen years since, the doctors lobby is pressing for amendment in the act by calling it too harsh for clerical errors. But Sabu George, the man who has been fighting for the cause of the unborn girls for the past two decades, differs. He spoke to TOI on the proposed amendment and its impact. Excerpts are:  Q: How do you see the proposed amendment in PC PNDT Act?  A: The ruling government launched Beti Bachao Beti Padhao with much fanfare and our prime minister Narendra Modi begged for the lives of the daughters. Proposed changes in the act would defeat our PM's dream of Beti Bachao. The amendment draft is a coup to convert cold blooded medical crime (read sex selection and elimination) into a mer...

Unique relief for Doctors in PCPNDT – The General Surgeon who was using Sonography Machine for diagnostic purpose received Rs.10,000/- from Appropriate authority for illegal sealing of sonography machines in a judgement delivered by Division bench of Bombay High Court.  Facts of the case:   1. The Appropriate Authority when visited the Petitioner’s (the surgeon) Clinic  in 2011 found that the room where the ultrasound Sonography machine was kept, was not put under lock and key. A show cause notice was therefore issued to the petitioner calling upon him to explain as to why the room where ultrasound Sonography machine was kept was not put under lock. On the same day, the Tahsildar, without waiting for receipt of explanation from the petitioner, proceeded to draw a panchanama and attached and sealed the machine. 2. The petitioner tendered his explanation informing that he uses the machine for diagnosis of cases for surgical purpose and does not put it to use...

For the first time, a special team has been formed by the district administration to keep a check over sex determination cases in Gurgaon as part of Haryana's 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' campaign.  The team, which includes senior health officials and will be assisted by the police department, is tasked with tracking down violation of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994, in the entire district. Violation of the Act is a cognizable and non-bailable offence. District drug controller Amandeep Chauhan and chief of the Red Cross Society, Shyam Sunder, have been appointed as the team's duty magistrates. Chief medical officer Pushpa Bishnoi is also part of the team."The team will keep a strict vigil around 24-hour operational ultrasound machines in both urban and rural areas. The police department will also be involved in tracking sex selection cases," a release said. Apart from the team, 100 Asha and 100 Anganwadi w...

Holding that doctors are duty-bound to detect any anomaly in a fetus, the state consumer commission recently ordered a nursing clinic and its doctors to pay Rs 17.5 lakh as damages to a woman who gave birth in 1999 to a baby with severe spinal defects. The child, "though of good intelligence", is paralyzed waist down, the commission said. Wheelchair-bound, she completed her Class X last year. The mother had approached the commission in 2000 alleging negligence by her doctors in not detecting the defects, despite conducting over half a dozen sonography tests. "Nalini Sule (name changed), was subjected to seven-eight sonographies and yet not diagnozed with any malformation of the fetus. This amounts to gross negligence by doctors... Certainly, the doctors and clinic are liable to compensate her," it said . The nursing home based in Nashik and a doctor couple attached to it, Dr Pradip Pawar and Dr Suwarna Pawar, were guilty of deficiency in service, held pres...

Tech helps remote hospitals get X-rays, CT/MRIs read by specialists across the nation Tomorrow, a link between government hospitals in Tripura and Bengaluru will come alive. A link that will help patients at any of these hospitals get their X-rays read by a radiologist located in a different part of the country, thanks to an arrangement facilitated by Bengaluru-based Teleradiology Solutions. The first phase of this tele-radiology project involving 13 of 20 hospitals will go live on October 15 and the rest by mid-November, says Arjun Kalyanpur, Founder and Chief Executive of TRS, a healthcare firm in the tele-diagnostics space. The 14-year-old company has been doing similar work with hospitals in the US. But the Tripura partnership is its first full-scale government project, he says. The importance of this remote diagnosis is best understood when exposed to the uncomfortable truth that India has only about 10,000 radiologists. This means the doctor-to-patient ratio is 1:...

Guest article by Dr. Arjun Kalyanpur, CEO, Chief Radiologist and Chief Pusher,Teleradiology Solutions Teleradiology, or the transmission of medical images from one location to another for the purpose of interpretation by a radiologist, has been at the forefront of telemedicine since its inception, and has become its poster child as the most successful application of telemedicine that exists today. Studies conducted in the US in the early 2000s saw very rapid acceptance and utilization of teleradiology among radiology groups and hospitals (one study showed that utilization tripled over a short 4 year period from 2003-2007). The rest of the world is fast catching up. A study from Japan showed 69% increase in teleradiology utilization by Japanese hospitals from 2006 to 2012. And a European survey in 2011 showed that 65% of radiologists used teleradiology at that time, a number that can only have been expected to have increased since then. What explains the astronomica...

By Adv. Rohit Erande USG Report given carelessly amounts to unethical practice and thus costed Rs.15 lakhs to Drs.. (In my opinion, this case is yet again another reason to amend MTP Act) http://cms.nic.in/ncdrcusersWeb/GetJudgement.do… In a case of ANIL DUTT & ANR. V/s. VISHESH HOSPITAL, INDORE & ORS., the National Commission passed strictures upon the Radiologists / Sonologists for not adhering to . Hippocratic Oath ! Case of the Complainant. : 1. The Wife of the Complainant was under treatment of Doctors during her pregnancy. IT was contended that the concerned sonologists / radiologists gave wrong reports at both occasions after 20 weeks ,which resulted into serious consequences.   2. When the female-baby was born, she was found not fully developed & her left arm and kidney were missing and even lungs were not completely developed and had fused spinal cord. The foetal weight was only 1500 gm. 3. The other Doctors opined that due to wrong U...

Dr. (Col) Arvind K. Chaturvedi, Director, Prof. of Radiology, Head of Radiology & imaging, RGCI, Delhi, talks to PG Times about the newer methods that have been introduced to kill tumours without surgery. 1. Beside surgery, what are the options for treating liver tumour? The liver tumours can be either primary which means they are developing within the liver itself or they can be secondary meaning cancer is somewhere else but most of them spread at some point of time. Surgery has been one of the options to treat these tumours as there are emerging options that can destroy the liver tumour by various methods; one method is transarterial chemoembolization where you do a vascular circulation and make the catheter tip reach right up to the tumour and inject chemotherapy, which gets blocked there and destroys the tumour. In this there are no side effects of chemotherapy like hair loss or general symptoms. Another every emerging method to destroy liver tumours is rad...

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 urgen...

Officials say it should not have taken over 30 seconds to disable machine's magnetic field, but the switch malfunctioned. The Tata Memorial Hospital on Tuesday blamed GE Healthcare for the horrific accident at the hospital's research and treatment centre in Navi Mumbai last week in which two of its employees suffered serious injuries when one of them entered the MRI room carrying a gas cylinder, triggering the machine's powerful magnetic field.  At a press conference on Wednesday, a day after this newspaper broke the story, senior officials of Tata Memorial-run Advance Centre or Treatment Research and Education in Cancer (ACTREC) in Khargar said that because a switch to disable the machine's magnetic field malfunctioned, it took engineers four hours to disengage the two employees - a ward boy and a technician -- stuck to the machine, when it should not have taken more than 30 seconds.  While the ward boy, Sunil Jadhav, 28, who brought the oxygen cylin...

Introduction Living donor liver transplantation has evolved into a widely accepted therapeutic option to alleviate the persistent shortage of cadaveric liver transplants.   This innovative procedure allows healthy adults to donate a portion of their liver to compatible recipients suffering from end-stage liver disease. This technique, called living-donor liver transplantation (LDLT), provides an effective alternative means of liver transplantation and is a method of expanding the donor pool in light of the demand and supply imbalance for organ transplants. Imaging plays an important role in LDLT programmes by providing robust evaluation of potential donors to ensure that only anatomically suitable donors with no significant co-existing pathology are selected and that crucial information that allows detailed preoperative planning is available. Procedures In the recent past, this preharvest assessment employed a multimodal radiologic evaluation protocol, including: ...