Raman's Blog

A third outbreak of Zika virus infection has occurred in India in Rajasthan. With more than 55 infected people of which more than 11 are pregnant females, it is time to recollect a few points about this viral infection. This is a viral disease; an emerging infection transmitted the same mosquito that transmits dengue and chikungunya. This virus was first identified in Uganda in 1947. The first outbreak in India was in January 2017 at Ahmedabad, the second in Tamil Nadu at Krishnagiri in the same year.  Most of the infections stay asymptomatic. The symptoms include fever, rashes, redness of eyes, muscle and joint pain, malaise and headache. The symptoms are mild, resemble other arboviral infections and last usually for 2 to 7 days. The fearsome aspect of this seemingly mild infection is the devastation it can bring about to the future generations. Microcephaly in the newborn and other neurological syndromes like Guillain Barre Syndrome can wreak havoc in a developing...

Mental Health problems are one of the leading morbidity even in the developing world. Most people would find it easy to talk to a religious guru than to a qualified mental health practitioner. Thus the sad state of affairs is that the patient ends up with a psychiatrist after receiving all the ill advice of every Tom, Dick and Harry. Depression is a very common psychiatric illness that can wear off many productive hours and even life of the patients. Millions of people around the world live with depression. In this context it is worthwhile to watch the video released by the WHO.

In the western countries, I know that many websites exist where the CME credits can be obtained for free. Medscape provides such CME hours for free even for foreign doctors like us which can be obtained at the comfort of one’s residence sitting in front of the computer. Free of cost CMEs should be our top priority. In fact it is not possible for an average middle class doctor to go to distant places taking leave from work and to pay dearly for a couple of CME hours. Also the feasibility of traveling to distant places from rural areas and the discomfort of conducting a journey in overcrowded public transportation of ours should be considered. (Of course, I am not referring to doctors having their own air conditioned vehicle driven by another driver) I would appeal to the medical fraternity to take some positive steps in this regard. My suggestions are the following. 1) MCI should recognize the online CME hours granted by reputed portals like Medscape. 2) The government should...

I was surprised to read a post on the Clinical Cases and Images Blog. 2 out of 4 top US Hospitals are on Twitter. There is an impressive list in the blog. Click here to follow them on Twitter.   Technorati Tags: twitter , medical

I have started a new blog called MnemonicsMD at http://mnemonicsmd.blogspot.com . I'll be posting my medical mnemonics as and when I come up with any. Though there are other readymade sources for medical mnemonics, I think it is better to come up with our own to retain in memory for a longer time. Though I make some good mnemonics and note them down in a notebook, I don't find them when I need it as there are many notebooks and I sometimes might misplace them. This blog will serve as an online notebook for my medical mnemonics and hope some others might find it useful as well. Please send in your comments. Please visit http://doctor82.blogspot.com for more contents

I was amazed to see such a fantastic collection of videos and animations in Youtube elaborating the intricate mechanisms in molecular biology. I always wanted to see them happening than just imagine it myself after going through the text descriptions. It was an eye opener to the educative aspect of this famous video sharing site. I just had to enter the right key words to search to get into a goldmine of these fantastic science videos. I wish I could see them much earlier during my undergraduate medical education days. Click here to go to the search page in Youtube to see the videos. Tags: youtube , molecular , biology , animations

UBC Health Library Wiki is an excellent resource for medical podcasts. It provides a detailed information on subscribing to podcasts and provides excellent links to contents from different medical specialties. Don't worry if you have only heard of words like podcasts, audiocasts or audioblogs but know little about them; the links in that wiki site will give you enough information to get you started! Feel free to browse through the links or add your own if it is not listed there. Tags: podcasts , wiki

I always knew that MS Excel can have immense applications in the field of medicine. I searched for good medical spreadsheets online with no luck for a long time. I was planning to create my own Excel templates for medical applications. But I never got time to learn the application in detail, let alone create my own spreadsheets. I was puzzled why such a simple yet fantastic idea never occurred in someone else’s mind. But after a tiring search, I stumbled upon the gold mine. Visit Medal.org if you are in search of high quality free medical templates online. I also discovered that Martindale has already indexed free medical calculators for our use. The link is http://www.martindalecenter.com/Calculators1B_3_MedAC.html It is a fantastic collection of free online medical calculators. Tags: medical , spreadsheets , excel , calculators

There is a very interesting blog in the Clinical Cases and Images Blog about the Web 2 in medicine. Though the contents were in the form of a PowerPoint presentation, there were many useful web links which I thought is very useful for a netizen like me. The following links were extracted from that presentation which I found useful in the presentation are the following : Case reports and HIPAA rules: http://casesblog.blogspot.com/2005/07/case-reports-and-hipaa-rules.html Top 5 podcasts to listen to: http://casesblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/top-5-medical-podcasts-i-listen-to.html Get RSS feed for any medical journal from Pubmed: http://casesblog.blogspot.com/2005/06/get-rss-feeds-for-major-medical.html Tags: web 2 , CCIB

How many times have you wished to visualize structure of the cell, DNA replication, photosynthesis or Krebs cycle in action? Johnkyrk.com offers amazing animations in cell biology and biochemistry. The animations are of high quality and don't require any extra plugins and loaded easily in my Opera browser. I just wish that the site adds more animations from more topics so that medical education becomes more enjoyable. You can access the site in 5 different languages. Tags: animations , biochemistry , raman

Medical mnemonics have always been an indispensable tool for a medical student to memorize facts. Medicalmnemonics.com is the world’s largest repository of medical mnemonics on the net and is accessible from PC, mobile or PDA or download all the mnemonics as a single PDF file. It is a nice place to share your mnemonics with others and contribute to the repository. Tags: medicalmnemonics , mnemonics , raman                                                                                                          

The best internet meeting place for Indian medical students is undoubtedly RxPG Online . It claims to be the largest community website for medical students on the web which in my opinion is right at least in the Indian context. The website features extremely vibrant forums and discuss about almost all postgraduate medical tests. The forums are well moderated and the news team keeps the members updated about any news relevant to the medical students. There are many useful free downloads and tools which are helpful to any medical student aspiring for PG medical education. It is a nice resource to keep in touch with fellow students and also to relax by participating in the conversation threads in the Offbeat section. Tags: Raman , rxpg , forums

Doctor’s Guide (Docguide) has been a ready reference for doctors for quite a long time. But as the name suggests, it is a website which caters only to doctors and the general public has little to benefit from that web site. The web site can be personalized and the resources can be arranged according to individual preferences. What I like the most is the top bar containing CME video links which is called Peerview Media Bar. The site offers ready access links to a large number of medical journals, patient resources, case discussions and medical news from different specialties. It is a nice web page to be bookmarked as a homepage as all the important medical links can be neatly arranged in the personalized edition. You can also add the web sites of your choice to your personalized homepage. But you don’t have to give your username and password to access the personalized edition and this makes me wonder if someone can mess with someone else’s personalized homepage. Tags: docguide , doctor...

I wonder why most of the American drugs are searchable by their trade names in the google, rarely is it possible with the Indian drugs. The only ways by which Indian doctors could refer to the trade names of the Indian drugs was to look into catalogues like CIMS and IDR which are available as books or CDs. But Medclik offers MedCLIK Drug Reference which the site describes as India's most reliable and comprehensive drug information for doctors. You can also check the MCI (Medical Council of India) registration of doctors in India and get lists of hospitals accredited by the MCI and DNB. In addition the site offers a variety of services like medical news updates, health calculators, and resources for medical students and much more. Tags: reference , indian , drugs , pharmaceutical , pharmacy , cims , idr , medclik

It is just a regular scene in my clinic when I ask a patient about the medical records he/she possesses about the past surgical procedures he underwent or some other significant illness, the patient responds innocently that it has been many years since that happened and the documents are now misplaced or not available. In this case, if only that patient had a unique ID and all the records were in an online database such incidents will be mentioned only in the history text books. So I was searching for such online databases which can be accessed for free and came up with the following links. Interactive Personal Health Record - iHealthRecord – This service has been there for quite some time and offers a great service for free. But Microsoft has started it’s new service in consumer health care market by offering free personal health records on the Web which is called HealthVault . Similar to iHealthrecord, the personal information will be stored in a secure, encrypted database. Its priv...

The Clinical Cases and Images - Blog is a blog of ClinicalCases.org with medical, tech and other interesting stories and is one of the greatest medical blog site at present in the blogosphere. URL: It's Interview Time Again for Future Residents -- See Helpful Tips The clinical cases and images blog have compiled a few useful links for the U.S. medical students and international medical graduates (IMGs) who are preparing their ERAS applications and waiting for interview offers from residency program. Tags: blog , residency , tips

Poliomyelitis, often called polio or infantile paralysis, is a viral paralytic disease. The causative agent, a virus called poliovirus (PV), enters the body orally, infecting the intestinal wall. It may proceed to the blood stream and into the central nervous system leading to muscle weakness and often paralysis. The National Polio Surveillance Project is a collaborative project of Govt. of India & the World Health Organization and managed by the latter. Currently a team of more than 250 Surveillance Medical Officer (SMO), Sub-Regional Coordinator (SRC) and Regional Coordinator (RC) are spread across the country who comprise the field staff of project. They are supported by a network of 9 Polio National Laboratories, which undertake the Virological Investigation of AFP (Acute Flaccid Paralysis) cases. The National Polio Surveillance Unit (NPSU) provides logistical & technical backup to the field staff. Pulse Polio immunization programme were conducted on April 9 and May 21 in I...