Thursday, June 27, 2013

The Radiopathology of Medicine

In the near future, with further development of technology, radiology will be able to not only comment on macroscopic pathology but microscopic pathology as well. Pathology would need to become an integral part of Radiology at that time.
Carrying this futuristic speculation further...there will be a phase when radiopathology shall become a single discipline and due to technology it is possible that the computer will also be able to label each and every finding be it macro or microscopic radiology (Not necessarily pure AI but even current generation 'user driven Web 2.0 has the same potential),making it easier for everyone to learn radiopathology so much so that the current generation of physicians who are heavily dependent on radiologists and pathologists will become independent and radiopathologists will be forced to
become physicians again.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

BMJ Case Reports approach to clinical problem solving in http://care.udhc.co.in/

Welcome to our UDHC network. Thanks for joining.

I am forwarding a potential case-report currently emailed by our social worker from Mathabhanga. Please help this patient (see details attached) to arrive at an innovative solution for his low back ache.

The steps toward this are:

a) Transcribe and translate the patient's handwritten letter/history and provide a summary of his problem inputs posted to the UDHC narrative page. (similar to what has been recently done by Deepanjan here: http://care.udhc.co.in/INPUT/displayIssueGraphically.jsp?topic_id=313

b) Search for current best evidence for diagnosis and further management of lumbar canal stenosis (something of the sort provided here:https://www.ecri.org/Documents/EPC/Diagnosis_and_Treatment_of_Degenerative_Lumbar_Spinal_Stenosis.pdf and as well as other evidence of 'innovative therapy discussed in social media sites on low-backache and lumbar stenosis (see this link to a recent BMJ Case Report from university of Sheffield detailing a process of social media data matching that the Sheffield team did along with their patient of chronic abdominal pain labeled IBS:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23239770)

c) Match your available individual patient data to generalizable patient data/current best evidence available online

and

d) Come up with a contextually matched patient management plan. Send it as an output1 (back to the patient through the social worker and his local physician) after getting moderator clearance (the current moderator for 726 area PIN code is me) and follow up the response to treatment through a series of inputs and outputs (see the input and output page here:http://care.udhc.co.in/

e) Prepare a case report for BMJ Case Reports similar to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23239770

For step 'a' you may require the help of someone who knows how to read and translate from Bengali (particularly from area pin code 726 or even starting from 700 and so on...this patient's botanical name attached by the social worker is LEUCAS CEPHALOTES and the website name will read as LEUCAS726CEPHALOTES).

Looking forward to working with you (and other interested UDHC co-authors copied here) around this patient.

best,

rb