Money & medicine – Part 2

Let me take an example of more common problem of fever and how economy decides the level of care. In a general out-patient care 80% of patients will be infections. Another fact that we have to remember is patients in low socio economic status earn about $4-6 a day, on which the whole family lives. [...]

Money & medicine

Money determines many things in places where insurance is not in place like India. Whether a patient is going to undergo thrombolysis or just heparin for myocardial infarction, thrombolysis for an acute stroke or just aspirin or for that matter any treatment becomes dictated by how much he/she can spend. Let us say a patient [...]

Is this all relationship is about?

About an year ago, a retired engineer came to me for uncontrolled hypertension. At the time of presentation, he had mild dementia which continued to progress, despite adequate control of hypertension. His CT of the brain showed multiple lacunar infarcts. Over the year, i have been seeing him and his dementia has unfortunately continued to [...]

Electric vehicles and pollution

In the recent days i see a lot of ads in the newspapers about, e-bikes – pollution free electric vehicles. These ads tout the supposed advantage of economy, noiselessness and with an added benefit of helping the environment. There is an electric car also in production. Are these not mis-informations? In India, like in most [...]

Memorable patients

        In this post i write about two unforgettable patients. The first one was a patient in his forties a smoker with diabetes, hypertension and hyper-lipidemia. He went on to develop exertional angina. His electrocardiogram showed ischemia at rest and an echocardiogram revealed regional wall motion abnormalities in the areas corresponding to the ischemia. [...]

Vicious Circle

Why do most of the practitioners in towns maintain medical records? Everybody knows that this is the most important document both to the patient and the doctor. For the patient this is not only going to record all his health problems, but also small details that will help avoid future troubles like tremors to Salbutamol [...]

Exploitation – The pitiable drug representatives

i feel, drug company representatives have the lousiest job. Allow me to explain. Most of the small drug companies, hire fresh graduates for a salary of Rs. 4000-5000. Most of the companies insist on the person getting a bike before he can be given an appointment order. After this the area manager, takes them on [...]

old medicine new use

There is a good article cited by Gruntdoc. This is about the use of Minocycline in CVA.
It is surprising so many unrelated drugs are found to have so many other uses. Some have turned out to be quiet useful. Many just a hype. The example for previous one is Chloroquine in arthritis including the recent [...]

Time to hog food again

Today is Vinayaka Chaturthi. This is the day when Lord Vinayaka was supposed to have been born. For who do not know about Vinayaka, he is the god with a human body and an elephant head. One good thing about any Hindu festival is you get to hog-up good food. The problem is with diabetics, [...]

Are we humane ?

This is about a kid dieing because of failure to be treated. What has happened is just probably one of the alarm bells of how inhumane we are becoming. Whether the doctors could have saved him (Especially when the bite is unknown) of course does not really matter. What matters is, he had to die [...]