Changes

In the next few days I will be migrating the blog from blogger to wordpress.

May 2015

Book review: Building BrainPower

I have got a copy of Dilip Mukerjea’s Building BrainPower: Turning Grey Matter into Gold as part of the BlogAdda book reviews program.Lets start with the basics first – the book has been published by Westland, paperback, 314 pages and the marked price is Rs. 750. The paper and print quality is pretty good and I’m quite satisfied with the binding of...

May 2015

On the death of Infants

The recent controversy and allegations over the infant death in the BC Roy Post-Graduate Institute of Paediatric Sciences demands that we examine the issue critically. Every death is lamentable but we should also recognize that every death is not preventable unless action is taken in a timely manner. Only by examining what went wrong we can begin to...

May 2015

An exercise on detecting fallacies in newspapers

I am quite fond of Justice M. Katju, the newly appointed chairman of the Press Council of India. For starters, he has correctly identified the deep seated rot within the Indian media. Will he able to do something about it? Only time will tell and I certainly hope he does but already the apologists for the New Media are coming out the woodwork and twisting...

May 2015

Outbreak of viral encephalitis in Bihar, India

An outbreak of viral encephalitis is ravaging the childrenof Magadh division in Bihar India. This is the second wave of encephalitis that has hit the state after the rainy season with 383 children affected and 82 lives lost. The local health authorities are ill equipped to handle such an epidemic and Bihar being one of the poorest states of Indiadoes...

May 2015

Actionable evidence: How to tackle obesity in primary care?

Scenario: A 45 year old male with a BMI of 32 presents to his primary care physician. What intervention should be suggested to him to reduce his BMI? Should only behavioral modification be adequate or should orlistat be added to it?Evidence: A recent study titled “Effectiveness of Primary Care–Relevant Treatments forObesity in Adults: A Systematic Evidence...

May 2015

Actionable evidence: Injectable contraceptives increase the risk of HIV infection

I was thinking of a new category of posts which I would be calling actionable evidence. Actionable evidence is that evidence which you can immediately put into practice; these are of direct clinical relevance. So to start this off I have selected a very important study that came out in the Lancet Infectious Diseases titled “Use of hormonal contraceptives...

May 2015

I want a female doctor! Well no body is stopping you.

This post on cloud nine blog irked me considerably.  The premise of the post is an important one but the blog author takes it to an illogical extreme.“India boasts of thousands of qualified doctors- with Indian degrees and the lesser mortals with Russian degrees. So, how does it feel when you end up in a hospital for delivery and the gynecologist about...

May 2015

The Facebook Suicide: Who is to blame?

Following the suicide of the 22 year old girl after herboyfriend dumped her, much debate has followed. I find that most of the commentators have joined either of the two camps; one side believes that the boyfriend is to be blamed for being an utter jerk while the other side thinks that at least some part of the blame lies with the girl for being immature....

May 2015

Hepatosplenomegaly with fever in a child

Yesterday I got into a discussion with one of my friends about a case. He had examined a 7 year old male child who presented with fever for the last 7 days. The fever was of mild grade, continuous in type. The fever was not associated with any chills, rigor or sweating. There were no complaints of headache, vomiting, visual disturbance or convulsions....

May 2015