Medicine

LSU Docs & Live Chatting on NOLA.com

Earlier today, two LSUHSC physicians were featured in a Live Chat on NOLA.com regarding Swine Flu. Fred Lopez & James Aiken answered questions from participants for about an hour starting at 12 noon.

Swine Flu

Louisiana is clear for the moment, but human cases of swine influenza A (H1N1) virus infection have been identified in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control have created a Swine Influenza (Flu) page at http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/index.htm

It includes incidence of U.S. Swine Flu Infection, currently at 20 cases in California, Kansas, Ohio, Texas and New York City.

More from CDC:
Interim CDC Guidance for Nonpharmaceutical Community Mitigation in Response to Human Infections with Swine Influenza (H1N1) Virus: http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/mitigation.htm

Guidance for Clinicians & Public Health Professionals: http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/guidance/

For international information & global statistics, see the the World Health Organization’s Swine flu page:
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/en/index.html

For folks in Louisiana, the State Dept. of Health and Hospitals encourages “Aggressive Prevention” Against Swine Flu:
http://wwwprd.doa.louisiana.gov/LaNews/PublicPages/Dsp_PressRelease_Display.cfm?PressReleaseID=2019&Rec_ID=0

The White House also issued a press briefing on Swine Influenza:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Press-Briefing-On-Swine-Influenza-4/26/09/

Where Circle Bar and Medical History Meet

A recent inquiry to Blake Pontchartrain, New Orleans Know-It-All, revealed a very interesting link between New Orleans and Medical History.

According to Blake, “The last house standing at 1032 St. Charles Avenue. . . was once the office of Dr. Elizabeth Cohen, the first woman to practice medicine in New Orleans.”

The historic building now serves as Circle Bar.

Dr. Cohen was not only the first woman to practice medicine in New Orleans, but also the first female physician licensed to practice medicine in Louisiana.

The life of Dr. Elizabeth Magnus Cohen is one with many challenges and triumphs that not only impacted the history of New Orleans, but the role of women in medicine as well.

Consumer health forecast: visibly cloudy

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/cloud.html

It just got a little easier to find out what consumer health topics are currently popular with patients. MedlinePlus, your number one authority from the NIH on patient health, just released a search cloud.

The search terms appear in alphabetical order, and their size represents their relative frequency. The bigger the term, the more often it is searched by people who visit MedlinePlus. A term’s exact ranking is found by placing your cursor over the term, and you can click on any term in the search cloud to conduct a search for that term in MedlinePlus.

Anyone who’s been on a camping trip lately can sympathize with why tick bites are so popular right now.

Create a Healthy Environment for Earth Day

As part of National Environmental Education Week and Earth Day, the National Library of Medicine is promoting its toxicology resources. These resources include: ToxMAP, ToxTown, ToxMystery, MedlinePlus, Household Products Database, and Hazardous Substances Data Bank (HSDB). Several of these resources are part of TOXNET which provides access a host of information related to toxicology, hazardous chemicals, and environmental health. For more information on Environmental Health and Toxicology, check out the Special Information Services page at NLM.

Think Before You Drink

April is indeed a busy month, adding?é?áAlcohol Awareness Month?é?áto the list?é?áof health observences.

Drinking one glass of wine per day has been clinically proven to provide health benefits. But what are the risks of drinking more than one glass on the weekend?

Brush up on facts about alcohol to help keep you and your loved ones safe.

Also, learn where Louisiana stands in drunk driving statistics.

Minority Health Awareness Month

April is a popular month for health observances, including National Minority Health Awareness Month sponsored by the US Department of Health and Hospitals Office of Minority Health. Preconception is the theme for 2009 with the slogan “Ordinary couples don?óÔé¼Ôäót plan their pregnancies. Be extraordinary!”

National Minority Health Month

USMLE Step 1 Practice Exams

Exam Master, a FREE USMLE testbank for LSUHSC students, announces a completely revised USMLE Step 1 Practice Exam. A wise L2 knows, you can never practice enough for this! First time users of ExamMaster will need to create a username and password:

http://www.exammaster2.com/wdsentry/lsuhsc.htm
More information

April is STD Awareness Month

April is STD awareness month! That?óÔé¼Ôäós Sexually Transmitted Diseases. The CDC estimates that there are approximately 19 million new cases of STDs each year in the United States, almost half of them among young people ages 15 to 24.
Let?óÔé¼Ôäós look at how Louisiana is doing. (Reports from the CDC – STD Surveillance, 2007)

Chlamydia ?óÔé¼ÔÇØ Reported cases and ranked by rates: United States, 2007
1 Mississippi: 21,686 Cases & a rate of 745.1 per 100,000 Population
2 Alaska:
3 South Carolina:
4 Alabama:
5 New Mexico:
6 Georgia:
7 Louisiana: 19,362 Cases & a rate of 451.6 per 100,000 Population
8 Tennessee:
9 Hawaii:
10 Illinois:

Gonorrhea ?óÔé¼ÔÇØ Reported cases and ranked by rates: United States, 2007
1 Mississippi: 8,314 Cases & a rate of 285.7 per 100,000 Population
2 Louisiana: 11,137 Cases & a rate of 259.7 per 100,000 Population
3 South Carolina:
4 Alabama:
5 Georgia:

Primary and secondary syphilis ?óÔé¼ÔÇØ Reported cases and ranked by rates: United States, 2007
1 Louisiana: 533 Cases & a rate of 12.4 per 100,000 Population
2 Alabama: 380 Cases & a rate of 8.3 per 100,000
3 Georgia:
4 Maryland:
5 Tennessee:

April is National Donate Life Month

Did you know. . .
?óÔé¼?ó More than 98, 000 people are in need of an organ for transplant.
?óÔé¼?ó In 2007, nationally, 52,869 people were added to the organ waiting list. 905 of these cases were in Louisiana.
?óÔé¼?ó One organ donor has the power to save up to nine lives.

More interesting statistics are available.

Organ donation and procurement can be a confusing and overhwhelming topic so take a minute and learn the facts. The best way to raise awareness about organ donation is to talk about it with others.

Louisiana hospitals are setting a great example by jumping on board to increase Louisiana?óÔé¼Ôäós donor registry by the end of 2009.

Join Louisiana in making an effort to save a life! It’s easy.

Tobacco Tax Makes Smokers Want to Quit?

The new Federal Tobacco Tax goes into effect today. It will cost smokers over $1 more per pack as of today. In response cessation hotlines are hearing from smokers in record numbers. So if you want to quit and can’t get through on the phone, try one of these websites for assistance:

Good luck!

World TB Day

March 24th is World TB Day. Although TB rates continue to decline in the United States (according to the CDC), the pace of that decline is slowing. Louisiana continues to have a higher than average number of cases. And while it didn’t rate a special Google logo, World TB day is featured from their search page.

Medical Words

Medlineplus.gov, the National Library of Medicine‘s consumer health information website, has created a tutorial on medical terms to assist consumers in understanding and using medical language.

Good luck on Match Day!

Matchmaker, matchmaker make me a match…

In this case, the matchmaker is the National Residency Matching Program. Match Day ceremonies at medical schools across the country begin at noon today.

Last year, exactly half of the 246 graduating students from Louisiana State University’s medical schools in New Orleans and Shreveport stayed in Louisiana, according to a 2008 article from the Times-Picayune.

Good luck to all our medical students, we hope you get your first choice! Whether you do or don’t, you may want to pick up the book Match Day: Young Doctors in Hell for what is in store for you.

Searching for a Clinical Trial

Clinicaltrials.gov offers a searchable database of clinical trials that are occuring world wide; it is provided by the National Institutes of Health and the National Library of Medicine. As of today, 38,757 trials are taking place in the United States and 2,816 of those are in Louisiana according to their searchable map.