Medicine

Peanut Product Recall

The FDA has a website that lists all the peanut containing products that have been recalled by the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA). Some PCA peanut products have been linked to the Salmonella Typhimurium Outbreak.

http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/peanutbutterrecall/index.cfm

This Friday, go red

Friday, February 6th is National Wear Red Day, when Americans nationwide wear red to show their support for women’s heart disease awareness.

Around town, local ladies will attend American Heart Association’s annual Go Red for Women luncheon and fashion show. Additionally, Macy’s will give all-day in-store savings & online discounts to customers wearing red February 5-8th.

In Louisiana, 35 percent of all deaths are a result of cardiovascular disease, and more women than men die from heart problems. You can find more information on heart disease in the Louisiana Health Report Card (pdf).

What is your risk for heart disease? Find out with the American Heart Association’s online heart checkup.

Science and Psychiatry

For February only, download a free PDF copy of Solomon Snyder’s Science and Psychiatry: Groundbreaking Discoveries in Molecular Neuroscience. A free, monthly book download is part of the subscription from Psychiatry Online, your one-stop online shop for (free) psychiatric textbooks.

Solomon Snyder has been instrumental in the establishment of modern psychopharmacology?óÔé¼ÔÇØas a pioneer in the identification of receptors for neurotransmitters and drugs and in the explanation of the actions of psychotropic agents. Science and Psychiatry is a collection of some of his best scientific papers, publications ranging over forty years that represent important advances in psychopharmacology and molecular biology. Audacious and unanticipated when they first appeared, these papers opened up new areas of understanding and revolutionized the modern study of the brain. Republished here, they show why fundamental research into the ?óÔé¼?ômessengers of the mind?óÔé¼?Ø is as essential for clinicians as for researchers.

You can access the book from PsychiatryOnline’s home page:
http://0-www.psychiatryonline.com.innopac.lsuhsc.edu/
(requires log-in off campus)

DynaMed, MD Consult, UpToDate Smackdown

A new study from Australian Family Physician found “no clear ‘winner'” between DynaMed, MD Consult and UpToDate when it came to answering clinical questions.

You can read the full report free online here:
http://www.racgp.org.au/afp/200810/28814

Honestly, I’m happy if you just use an evidence-based clinical resource instead of Google.

DynaMed: http://www.lsuhsc.edu/no/library/ss&d/data/dyna.html
MD Consult: http://www.lsuhsc.edu/no/library/ss&d/data/mdconsult.html

A Practical Guide to Clinical Medicine

Whether it’s your first H&P or fifty-thousandth, medical students and other health care professionals will find A Practical Guide to Clinical Medicine useful.

Created by Charlie Goldberg, M.D. and Jan Thompson at UCSD School of Medicine, A Practical Guide to Clinical Medicine is designed eye towards clinical relevance. Each section is constructed to answer the question: “What do I really need to know about this area of medical care?” and the material is presented in a concise, ordered fashion with color photographs that should be readily applicable to the common clinical scenarios seen in day to day practice.

Detailed descriptions of how to function in clinical settings are included. If you’ve ever wondered about oral presentations, patient write-ups, outpatient clinics, functioning on an inpatient service or clinical decision making, there are sections describing exactly that.

A Practical Guide to Clinical Medicine is freely available online for anyone.

Choking Hazards

Everyone knows to watch out for small children and choking hazards, especially when age recommendations are not followed. As tomorrow (January 6th) is the first day of carnival, it is also the first day of the official King Cake season. Make sure you don’t choke on any plastic babies.

22 must-see diagnoses for med students

Wandering around Learningradiology.com today, I stumbled across “22 Must-See Diagnoses for Medical Students“. It’s a great review if you have 12 minutes to brush up on your radiology skills.

LearningRadiology.com has a ton of multimedia radiology resources, from interactive quizzes, and cases of the week. There’s also video podcasts available to download to your iPhone or mobile device too.

Have a favorite radiology site? Post here, and we’ll add it our radiology links page.

Get Thee to a Leprosarium

The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene concluded their 57th annual meeting in New Orleans this week. Since Louisiana is the home for the Hansen’s Disease Center, it only makes sense that the subject of leprosy might come up. The fact that the disease is considered biblical rather than contemporary was discussed at the meeting this week; mis-diagnosis is a frequent problem which, of course, hampers treatment. The article emphasizes that we do not have an epidemic.

Need a Present for Grandma?

Consider buying your grandparent video games. Health Day recently released a report font size=”-1″>(link removed) about a December article in Psychology & Aging which stated that playing video games can boost the cognitive ability of older brains. The research wasn’t even funded by the gaming industry.

But maybe Grandpa isn’t really ready for GTA or Halo.

Bookmark Changes

As you may remember the Library converted its links to a Delicious Account back in August. In October, we posted about the social bookmarking phenomenon. The Delicious Links continue their dyamic growth with over a dozen new sites added in the last month. My particular favorite? The Virtual Stethoscope Project. from McGill University.

Residents need more sleep, says IoM

A report from the Institute of Medicine released on Tuesday morning proposes revisions to medical residents’ duty hours and workloads “to decrease the chances of fatigue-related medical errors and to enhance the learning environment resident training.” The report does not recommend further reducing residents’ work hours from the maximum average of 80 per week set by ACGME in 2003, but rather recommends reducing the maximum number of hours that residents can work without time for sleep to 16, increasing the number of days residents must have off, and restricting moonlighting during residents’ off-hours, among other changes. The committee, which was chaired by Dr. Michael Johns of Emory, estimates that the cost for additional personnel to handle reduced resident work could be roughly $1.7 billion annually.
Read the full report here

Thanks Ram Paragi, for the publication alert!

World AIDS Day

December 1st is World AIDS Day. Designated in 1988, this annual observation exists to bring attention to the continuing AIDS epidemic. For additional information, resources, and statistics, check out the following websites:

  • AIDS.gov: World AIDS Day
  • Centers for Disease Control: Celebrate Life – World AIDS Day
  • Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals: Preventive Health HIV/AIDS
  • NO/AIDS Task Force
  • World AIDS Campaign
  • Additionally, 2008 also marks the 25th anniversary of the NO/AIDS Task Force which dedicated an AIDS Memorial in Washington Square Park over the weekend.

    Family Health History & Thanksgiving

    Thursday isn’t just Thanksgiving. It’s also the 5th annual National Family History Day, as declared by Acting Surgeon General Steven K Galson, M.D., M.P.H. National Family History Day is part of the Family History Initiative which provides access to a web-based tool called, “My Family Health Portrait.” This tool helps users to organize family history information and then save their history information to their own computer and even share family history information with other family members.

    Why Does Everything Taste Bad After You Brush Your Teeth?

    If you have no idea why we?óÔé¼Ôäóre pondering that question today, go brush your teeth real quick and grab a drink (orange juice, iced tea, beer?óÔé¼ÔÇØanything except water). Awful, isn?óÔé¼Ôäót it?

    http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/19516

    Google & the Flu

    Google announced on Tuesday that it was launching Google Flu Trends which will combine flu-related searches that it receives along with information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to estimate flu cases in all 50 states. The CDC offers information on Flu Season for consumers as well as Seasonal Flu information for health professionals, parents, and teachers.

    According to Google Flu Trends, incidence of the flu in Louisiana is still low. And they even offer a flu shot locator by zip code, courtesy of the American Lung Association.