BrainBlog

From the Guardian : NHS warned of 'neurology timebomb' Call for 'neurology tsar' as growing numbers are diagnosed with Parkinson's, motor neurone disease and multiple sclerosis The Guardian Tuesday 17 January 2012 Read full article

An interesting post on the Wellcome Trust Blog: What I Learned at the BBC By Johanna Hoog 18 November 2011 A look at how science gets on television. Read the post

From a New York Times blog: Preventing Hospital Delirium By SUSAN SELIGER November 11, 2011, 4:09 PM Read the full blog entry

From the CBC: Montreal-born scientist dies before Nobel honour Nobel committee unaware of recipient's recent death CBC News Posted: Oct 3, 2011 5:54 AM ET Last Updated: Oct 3, 2011 10:20 AM ET "Montreal-born scientist Ralph Steinman was announced as the co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday, but the news was immediately overshadowed by word of his death on Friday. "Steinman and two other scientists were announced as winners of the Nobel in medicine. Nobel committee member Goran Hansson said the committee didn't know Steinman was dead when it chose him as a winner and was looking through its regulations. "The Rockefeller University is delighted that the Nobel Foundation has recognized Ralph Steinman for his seminal discoveries concerning the body's immune responses," Rockefeller University president Marc Tessier-Lavigne said in a statement. "But the news is bittersweet, as we also learned this morning from Ralph's family that he pas...

Britain is bottom of Euro league table at diagnosing Alzheimer's Britons with symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease take twice as long to be diagnosed as sufferers living in other European countries, research has found. By Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent The Telegraph 9:00PM GMT 26 Feb 2011 Read the article

Last week, the Pew Internet & American Life Project released a report about individuals with chronic diseases and their use of the Internet to obtain and share information. The report is available at the link below: Pew Report on Chronic Disease and the Internet From the summary: "The deck is stacked against people living with chronic disease. They are disproportionately offline. They often have complicated health issues, not easily solved by the addition of even the best, most reliable, medical advice. "And yet, those who are online have a trump card. They have each other. This survey finds that having a chronic disease increases the probability that an internet user will share what they know and learn from their peers. They unearth nuggets of information. They blog. They participate in online discussions. And they just keep going. "

Several days ago, the CDC released a report entitled, "Traumatic Brain Injury in the United States: Emergency Department Visits, Hospitalizations, and Deaths, 2002-2006" - available as a .pdf (and .doc) download. Download the report

From the King's College London website: Seminar: The computer as the third actor in the clinical consultation 17 Mar 2010, 12:45-13:45, 6th Floor Seminar Room, Capital House, Guy's Campus Speaker: Dr Simon de Lusignan Speaker institution: St George's University of London Full information

TEDMED2010 website 26-29 October 2010 San Diego, California From the homepage: "Created by Marc Hodosh and Richard Saul Wurman, TEDMED celebrates conversations that demonstrate the intersection and connections between all things medical and healthcare related: from personal health to public health, devices to design and Hollywood to the hospital. Together, this encompasses more than twenty percent of our GNP in America while touching everyone's life around the globe."

Surgery for Mental Ills Offers Hope and Risk By BENEDICT CAREY The New York Times Published: November 27, 2009 "Hundreds have undergone brain surgery for problems like depression, anxiety, even obesity." Read the article

My brain abscess and me I had no idea I had a potentially fatal infection. Now, after my life-saving surgery, I will never take my health for granted again Tim Lusher The Guardian Tuesday 3 November 2009 Read Tim's narrative report here . [snip] "Finally, on Tuesday morning, someone realises something is horribly wrong. My GP sees immediately that my gait is clumsy, my focus wild, my speech slurring. She sends me straight to A&E at the Royal London hospital and phones ahead to order a brain scan. There, I collapse gratefully into the care of doctors and nurses." [snip]

Read details about this year's awardees at The Nobel Prize website Awarded to Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase."

For Speech-Impaired, Insurance Fights Remedy By ASHLEE VANCE The New York Times Published: September 15, 2009 "Despite their usefulness and lower cost, devices like iPhones and netbook PCs that can help the speech-impaired are not covered by Medicare or insurers." Read the article

From The Utica Observer-Dispatch : Obama adviser speaks about epilepsy locally Axelrod also touts healthcare reform By ELIZABETH COOPER Observer-Dispatch Posted Sep 12, 2009 @ 09:01 PM Last update Sep 12, 2009 @ 10:59 PM WHITESBORO —Amid the national debate on health care, a top White House adviser related his personal story about troubles his family encountered in getting care for a daughter with epilepsy. David Axelrod, a close adviser to President Barack Obama, was the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy, known as CURE, at Hart's Hill Inn Saturday evening. Axelrod's wife, Susan Landau, is one of the founders of CURE, and she has come to the Mohawk Valley in the past for CURE fundraisers, though Saturday was Axelrod's first visit. More than 700 people attended Saturday's fundraiser, which raised $207,000. Before the event, he took questions from reporters about his personal story, and said it had been “the cause of our lives to...

After a Diagnosis, Someone to Help Point the Way By LESLEY ALDERMAN The New York Times Published: September 12, 2009 "Patient advocates can help research treatment options, sort out insurance claims and open doors to specialists." Read the full article

Tara Calishain and her diverse service specialty called Research Buzz provides a link to a new Google Custom Search Engine specific to hospital websites in the U.S., 2800 of them at current count. For specifics, please see her website/blog entry: click here

Hojat, Mohammadreza; Vergare, Michael J.; Maxwell, Kaye; Brainard, George; Herrine, Steven K.; Isenberg, Gerald A.; Veloski, Jon; Gonnella, Joseph S. The Devil is in the Third Year: A Longitudinal Study of Erosion of Empathy in Medical School Academic Medicine , September 2009 - Volume 84 - Issue 9 - pp 1182-1191. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0b013e3181b17e55 The full text of this research paper is available at: Click here This issue of Academic Medicine includes additional commentary and research papers on the topic of empathy, available as courtesy full-text downloads.

Cleveland Clinic considering telemedicine services for ICUs, home health care MedCity News August 20, 2009 by Chris Seper Read the article

From The New York Times : And You Thought a Prescription Was Private By MILT FREUDENHEIM Published: August 9, 2009 "Prescriptions and the information on them are bought and sold in a murky marketplace, often without the patients’ knowledge or permission." Read the article

Yet another case from the UK: Woman dies of meningitis after swine flu diagnosis • Woman prescribed Tamiflu and paracetamol dies in hospital • Son urges doctors to heed symptoms of other illnesses Karen McVeigh guardian.co.uk Wednesday 12 August 2009 17.02 BST A man whose mother died of meningitis days after being misdiagnosed with swine flu has called on doctors to pay more heed to other illnesses when treating patients. Jasvir Kaur Gill, 48, a mother of three from Leicester, began suffering from a sore throat and vomiting during the evening of Saturday 1 August. She was told to take Tamiflu after a telephone diagnosis, but 12 hours later she suffered a heart attack and was taken to hospital. She died without regaining consciousness, four days later. An inquest, which opened today, heard how her death was caused by meningococcal septicaemia, or blood poisoning caused by meningitis. After the hearing, her son Sukhvinder Gill, 25, said: "We said to the doctors in the hospital, ever...