PARIS: Scientists said on Monday they had discovered immune cells that can fight all known flu viruses in what was hailed as an “extraordinary breakthrough” that could lead to a universal, one-shot vaccine against the killer disease.
HEALTH
WASHINGTON. Scientists have identified a gene that may be activated to reverse symptoms of major depression such as social isolation and loss of interest.
KARACHI: Despite the fact that approximately 8,000 children – under the age of 18 years – are diagnosed with cancer every year in Pakistan, there are only 13 centres for paediatric cancer care in the country.
LAHORE: A new polio case has surfaced after a gap of two years in Punjab and seven years in Lahore. The case was reported from Shalamar Town where the crippling disease has affected eight-month-old Yashif who was said to be vaccinated soon after his …
With 300,000 children diagnosed with cancer around the world, the International Childhood Cancer Day (ICCD) is being celebrated here like other parts of the world on Friday (February 15) focusing on “No More Pain and No More Loss” for children with .
Approximately 8 in 10 of these children live in low and middle-income countries where their survival rate is often poor, Dr Saadiya Javed Khan, Consultant Pediatric Oncologist at Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre (SKMCH&RC) told media with reference to “World Childhood Cancer Day.
“She added, Cancer is a curable disease if diagnosed and treated at an early stage under the supervision of qualified pediatric oncologists. In Pakistan, leukemia or blood cancer is the most common type found in children.
Although it is nearly 90-95% curable in the west, survival in Pakistan is about 60-70%. Factors leading to these poor outcomes include rampant malnutrition, infections, and late diagnosis.”She maintained that leukemia mostly affects kids between the ages of 3 to 5 and later adolescents. The symptoms of leukemia are very identifiable.Some of its major symptoms include pallor, fatigue, easy bruising and frequent bone pains. Besides leukemia, other common types of cancer seen in Pakistan include lymphomas, bone tumors, and retinoblastomas.
As SKMCH&RC is a referral center, it receives patients from not only all provinces of Pakistan but also from Afghanistan as well. Retinoblastoma, as it is hereditary should have genetic screening and family counselling once a child has been identified with the disease, she added.
Talking about precautionary measures, Dr Saadiya said, “A balanced diet is very important in the upbringing of a healthy child. A huge number of children are victims of malnutrition.
In our society, children are only being taken to doctors when they fall seriously ill. This practice should be avoided and regular medical checkups must be done after every six months to a year for well-child checks.”She further added that in cancer treatment for children the role of trained pediatric oncologists is vital along with the availability of latest technology. SKMCH&RC is providing state-of-the-art facilities in this regard.The most popular technology in the treatment of leukemia is cytogenetics and evaluation of minimal-residual disease (MRD) which is being provided to patients since the last couple of years. Cytogenetic helps in risk stratification and appropriate treatment plans.
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KARACHI: Expressing concern over the increasing number of extensively drug resistant (XDR) typhoid cases in Sindh, the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) has urged the general public to adopt basic hygiene practices to avoid infection and illness.
In the near future your first contact at a hospital might be with a computer that decides whether you have glandular fever or just the flu.
Now it appears doctors may also be in line, with scientists reporting they have built a system that automatically diagnoses common childhood conditions as accurately as a trained physician.
Nature Medicine, a group of researchers in the United States and China reported they had trained an AI on medical records from 1.3 million patient visits at a major medical centre in Guangzhou, China.
When tested on previously unseen cases, the AI could diagnose glandular fever, roseola, influenza, chicken pox, and hand-foot-mouth disease with between 90 and 97 per cent accuracy. When tested against 20 doctors, the AI system made more accurate diagnoses than junior medics.
It was more than 90 percent accurate at diagnosing asthma; the accuracy of physicians in the study ranged from 80 to 94 percent.In diagnosing gastrointestinal disease, the system was 87 percent accurate, compared with the physicians’ accuracy of 82 to 90 percent.
Could a robot do your job? Search our database to find out how your job is affected.Dr Kang Zhang, chief of ophthalmic genetics at the University of California and the lead author of the report, said the AI could help sort hospital patients according to their severity, as well as improve the diagnosis of complex, rare conditions.
“Our study provides a proof of concept for implementing an AI-based system as a means to aid physicians in tackling large amounts of data, augmenting diagnostic evaluations, and to provide clinical decision support in cases of diagnostic uncertainty or complexity,” Dr Zhang said. “When you’re busy you can see 80 patients a day.
And you can only grasp so much information. That’s where we potentially as human physicians might make mistakes.
AI doesn’t have to sleep, it has a large memory and doesn’t lose energy.This doesn’t mean computers will replace doctorsThis week, the same day as the Nature MedicineMany organisations are developing and testing systems that analyse electronic health records to detect medical conditions such as diabetes and heart failure.
In July last year, an AI system beat a team of 15 doctors in a competition that looked at the ability to diagnose brain tumours. The NHS report proposes that smart speakers – like Alexa and Siri – could soon be used with a “mental health triage bot” that engages in conversation while analysing text and voice for suicidal ideas and emotion.
Technology such as this could help save millions of hours of GP’s time, it says.”Our review of the evidence leads us to suggest that these technologies will not replace healthcare professionals, but will enhance them .
giving them more time to care for patients,” the authors of the report conclude
KARACHI: The deadly Congo viral fever claimed the life of a woman on Tuesday at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC). JPMC staff said that 35-year old Tazeem Faizan, a resident of Orangi Town, was brought to the emergency department of JPMC …
The city's first case in 2019 of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF), commonly known as Congo virus, was reported on Sunday as a woman tested positive for the disease at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC).
One in every 12 pregnant women in Birmingham are smokers at the time they give birth – as experts claim budget cuts have “eroded the support that women need”.