What’s on the web? (7 January 2008) January 7, 2008
Posted by Dr. Bertalan Meskó in What's on the web?.trackback
- New Tumor Markers & Targets (Cancer Genetics)
Because of a lack of genetic screening, a girl born in California from a donated egg has Tay-Sachs disease, which will probably kill her before her fifth birthday. But her story may prompt closer tracking of egg and sperm donors, and of birth outcomes, the Los Angeles Times reports this morning.
- Patient education libraries in hospitals (The Patient’s Doctor): Every hospital and waiting room should have a patient education library!
- Bad Cancer Tests Drawing Scrutiny (WSJ Blog):
Thousands of breast-cancer patients may be getting the wrong treatment because of errors in two laboratory tests widely used to determine which drugs are prescribed.
- Health2.info: a Web 2.0 Health Information Platform. The objective is to provide information about Healthcare relevant stories found around the internet.
Regarding the cancer tests:
This is nothing new. There are many tests out there that are misread, not known about, unnecessary… you name it. There is a large gap between physicians and pathologists that has been happening for way too long. There is a site that has finally been created to help avoid misdiagnosis and unnecessary lab testing called ARUP Consult. It’s a site tailored to physicians, but anyone can use it. It’s for esoteric testing and just by browsing disease topics or conditions you can access which tests should be ordered for a certain diagnosis, algorithms and concise diagnostic advice linked back to PubMed. Too many people don’t have a clue about lab tests from hospitals or how to read them, and physicians don’t have the time to stay current on lab test information. This is a great resource for any health care provider, saving patients and physicians valuable time and money.
by the way… the url to ARUP Consult is http://www.arupconsult.com
Donor Sperm and Genetic Disease…Again
Bertalan Mesko at ScienceRoll linked today to a Wall Street Journal Health blog post about a child with Tay-Sachs conceived with a donated egg. This interesting story, originally reported in the LA Times, certainly isn’t the first example of a rare g…
Regarding the WSJ blog post about the donor eggs and Tay-Sachs, there was another fairly recent example involving sperm from the same donor and 5 children with severe congenital neutropenia. For more, see this post at my blog, DNA and You: http://genomicmd.typepad.com/dna_and_you/2008/01/donor-sperm-and.html
-Matt Mealiffe, M.D.
http://www.dnaandyou.org/
http://genomicmd.typepad.com/cancer_and_your_genes/
Spork, thank you for the detailed explanation. I bookmarked tha ARUP Consult site and will write about it soon.
Bertalan – I changed my name from Spork to skibjork for future reference. Sorry to get back to you late regarding this post, but it’s been busy. I think that’s great that you will write about ARUP Consult soon. From what I see, this is a very credible blog and many people will benefit from knowing about resources as this one. Keep up the good work.