Best of Medical Blogs - weekly review and blog carnival

The “Best of Medical Blogs - weekly review and blog carnival” is a weekly summary of the best posts from medical blogs. Feel free to send your suggestions to my email at clinicalcases@gmail.com. Best of Medical Blogs (BMB) is published every Tuesday, just like the old Grand Rounds.

Medical crowdsourcing through social media

Berci, one of the most popular proponents of #HCSM, comments on being mentioned in TIME magazine: They described how crowdsourcing works through social media and used my story of crowdsourcing a rare diagnosis via Twitter as an example. Life is just great!" http://goo.gl/CxwgK

The Final Update of the Hospital Social Network List

Ed Bennett: "After a long run, I’ve decided to archive the Hospital Social Network List. The final update will be published at the end of August 2012" http://goo.gl/z0GTm

International Conference on Emergency Medicine (ICEM) 2012 Talks Free Online

Chris Nickson, from the EM blog Life in the Fast Lane, reports that the lectures from the 2012 International Conference on Emergency Medicine are now freely available: http://goo.gl/qIF9n

Johns Hopkins medical students have invented an app that checks your symptoms

Symcat (symptoms-based, computer-assisted triage) app allows the user to enter in various symptoms such as a fever, cough, swelling etc. and receive "an instant diagnosis" (more like a suggestion rather than a diagnosis) http://goo.gl/C0nYc

Instead of Asthma, Laryngospasm in a Child

The ENT surgeon and prolific medical blogger Dr. Christopher Chang special comments on how VCD can masquerade as asthma http://bit.ly/QGMJJJ

Computers can never replace physicians as diagnosticians - Dr. Centor explains why on his blog: http://goo.gl/SDx2L

Social media updates and the 2012 AAFP National Conference of Family Medicine Residents and Students

Dr. Mike Sevilla from published a #AAFPNC 2012 Wrap-up at: http://goo.gl/TCI7L

How Twitter connects Mayo Clinic and patients - Lee Aase's presentation http://goo.gl/7LNde

Tweetcamp for New Connections

View more presentations from Lee Aase

How Do Pain Relievers Work? TED-Education video

From TED Education series, Jun 26, 2012: Some people take aspirin or ibuprofen to treat everyday aches and pains, but how exactly do the different classes of pain relievers work? Learn about the basic physiology of how humans experience pain, and the mechanics of the medicines we've invented to block or circumvent that discomfort.



Lesson by George Zaidan, animated by Augenblick Studios.

Warning: Your reusable grocery bags can become contaminated with bacteria

97% of shoppers admit they never wash their reusable grocery bags. Dr. Susan Rehm from Cleveland Clinic talks about avoiding illness from contaminated grocery bags:



Another video: Viruses and Bacteria In Reusable Grocery Bags, from a local TV station, KOBITV:



Comments from Twitter:

SwoodLady @SwoodLady: Always something! RT @DrVes: Warning: Your reusable grocery bags can become contaminated with bacteria goo.gl/fb/sDOMs

Sherpaa's take on health insurance: 24/7 phone/email access to doctors, no need for clinic visit 70% of the time

From CBS News:

Dr. Jay Parkinson is trying to change healthcare business with Sherpaa. The company gives 24/7 phone and email access to a group of doctors in New York City. "You can call or email and 70 percent of the time," Parkinson said. "We will solve that problem over email or on the phone."

For example, if you've suffered a nasty cut, you snap a picture, email it to Sherpaa, and a doctor will respond immediately with instructions. If you need stitches, Sherpaa will schedule a same-day appointment with one of the 100 specialist they work with. That could cut out the expense, and long wait on average more than four hours of a visit to the emergency room. Parkinson said instead of getting charged $4,000, it could be a $1,000 charge.

Sherpaa doesn't replace health insurance, but instead works to weed out inefficiencies, while offering a kind of everyman's concierge service. Companies like Tumblr pay about $1,000 a year per employee.

References:

Doctor's company reimagines health care delivery - CBS News http://goo.gl/DLXUd

Spectrum of gluten-related disorders: consensus on new nomenclature and classification

A decade ago celiac disease was considered extremely rare outside Europe and, therefore, was almost completely ignored by health care professionals.

Celiac disease is the most common genetically based food intolerance (1% prevalence among general population) (JAMA 2014, http://buff.ly/1cJWgFy).

In only 10 years, key milestones have moved celiac disease from obscurity into the popular spotlight worldwide.

Now we are observing another interesting phenomenon that is generating great confusion among health care professionals. The number of individuals embracing a gluten-free diet (GFD) appears much higher than the projected number of celiac disease patients, fueling a global market of gluten-free products approaching $2.5 billion (US) in global sales in 2010.

This trend is supported by the notion that, along with celiac disease, other conditions related to the ingestion of gluten have emerged as health care concerns.

This review summarized the current knowledge about the 3 main forms of gluten reactions:

- allergic (wheat allergy)
- autoimmune (celiac disease, dermatitis herpetiformis and gluten ataxia)
- possibly immune-mediated (gluten sensitivity) ("non-celiac gluten sensitivity" or NCGS)

New nomenclature and classifications are proposed (see the figures below).



Key figures:

New nomenclature and classification of gluten-related disorders - http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/10/13/figure/F1

Algorithm for the differential diagnosis of gluten-related disorders, including celiac disease, gluten sensitivity and wheat allergy - http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/10/13/figure/F4

3 million Americans are living with celiac disease

Celiac disease, an immune system reaction to gluten in the diet, is four times as common today as it was 50 years ago. Lack of awareness of celiac could be contributing to a delay of up to 11 years in diagnosis of adults in North America (http://goo.gl/sy778).

This is an informative and beautifully designed video by the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center. It looks like an infographic made into video - have a look:



New classification is being proposed for gluten-related disorders: celiac disease; dermatitis herpetiformis; gluten ataxia; wheat allergy; gluten sensitivity. WSJ, 2012.

Recent studies support the existence of the new condition nonceliac gluten sensitivity which is defined as symptoms with negative celiac antibodies and biopsy (http://goo.gl/57IlB).

References:

Spectrum of gluten-related disorders: consensus on new nomenclature and classification. Anna Sapone et al. BMC Medicine 2012, 10:13 doi:10.1186/1741-7015-10-13.
Image source: Colon (anatomy), Wikipedia, public domain.
Disclaimer: I am an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at University of Chicago.
Non-coeliac gluten sensitivity | BMJ http://bit.ly/SlOTNO

Comments from Twitter:

Karen Price @brookmanknight: reflects well what we see in clinical practice, though haven't seen or dx'd too much derm herpetiformis.