Medicine

Toys~4~Tots!

PIG (Pediatric Interest Group) is sponsoring a toy drive.?á Drop off boxes are in Lecture Halls A & B on the 1^st floor of the MEB. Last day to donate is Tuesday December 18th, so hurry!

In the News: Runny Nose or CSF Leak

Making the internet rounds is this story, of a Tucson Mom who had been leaking cerebral spinal fluid for four months before it was caught. Endoscopic surgery at the University of Arizona repaired the cracks in her sphenoid sinus and stopped the gushing.

Physician Assistant Degree Program Arrives at LSUHSC

This January, the LSU Health Sciences Center jumps on the health education bandwagon as it inaugurates a brand-new ARC-PA accredited physician assistant training program. LSUHSCÔÇÖs 29-month program of study in evidence-based medicine will instruct its students in patient examination, diagnosis, and treatment.

Dr. Charles L. Hudson first proposed the creation of a physicianÔÇÖs assistant position at a 1961 meeting of the American Medical Association (AMA) as a way to mitigate the decline in primary care providers. Ranked second in CNN Money MagazineÔÇÖs ÔÇ£Best Jobs in America 2010,ÔÇØ this careerÔÇÖs ÔÇ£average annual pay was $86,410 in 2010 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Federal labor officials projected a 30 percent growth rate in the occupation between 2010 and 2020.ÔÇØ

The John P. Isch?® Library would like to take this opportunity to welcome LSUHSCÔÇÖs 30 new students to the School of Allied Health Professionals! We look forward to introducing you to all our Library has to offer.

LSUHSC HOP Clinic Featured

Ahead of the Curve
The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program Progress Report

The LSUHSC HOP Clinic was featured as a case study in the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program Progress Report 2012(pgs 32-40). The Report is issued by the US Department of Health and Human Services – Health Resources and Services Administration – HIV/AIDS Programs.?á The many services offered by the Clinic and several faculty members are highlighted.

This Month in History: Dr. Rowena Spencer and Her Little Chickens

Despite the resemblance, Dr. Rowena Spencer explains, children are not tiny adults; indeed, ÔÇ£Children are like little chickens. They like to know their way around.ÔÇØ As one of the first women in the country to specialize in pediatric surgery as well as the first woman appointed to the surgical staff at the LSU Medical Center and the first female surgeon in the state of Louisiana, Dr. Spencer proved a wonderful asset to any hospital. Her bedside manner set her apart as a surgeon of unparalleled worth.

Dr. Spencer preferred to take a lighter approach to her smaller patientsÔÇöbeing a friend instead of a threat; as a 1960 Times-Picayune article describes, ÔÇ£She is not above bribing a youthful patient with a nickel or a piece of candy.ÔÇØ And when asked in a recent interview about the most satisfying part of her work, she answered, ÔÇ£Holding the babies. I love babies more that a mule can kick.ÔÇØ

A forerunner for females in the surgical arena, Dr. Spencer faced some adversity, though she did not appear to dwell on this issue. She persevered to become a respected member of the medical community at a point in history rife with tension over not only the presence of women in the medical field but also African-Americans. At Johns Hopkins University, where she earned her M.D. in 1947, Spencer was in good company. She studied under Dr. Alfred Blalock and his laboratory technician, Vivien Thomas. Thomas, an African-American with little formal education, played an integral role in helping save those suffering from ÔÇ£blue baby syndrome.ÔÇØ Another partner in this discovery was Helen Taussig, founder of the field of pediatric cardiology and first female president of the American Heart Association. The work of Blalock, Thomas, and Taussig on the heart is immortalized in a PBS production, ÔÇ£American Experience: Partners of the HeartÔÇØ(2002), and in a Hollywood production, Something the Lord Made (2004). Dr. Spencer would continue their work on infant patients, making a name for herself as an authority on conjoined twins.

Examples of her work include many articles such as: ÔÇ£Parasitic Conjoined Twins: External, Internal, and DetachedÔÇØ and ÔÇ£Congential Heart Defects in Conjoined Twins.ÔÇØ An autographed copy of her text, Conjoined Twins: Developmental Malformations and Clinical Implications, is available for checkout at the Library. Dr. Spencer has also had the honor of being featured in a publication entitled, Louisiana Women: Their Lives and Times. Her chapter, ÔÇ£A Study of Changing Gender Roles in Twentieth-Century Louisiana MedicineÔÇØ by Bambi L. Ray Cochran, appears alongside essays on Marie Therese Coincoin, Oretha Castle Haley, and many others in a fitting tribute to their contributions. Dr. Spencer recently celebrated her 90th birthday.

Glimpse of the Past is an ongoing project to promote the Louisiana Digital Library effort. This Month in History will present for your reading pleasure a closer look into a newspaper clipping of note from our Digital Collections and articles relating to the LSU Medical School.

Friday fun: games edition

Our ?áintrepid physical therapy students c/o 2014 are holding a health fair next month, and want to know what attendees (which would be all employees, faculty, and students of LSUHealth New Orleans) would like to learn from the event. Check out their quick survey and let them know what you want! The health fair is set for Wednesday Nov. 7th from?á10:00 AM-2:00 PM by the cafeteria, and rumor is they may have some cool Saints-related prizes for participants.

Now that the hard work is over, here’s some fun and games from Healthelinks for Kids, a project out of?áLSUHealth Shreveport.

Milk Matters for Kids:?áHelp Bo Vine the cow escape from the farm and make it to the great Calcium fair.

Big E’s Grossest Hits: He’s a rotten roll star, playing his germy music.

The Great Bully Roundup: ?áTest your bully smarts in this?á?áinteractive board game for one or two players. Be careful or you’ll land in Bully Corral.

Look, Mummy, lots of cavities!

A recent article published in the International Journal of Paleopathology discusses the dental problems of a 2,100 year old mummy.?á

The mummy, named the Redpath Ptolemaic Theban Male, underwent CT scans and it was discovered he had a large amount of cavities.?á At least one of these cavities caused a sinus infection which probably led to his untimely demise.

The CT also revealed that the man received treatment for his dental woes which would have caused him extreme pain.?á There were pieces of linen, most likely soaked with cedar oil, inside one of his cavities.

You can read about this story on LiveScience or take a look at the abstract for the paper from ScienceDirect.?á Unfortunately, LSUHSC-NO doesn’t have full text access to this journal, but you can request it from a library using ILLiad, our interlibrary loan service.

Friday Fun: Study maybe

Via Dr. Bertalan Mesk??’s ScienceRoll blog comes this inspired “Call me maybe”* parody by the University of Maryland School of Medicine 2015.

At 7:15 it’s fairly long for our limited attention span. To just watch the music, skip ahead to 2:08.

*Over 25? Check out the story behind the song?áCall me maybe via Wikipedia

Happy National Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Avast me hearties! In celebration of this wondrous event, hereÔÇÖs an amusing cartoon for your mid-afternoon enjoyment.

If youÔÇÖre interested in learning more about pirate surgeons, try searching for information on the ÔÇ£Father of Sea Surgery,ÔÇØ John Woodall, who authored The SurgeonÔÇÖs Mate. The British Journal of Surgery has a neat article on this very subject.

And for the sake of our other patrons, please try to keep your swashbuckling to a minimum in the Library.

This Month in History: Trading the Mrs. for an M.D.

In honor of those nursing students plowing through history papers this week, here is a little piece of LSU Health Sciences Center history on the role of women in medicine.

Though the word ÔÇ£invasionÔÇØ might connote a hostile takeover or an alien attack, for those who witnessed a new trend in medical student populations post-World War II, ÔÇ£invasionÔÇØ spoke to the influx of females in the medical fieldÔÇönot a case for either the armed forces or Special Agents Mulder and Scully, but certainly an opportunity for marked advances in modern science. This article from the New Orleans States (a newspaper subsumed by the Picayune in 1980) from September 1946 marks an important milestone in our institutionÔÇÖs history as twenty female students enrolled in their first-year of medical school at LSU, surpassing the thirteen of the previous year.

The reasoning behind this onslaught of female M.D. candidates seems to follow on the wake of the recent war: ÔÇ£There is no telling what would have happened to their dreams of a profession if the right man had been attending classes at college with them instead of fighting a war, most of them agreed.ÔÇØ While the availability of Mr. Right may have been postponed, the drive of these women to pursue a medical career (perhaps a less intuitive path according to the social norms of the late 1940s) cannot be denied. Citing the greater freedom and social mobility of the times in addition to the general indifference of their professors and male peers on the growing female presence in the classroom, these women transcend the ÔÇ£vague motivesÔÇØ of the ÔÇ£feminine vogue for wearing a doctorÔÇÖs insigniaÔÇØ to participate within our history.

Perhaps bolstered by the popular figure of Rosie the Riveter, a new class of professional care-givers is subjected to the rigors of a medical education and the horrors of the cadaver lab. One such empowered and notable woman pictured in this piece is Ms. Jean Persons, who would go on to become one of AlaskaÔÇÖs best known pioneer doctors and who published a memoir in 2007: From Dog Sleds to Float Planes: Alaskan Adventures in Medicine. You can read the glowing Amazon reviews here. In a time of tuberculosis and remote citizenship, Dr. Persons ÔÇ£was a petite single woman tackling a job most men would run from,ÔÇØ and so she stands as a measure for all those who follow, a prime example of not only female physicians, but of all LSU Medical School graduates.

Glimpse of the Past is an ongoing project to promote the Louisiana Digital Library effort. This Month in History will present for your reading pleasure a closer look into a newspaper clipping of note from our Digital Collections and articles relating to the LSU Medical School.

New Voting Resources for Academic Medicine Community

The AAMC has a new resource devoted to voting information for the Academic Medicine Community. Watch ?áAAMC President and CEO Darrell G. Kirch, M.D. discuss the importance of voting on?áTuesday, November 6, 2012 below.

Visit the site at?áhttps://www.aamc.org/initiatives/election/?áfor?áinformation for voters to register, request absentee ballots, and create district-specific sample ballots.?á The site includes links to candidate and party Web sites.?á Visitors also can connect with AAMC initiative pages that contain messaging and other resources on the critical issues of funding for graduate medical education and medical research.

CDC Grand Rounds: New Disease Detection

The Centers for Disease Control offers a monthly Public Health Grand Rounds webcast.?á The Tuesday, September 18th broadcast (12-1 pm CDT) is entitled “Explaining the Unexplained: Discovering New Diseases Using Advanced Detection Tools.“?á It is possible to receive continuing education contact hours for participating.

New Medical Student Blog

From the Association of?áAmerican?áMedical Colleges:

Aspiring Docs Blog Features Life of a First-Year Medical Student

The AAMCÔÇÖs Aspiring Docs program recently launched a blog featuring an inside look at the life of a first-year medical student attending Harvard Medical School.?á Aspiring Docs Diaries will be written by Devon Taylor, who received a full scholarship to Harvard Medical School after overcoming significant adversity, including growing up in poverty and dropping out of high school.?á He will blog about his experiences beginning with orientation through the end of his first year.?á The blog offers an inspiring story to help demystify the medical school process and encourage others from similar backgrounds to aspire to careers in medicine.?á To learn more about Taylor and read his posts, visit www.aspiringdocsdiaries.org.

Malarial Mosquito with Seussical Whimsy

During World War II, Theodore Geissel (better known as Dr. Seuss) joined the war effort doing what he did best, creating cartoons and educating. He was commissioned as a captain in the US Army. The Contagions blog discovered this image on the USDA Young Dipterists website and NPR picked the story up.?á This is the first page of a handbook for soldiers to help educate them on the prevention of malaria by avoiding mosquito bites…no partying with Ann for them!

Perhaps those of us in South Louisiana should be taking his advice 70 years later with West Nile outbreaks making the news.?á Of course the Centers for Disease Control have released a feature with some more modern advice.

Kinesio Tape at the Olympics

If you’ve been watching the Olympics, you’ve noticed the tape on various athletes. Mostly it seems to be a relatively new product, Kinesio Tape.?á NPR News wrote a story on its efficacy earlier this week. The news article linked to a 2012?ástudy in Sports Medicine and?á a 2008 article in Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy; both are?áavailable to LSUHSC Library patrons.

Full text?áaccess to the articles may only be available to LSUHSC faculty, staff & students. It can be accessed off-campus with a valid LSUHSC library barcode & PIN. You can find more information at our remote access webpage.