Medical treatment and its impact of health and life

Dear readers,
Wish you very happy New Year 2018 and thank you for your continuous support to Double Helical in the dissemination of knowledge and awareness about issues confronting the health and well-being of people and the challenges before the healthcare sector.
Double must appreciates your unstinted patronage, we have not only been able to regularly update you about the latest health news and expert views, but also fulfil our avowed commitment to honour and award the extraordinary contribution of the medical professionals in wiping the tears of the suffering humanity with their remarkable expertise and ceaseless research and development efforts..
Our cover story in this year end month is on Shocked Medical Practices. Today expectations from medical treatment had reached a scale, where death is considered to be the result of a mistake. While this may be true some of the time, in most cases it is not. Medical treatment and its impact of health and life, is a complex interaction of many factors, which cannot be attributable to one factor alone. We must revisit the time when doctors were revered and literally placed next to God!. From that time till now there have been many changes in the understanding of illnesses, medical practices, technology and thereby expectations of the medical profession.
As a matter of fact, intentionally no any doctor can show his/her negligence while treating his/her patients. But sometimes some mishaps occur in the course of medical treatment which does not call for any harsh punishment. It is essential to note that the protection of patient’s right should not be at the cost of professional integrity and autonomy. There is definitely a need for striking a delicate balance……
Medical negligence is an oft-quoted but much-abused term today. To begin with, it is important to know what constitutes medical negligence. In simple terms, the doctor owes certain duties to the patient who consults him for illness, any deficiency in this duty results in negligence.
The doctors need a basic knowledge of how medical negligence is adjudicated in courts of law to help them practice their profession without undue worry about facing litigation for alleged medical negligence. As a matter of fact, intentionally no any doctor can show his/her negligence while treating his/her patients. But sometimes some mishaps occur in the course of medical treatment which does not call for any harsh punishment. Such disputes must be solved amicably.
There is a general perception that healthcare is expensive for the simple reason that the common man does not budget for it. Sickness is never anticipated and is considered as a not-likely-to-happen event. Under the circumstances, the cost of treatment for major ailments appears deceptively high. Yet another reason for such a perception comes as government run community health centers or hospitals extend free healthcare services. We do not realize that free healthcare is actually not free. It comes from the tax payer’s money.”
As part of exclusive story we highlight the current trends of medical entrance test. National Eligibility –cum-Entrance Test (NEET) has come out following extensive churning to improve the quality of new entrant to medical profession. The efforts of MCI, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (Govt. of India) and Hon’ble Supreme Court is undoubtedly laudable to bring all the desirous candidates in our country under one ambit of NEET. Since NEET 2017 is a first experience but the lesson learnt from it would further help in improving the scope of NEET in identifying the good quality of students in medicine.
A story on Gastro- esophageal reflux (GER) is also an exclusive story which describes GER is a common but under-diagnosed condition in children. There is a low awareness about GER in children in India although the available data indicates that prevalence of GERD symptoms among Indian infants are almost the same as in Western infants. There are fundamental differences in the pathophysiology, clinical features, diagnostic evaluation and treatment in children and adults. Reflux is a physiological phenomenon occurring in every individual. Hence it is important to distinguish a benign and developmentally normal physiological event from a possible pathological GER. Most of neurologically normal children with GER have an excellent prognosis. Only children with ‘red flag ’signs require intervention.
Apart from this, there are many more interesting and insightful stories, based on intensive research and analysis. So, happy reading to all of you!

Warm regards,
Amresh K Tiwary,
Editor-in-Chief