Docnotes

From the CDC

Encouraging news from the CDC:  "Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) was the leading cause of bacterial meningitis and a major cause of other serious invasive diseases among children aged <5 years in the United States before Hib conjugate vaccines became available in 1988."    

 "In 1991, all infants starting at age 2 months were recommended to receive Hib conjugate vaccines; by 1996, incidence of Hib invasive disease (i.e., illness clinically compatible with invasive disease, such as meningitis or sepsis, with isolation of the bacterium from a normally sterile site) among children aged <5 years had declined by >99%."     Hib invasive disease remains at these low levels, except in communities with unusually low vaccination rates.

 

National Library of Medicine has

National Library of Medicine has published information on the linkout program.  LinkOut is a feature of Entrez that is designed to provide users with links from PubMed and other Entrez databases to a wide variety of relevant web-accessible online resources, including full-text publications, biological databases, consumer health information, research tools, and more.  This is one of a number of efforts to tie medical information resoures together.

Another recent attempt to build unity in health information resources is HEAL.   Health Education Assets Library (HEAL) was started with funding of the National Science Foundation and in collaboration with National Library of Medicine.  It's a cool idea.  Link medical education resources together.  I create class materials .. share them through HEAL with you .. and you don't have to re-invent the wheel.  They have defined a core set of decriptors. and they invision that we will all share information about the resources in XML.  I think I'll work on making fpclassroom.org compliant with their site .. so that we can share data with them.  XML and "web services" will change the way that most people think about websites.  No kidding.

bmj.com Responses for Charatan, 324 (7344) 994

... and now we hear from nocirc in this compelling response to the NEJM paper.   This issue won't die any time soon ... another paper on parental education just off the presses too.  This one seems odd to me too.  Parents didn't change their minds about circumcision even after education.  But the education that they received was the AAP's Circumcision Information for Parents. This is anything BUT an even-handed document -- so I'm not surprised that parents still chose to circ.  Trouble is .. there really aren't any good even-handed documents out there.  The NOCIRC stuff is a little too far off in left field "children can go into a coma when they are circumcised."  and the AAP stuff (among others) is too pro-circ.

bmj.com Abstracts: Maxwell et al. 324 (7344): 1031

In this paper:  "Clinical screening for developmental dysplasia of the hip in Northern Ireland." The authors say we're not screening well.