Did I stir up a hornet’s nest when I tried to examine the benefits and harms of mammography? I’m glad I did. I might have been less than generous in my remarks about mammography, but that does not diminish my unqualified admiration of those who believe that it works. I am happy that some of …
Screening for breast Cancer
Recently, I was part of a team that was caring for a woman with breast cancer. “Would I have fared better had I undergone mammography when I turned 50?”, she asked me. She is right because a neighbouring medical school is offering mammography on wheels—bringing technology to the doorsteps of rural women who cannot access …
Vive La Difference!
Worldwide, women have shaped medical education, healthcare, and research. They now make up half of all medical schools— at MGIMS, in a dozen batches (86, 87, 90-94, 98-99, 2001, 2011 and 2014) girls outnumbered boys. They have led the institute, the department, and the units. They have also published papers that have changed the face …
What should Siddhartha Mukherjee do to earn a promotion?
I chanced to read Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee’s profile on Simon and Schuster website this evening. “Siddhartha Mukherjee is a cancer physician and researcher. He is the author of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction. Mukherjee is an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia …
Mrs Behere
Mrs Mani Behere—passed away today evening at her home in Sevagram. For over a decade, she had worked in our department of Psychiatry as a faculty. A kind-hearted woman—always sporting a genuine smile on her face, and exuding warmth and love—she fought a long battle with metastatic breast cancer and endured her illness with fortitude. …
Information and Communication technology in Medicine
My talk in Pune…
Naushadnama
Last week, I re-discovered the golden era of Hindi film music. I picked up a book that took me to an era when the rhythm was the king. I read the entire book—cover to cover— and learnt a great deal about Naushad, the last Mughal Musician and his contemporaries: C Ramchandra, Anil Biswas, Shankar-Jaikishan, Kalyanji-Anandji, …
Cricket records have a very short half life!
How long do the records in International Cricket last? And how quickly do they tumble? Today, at Auckland, Martin Guptill’s 19-ball record for fastest New Zealand fifty lasted barely for 20 minutes. He got out in the seventh over; in came Colin Munro, and he began to treat Sri Lankan bowlers with a ferocity that …
Dr (Mrs) Lata Patil
Dr (Mrs) Lata Patil —Samir Patil’s (MGIMS Class of 1993) mother—died this morning of metastatic cancer in a private facility at Nagpur after fighting malignancy for more than a year. She was 71. She is survived by her husband, Dr.SM Patil—the well-known physician and two children- both doctors. Dr (Mrs) Lata Patil taught me Medicine …
Dr (Mrs) Savita Borle
Dr (Mrs) Savita Borle passed away this afternoon after enduring a stormy illness. She was 53. Detected to have metastatic thyroid cancer a few months back, Mrs Borle faced her advanced cancer with remarkable poise and indomitable stoic. A dental surgeon by profession, she had been a faculty in Dental Surgery at MGIMS since the …