Barbara Walters, US TV Anchor, to Undergo Heart Surgery to Replace a "Faulty Valve" - Sounds Like Aortic Stenosis

Walters announced that she will undergo surgery to replace a "faulty" heart valve later this week.

"You know how I always say to you how healthy I am. ... I've never missed a day's work," she began. "Later this week, I'm going to have surgery to replace one faulty heart valve."

From her description, the valve defect sounds like aortic stenosis. For a variety of reasons, mitral stenosis is a less likely possibility in the differential diagnosis.

Best wishes for successful surgery and speedy recovery!

References:
Barbara Walters to Undergo Heart Surgery. ABC.

Barbara Walters' Heart Surgery. WebMD.

Room-temperature plasma gases may replace hand disinfectants

From the NYTimes:

Instead of scrubbing, the workers would put their hands into a small box that bathes them with plasma — the same sort of luminous gas found in neon signs, fluorescent tubes and TV displays.

This plasma, though, is at room temperature and pressure, and is engineered to kills bacteria, including the drug-resistant supergerm MRSA.

References:
Hospital-Clean Hands, Without All the Scrubbing

Image source: Neon sign. Wikipedia, Rolf Süssbrich, Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License.

Microsoft software to "replace" radiologists - recognizes organs and structures in medical images

Microsoft Research, Mar 8, 2011: InnerEye focuses on the analysis of patient scans using machine learning techniques for automatic detection and segmentation of healthy anatomy as well as anomalies:



Antonio Criminisi is the the researcher shown in the video above.

The InnerEye research project focuses on the automatic analysis of patients' scans by using machine learning techniques for:

- Automatic detection and segmentation of healthy anatomy, as well as anomalies

- Semantic navigation and visualization

Microsoft Research methods aim to combine medical expertise and modern machine learning theory in the design of tools for computer-aided diagnosis, personalized medicine, and natural user interfaces for surgical intervention.

The InnerEye project has a host of famous collaborators, including Johns Hopkins Medical Institute, The University of Oxford, Cornell Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Washington, Kings College London, and Cambridge University Hospitals.

High-Performance Cancer Screening: See how a high--performance, 3-D rendering engine can be transformed into a real-world, life-saving medical application:



References:

Medical Image Analysis

InnerEye: Visual Recognition in the Hospital
A Search Engine for the Human Body. Technology Review.

Comments from Twitter:

@hrana (Hisham Rana, MD): No thanks. RT @DrVes: Microsoft software to "replace" radiologists - recognizes organs and structures in medical images http://goo.gl/HwNNx

@doctorwhitecoat (Vamsi Balakrishnan): Definitely not a replacement... but cool tool in development.

@DrVes: Well, of course it's not a replacement... :) Just as "Watson" supercomputer won't replace PCPs/specialists...

@doctorwhitecoat (Vamsi Balakrishnan): Watson can't replace 3rd year Med students either; it can't do scutwork...:)

@ILoveOrthopedix (Orthopaedic Resident): MS Radiology! very interesting - the ECG machines recognise patterns & give diagnoses, but all the doctors make their own diagnosis.

@drcrosby (Bradley Dick): Reminiscent of Robin Cook's "Brain"?! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_(novel))