Cardiology

I volunteered as usual on the cardiology ward this evening and met a very interesting man who had just arrived and began talking to me. He told me about his two sons who are both very bright, with science related careers. One of whom moved to Australia several years ago and is a specialist biomedical engineer and has made millions!

I'm quite nervous about the upcoming exams but hopefully I will do well and I hope that you all get the grades you're hoping to get too!

I just read an interesting heart related article about the repairing of scar tissue caused by heart attacks using gene therapy and thought I would post a link here incase anyone wanted to have a quick read! Who knows, perhaps these findings could be significant! (Or on the other hand insignificant..) We shall see.

Biomedical engineering

I attended a lecture on biomedical engineering after school today given by a lecturer on the course at Kings College London. The course is relatively new at Kings and the entry requirements are AAA - including physics and maths.

 I did not know what to expect but my reasons for going were that I knew it would be interesting in terms of science and technology and such fields are likely to play an increasingly important role in the future! I personally am not considering biomedical engineering but know it could be an alternative to medicine if I were to fail to get into medicine more than once..

The course involves four main things:

1.) Computation eg computers which can read scans for tumours based on the shade and resolution of the scan

2.) Software and modelling eg programmes with the ability to track excitation waves in the heart and consequently makes improvements on things such as heart fibrillation and why a defibrillator works

3.) Imaging eg 3D images of areas with a higher metabolic rate than usual likely to be tumours dividing

4.) Robotics and devices eg devices which are able to give doses of radiation to pin point accuracy

All of the areas sound extremely interesting and considering the advancements made in the past 50 years who knows what will be developed in the next 50 years time!? Hopefully a time when we are practicing medicine..

Malaria

A very short post on an article I read today having heard the nurses at volunteering speaking about it. The article describes research showing new evidence that the the number of parasites resistant to "front line" malarial drugs is increasing.

Resistant strains of the parasite to drugs derived from the Artemisia annua plant have recently been found 500 miles away from the original sites and more data is still being collected.

If resistance continues to rise this would be a major set back and the discovery of a vaccination against the disease would take much longer.

The disease killed more than 665,000 people in 2010 - equivalent to more than 1 every minute.

I may add to this post in greater depth if I find out more, if anyone knows or has read anything related feel free to comment!

I hope everyones revision is going well!