Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from January, 2009

As we rush through life!

In Washington, DC, at a Metro Station, on a cold January morning in 2007, this man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes.  During that time, approximately 2,000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. About 3 minutes: The violinist received his first dollar.  A woman threw money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk. At 6 minutes: A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again. At 45 minutes: The musician played continuously.  Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while.  About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace.  The man collected a total of $32.  After 1 hour: He finished playing and silence took over.  No one noticed and no one applauded.  There was no recognition at all. No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world.  He played one of the most intricate pieces eve

Blood Transfusion and Hepatitis B....Concluded

The articles related to blood transfusion and hepatitis B infection have been published in three installments earlier and now being concluded. Any one interested to get any such article written as this may write to kamalkali1962@yahoo.com . A critical evaluation the laboratory tests that are available for testing blood donations for the presence of anti-HBc. Among anti-HBc assays there are nine assays which are used by the laboratories across the world. These nine assays are divided into two groups; competitive and non-competitive. The competitive assays are Murex, AxSYM, PRISM® HBcore, PRISM® HBc, COBAS Immulite and the non-competitive assays are ADVIA and Ortho. The choice of assays depend upon the suitability of its use varies from one medical community to other and the cost factors matter too. However, in case blood transfusion, with its social objectives in mind, most of the developed and developing nations opt for those assays which are cost effective and dependab

Blood transfusion and Hepatitis B part -III

Continued from Part - I & II .......... In transfusion medicine safety of blood products is a major concern. The hepatitis B virus getting transmitted through blood transfusion is far more than the hepatitis C virus it is around 1:60000 vs 1:103000 (Schreiber, Busch, Kleinman, Korelitz. 1996). This is despite of availability of assay for screening quite sensitive to detect hepatitis B virus surface antigen or HBsAg. It is very common incidence of hepatitis B infection in post-transfusion cases (Saraswat, Banerjee, Chaudhury, Mahant,Khandekar, Gupta, et al.1996). Common explanations what offered for incorrect negative findings or results with the common assays are due to circulation of viral protein in low level. This can escape detection and screening of HBsAg mutant`s infection by assays in blood donors. Obviously this cause hazards in post blood transfusion (Jongerius, Wester, Cuypers, van Oostendorp,Lelie, van der Poel, et al.1998). Besides this other reason is cited