Are you over weight? Check it for yourself...

Are you over weight?
Are you putting up more fat?
Is your new year's resolution is to loose some weight?
Wondering how much weight you should loose?

For this purpose, Body Mass Index (BMI) is used. It checks whether an individual has appropriate weight for height.

The formula is; BMI = Weight in kg/ Height in meteres²

I have done the hard part & wrote the below JavaScript calculator to do it. Before proceeding any further, shall we do some calculations? Use the below BMI calculator to calculate your BMI.

BMI value is independent of age & sex. So all age groups & both males & females can use it to assess their health risks & it indicates body fatness. Health risks increase at both ends of the spectrum, especially at higher end. The WHO classification is used in this calculator. There is an ongoing debate, whether to have different cut-off points for different ethnic groups, specially Asians, but still the results are inconclusive.
BMI itself is not a diagnostic tool. If your BMI is higher than 24.99, you have a higher tendency to have health risks associated with obesity. So in that case a doctor needs to check up whether you really have any health risks & to check whether you should lose weight.

Read further on BMI:
Wikipedia: Body mass index
CDC: About BMI for Adults

Read further on, Controlling Your Weight


Notice:

Above BMI calculator was written by me. I'm not a pro in Javascript. If you find any bugs, please fell free to bring it to my notice. This have been tweaked to run on Firefox 2. It had been tested on IE 6. both on MS Windows. If you find any problems in using it on any other browser or platform, please put a comment with the problem you have noticed, and a method to contact you, to get further details if I need to. Thank you.

Pregnancy Due Date Calculator

Pregnancy Due Date Calculator or Expected delivery Date Calculator can be used calculate the approximate delivery date in a pregnant lady. This uses a standard calculation method, where it is considered that the period from last menstrual period to date of the deliery of the baby is a constant. This period can slightly vary in a small percentage of the women population. This only gives a approximate date & this date can vary due to various reasons.
For this calculator to be used, the woman should have regular menstrual periods.
The date that is entered is first date of the last menstrual period.

For the design of the above Calendar, Tom Duffy's Create an Object-Oriented JavaScript Calendar Using the Façade Design Pattern was used. Thanks Tom!

Be a Hero...

Being a hero is not something that can be achieved very easily.
But ofcourse I took a bold step today...
Yeah, became a volunteer blood donator. I always wanted to donate blood, but couldn't take that inaugural step.
Yesterday was the (14th of June) World Blood donor Day. So there is a special campaign going on in whole of Sri Lankan government hospitals to mark the event.
The Blood Donor system is a well functioning system in Sri Lanka where volunteer blood donors donate blood at regular intervals of four months. Every donor is registered & details of their illnesses, especially AIDS & Hepatitis B are tasted for in the donated blood & healthy donors are encouraged to donor regularly.
The aim of the National Blood Transfusion Service of Sri Lanka is to have all needed blood collected from volunteer donors.
At present patients undergoing routine surgeries are encouraged to get someone to volunteer to donate blood. This can be eliminated in the future. In Teaching Hospital - Kurunegala, where the National Thalassaemia Center is situated, so many units of blood are needed daily to be transfused to Thalassaemic children. All thee are collected from volunteer donors.
I am very happy to be able to be a donor & 'Blood saves lives...'

Also visit:

• WHO : World Blood Donor Day
• Official World Blood Donor Day website

Tale of the Two Rods

Have you noticed the symbols used in relation to medicine?

Which of these is it?
< >

Actually the medical professionals also have been confused in the use of these two symbols.The staff entwining a single serpent –believed to be a rat snake species- is known as Rod of Asclepius.

Asclepius was the god of medicine & healing in the Greek mythology. He was the son of Coronis -a mortal- & Apollo -a Greek god-, brought up by Chiron -a centaur-, who thought him all his skills in Medicine. Zeus killed him with a thunder bolt. Many reasons are speculated for this killing, one reason being acceptance of money in return for resurrection. These have to be discussed separately.
Then realizing his importance Zeus made him immortal & placed in the sky as the Ophiuchus among the stars.

The other one is Caduceus of Hermes or Kerykeion of Mercury. It depicts a staff with wings with two snakes wrapped around it. Hermes is the Greek god of boundaries, of travelers, shepherds and cowherds, of orators, literature and poets, of athletics, of weights and measures and invention, of commerce in general, of the cunning of thieves, and the messenger from the gods to humans. Mercury is the Latin god of trade, profit and commerce.

Thus Rod of Asclepius is more relevant to be used as a symbol of Medicine rather the Caduceus or Kerykeion which is more connected with commerce. But Hermes also is connected with alchemy in the form of hermetic spells, which is a precursor of medicine

< Logo of British medical association



Logo of World Health Organisation >

Wash your hands....

While we were attending to inducing anesthesia for the next patient, our Consultant Surgeon - Dr R D Yapa- popped a question to us as usual.
"Who discovered Antisepsis?". Chandaná was quick to answer "Joseph Lister...". We nodded in agreement. "No.. It's Semmelweis" & we've never heard of a 'Semmelweis' until now.

That's how I found about an ugly chapter in "The Art of Medicine".

Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (July 1, 1818 - August 13, 1865), was a Hungarian doctor who practiced under Klein, Professor of Obstetrics at Lying-in Hospial, Vienna.

He noticed that,

• the neonatal death rate due to Puerperal fever (childbirth fever) was 13% in his unit compared to 2% in the other unit in the same hospital
• his unit was managed by doctors & medical students & the other unit was managed by midwives
• his colleague Jakob Kolletschka died of similar symptoms after he cut his finger accidentally during a post mortem.
• women admitted with "street-births" (who had delivered in the streets) had lower fever rates compared to his unit's
• student doctors attended to autopsies & then to women in delivery

With these observations in 1847, he introduced a new rule that everybody must wash their hands with chlorinated lime before examining patients & later on added the instruments also to be washed. Death rate felt immediately to 2% which was comparable to the other ward.
The ugly chapter starts here. Semmelweis was not keen to report his findings to his superiors & was eventually dismeissed from his post by Prof. Klien. He returned to Hungary in 1850 & worked in St. Rochus Hospital in Pest.
He published his work in a book in 1861, "The aetiology, understanding and prevention of childbed fever" (Die Ätiologie, der Begriff und die Prophylaxis des Kindbettfiebers). It was accepted by Hungarian government, even though it was widely criticised by German speaking doctors in Vienna. Even Viennese Medical Journal editorial reminded its readers "It was time to stop the nonsense about the chlorine hand wash".
He suffered a nervous breakdown and was admitted to a insane assylum & died 2 weeks later.
Cause of his death is speculated to be due to infection he received from a wound during autopsy. But the real cause was found to be something else. He had become violent while in the assylum & was beaten by assylum personnel. He died due to injuries received, in a fortnight.
Only in 1867 Joseph Lister introduced Carbolic Acid spray for asepsis. The scientific growth in asepsis had been halted for 20 years.

I remembered, during a class in Microbiology when I was a medical student, the lecturer told, "Wash your hands, that's the single most important action to prevent infections"

Further readings:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
• http://general-anaesthesia.com/images/ignaz-semmelweis.html
• http://www.np.edu.sg/~dept-bio/ssm/news/apr_jun99/ignaz.htm
• http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blantisceptics.htm
• http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi622.htm