Postgraduate medical journal
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Historical Article
A Journey of Innovation: 40 years of Pioneering Medical Education at the Aga Khan University Medical College in Karachi, Pakistan.
This article presents an overview of Aga Khan University's (AKU) pioneering medical education initiatives over the past 40 years, exploring its impact on healthcare in the region and its commitment to advancing medical education and research in the developing world. Established in 1983 as the first private university in Pakistan, AKU has evolved into a global institution with a focus on improving healthcare standards and addressing healthcare needs in the developing world. The article also discusses the undergraduate and postgraduate medical education programs at AKU Medical College, Pakistan, highlighting their unique features and pioneering approaches to medical education. The institution's journey highlights its ability to adapt to the evolving healthcare landscape while maintaining a focus on quality and excellence, offering a model for other institutions striving to meet healthcare needs in low- and middle-income countries.
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Review
The diagnostic, therapeutic, and ethical impact of artificial intelligence in modern medicine.
In the evolution of modern medicine, artificial intelligence (AI) has been proven to provide an integral aspect of revolutionizing clinical diagnosis, drug discovery, and patient care. With the potential to scrutinize colossal amounts of medical data, radiological and histological images, and genomic data in healthcare institutions, AI-powered systems can recognize, determine, and associate patterns and provide impactful insights that would be strenuous and challenging for clinicians to detect during their daily clinical practice. The outcome of AI-mediated search offers more accurate, personalized patient diagnoses, guides in research for new drug therapies, and provides a more effective multidisciplinary treatment plan that can be implemented for patients with chronic diseases. ⋯ AI-powered algorithms can now accurately and sensitively identify cancer cells and other lesions in medical images with greater accuracy and sensitivity. This allows for earlier diagnosis and treatment, which can significantly impact patient outcomes. This review provides a comprehensive insight into diagnostic, therapeutic, and ethical issues with the advent of AI in modern medicine.
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Trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO) is a common intestinal metabolite. The Choline in the nutrient forms TMA under the action of the gut microbiota, which passes through the liver and eventually forms TMAO. ⋯ As a two-way communication axis connecting the central nervous system and the gastrointestinal tract, the brain-gut axis provides the structural basis for TMAO to play its role. This article will review the correlation between TMA/TMAO and neurological diseases in order to find new directions and new targets for the treatment of neurological diseases.
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Providing family updates is a common clinical task for medical trainees and practitioners working in hospital settings. Good clinical communication skills are essential in clinical care as it is associated with improved patient satisfaction, understanding of condition, treatment adherence, and better overall clinical outcomes. Moreover, poor communications are often the source of medical complaints. ⋯ In fact, in Asian populations with more collectivistic cultures, families are generally highly involved in patient care and decision-making. Therefore, effective clinical communications and regular provision of family updates are essential to build therapeutic rapport, facilitate familial involvement in patient care, and also provide a more holistic understanding of the patient's background and psychosocial set-up. In this article, we herein describe a seven-step understand the clinical context, gather perspectives, deliver medical information, address questions, concerns and expectations, provide tentative plans, demonstrate empathy, postcommunication reflections model as a practical guide for medical trainees and practitioners in provision of structured and effective family updates in their clinical practice.