PurposeTreatment of malignant and nonmalignant hematologic diseases with
hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation (HSCT) was first described almost 60
years ago, and its use has expanded significantly over the last 20 years.
Whereas HSCT has become the standard of care for many patients in developed
countries, the significant economic investment, infrastructure, and health
care provider training that are required to provide such a service have
prohibited it from being widely adopted, particularly in developing
countries.MethodsOver the past two decades, however, efforts to bring HSCT to the developing
world have increased, and several institutions have described their efforts
to establish such a program. We aim to provide an overview of the current
challenges and applications of HSCT in developing countries as well as to
describe our experience in developing an HSCT program at Dhaka Medical
College and Hospital in Bangladesh via a partnership with health care
providers at Massachusetts General Hospital.Results and ConclusionWe discuss key steps of the program, including the formation of a
collaborative partnership, infrastructure development, human resource
capacity building, and financial considerations.
Despite all the devastating effects, wars have made some very significant positive impact in the development of cardiac surgery. Heart is an organ that cannot be stopped even for a minute, there by making it very difficult for the surgeons to operate. The wars of the Twentieth Century, particularly the two Great wars produced a significant number of patients with heart injury to reach surgeons operating tables. This gave the surgeons a unique opportunity to study, operate, practice and research cardiac surgical patients. Notable names including Wilfred Bigelow, Walton Lillehei, John Gibbon, Christian Cabrol, Vasilii Kolessov and Alexander Vishnevsky all were world war veterans and utilized their wartime experience later on in the development of cardiac surgery. Had there not been the two great wars, the development of cardiac surgery would have been delayed probably by years. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/cardio.v4i2.10463 Cardiovasc. j. 2012; 4(2): 174-178
Abstracts
Background: Oral melphalan, prednisone and Thalidomide (MPT) has been tested and proved efficacy in multiple myeloma (MM).
Results: The overall response rate (ORR) was 87.5% (n=14); complete response (CR) rate 50% (n=8), partial response (PR) rate 31.25% (n=5), minimal response (MR) rate 6.25% (n=1) and no response (NR) was 12.50% (n=2) of patients. During MPT therapy, MM patients noticed abdominal discomfort in 31.11% (n=14), insomnia in 17.78% (n=8), constipation in 13.33% (n=6), numbness/ peripheral neuropathy in 13.33% (n=6) and developed infection in
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