Elevator Humor

The Great Indian Tea Story

Alcohol hinders having a baby through IVF, couples warned

Couples who share a bottle of wine a week reduce their chances of having a baby through IVF by more than a quarter, according to a study by American fertility specialists.

Research into alcohol consumption among couples being treated at a fertility clinic found fewer successful pregnancies when the women drank several glasses of wine a week, or the man had a daily beer.

Doctors at Harvard medical school, in Boston, asked 2,574 couples about their drinking habits shortly before they embarked on a course of IVF treatment.

A little over half of the women (56%) and a third of the men had less than one alcoholic drink a week, while 4% of women and 5% of men consumed at least one drink every day.

Dr Brooke Rossi, who led the study, said men and women who each drank six units of alcohol a week each or more "significantly reduced their likelihood of pregnancy".

At these levels of consumption, women were 18% less likely to have a successful IVF baby, while men reduced their chances of fatherhood by 14%.

The effects were particularly strong for women who drank white wine and men who preferred drinking beer, Rossi told the American Society of Reproductive Medicine annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia last month.

"In general, women are told they should stop drinking when they are trying to achieve pregnancy," Rossi said. The men and women who took part in the study had average ages of 37 and 34 respectively. They were all from the Boston area and completed questionnaires about their drinking habits between 1994 and 2003.

Tony Rutherford, chairman of the British Fertility Society, said guidelines from the society and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) advise women to stop drinking completely throughout their pregnancy. "The link between alcohol and conception is an area where the evidence is not clear-cut. It may well be that couples who are already subfertile are more affected by alcohol that those who are perfectly fertile," he said

"If you are going to have IVF, my recommendation would be that it makes sense to avoid alcohol all together, from three months beforehand."

A previous study, published in the British Medical Journal by Tina Jensen at the National University hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark, found that women were less likely to conceive if they drank moderately.

But other studies have found that alcohol had little effect on the time it took women to conceive.

Rutherford added: "This is further evidence to suggest that alcohol does have an impact and that those women who try for a baby should think about their lifestyle choices.

"Eggs and sperm take at least three months to develop so women have got to stop smoking, reduce alcohol consumption or, if you are overweight, correct that weight, that far ahead if you want to maximise your chances of conception."

Little Mohamed

Little Mohamed entered his classroom in France.
- What is your name? asked the teacher.
- Muhammad.... answered the kid.
- Here we are in France, there is no Mohamed. From now on your name will be
Jean-Francois, replied the teacher.
In the evening, Mohamed returned home.


- How was your day, Mohamed? asked his mother.
- My name is not Mohamed, I am in France and my name is Jean-François.
- Ah, are you ashamed of your name, are you trying to disown your parents,
your heritage, your religion? Shame on you .. and she beat him.
Then she called the father and he too beat him savagely.


The next day Mohamed returned to school. When the teacher saw him with all
the bruises she asked:
- What happened my little Jean-François..
- Well Miss, just two hours after becoming French I was attacked by two
Arabs!

Celine Dion determined to try IVF again

Celine Dion is "determined" to continue with in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment after learning she is not pregnant after all.The Canadian superstar, 41, confirmed she was expecting her second child with husband Rene Angelil in August (09) amid reports she was carrying an embryo that had been frozen in liquid nitrogen for the past eight years.

The couple had embryos frozen for in-vitro fertilization while trying to conceive her first child, Rene-Charles, now eight.Dion had embryos implanted in her womb in August (09) and again in October (09), but both attempts proved to be unsuccessful.

Reports Dion was no longer pregnant broke on Wednesday (11Nov09), but the sad news has not put the My Heart Will Go On singer off trying for another baby. Angelil, 67, tells Canadian newspaper Journal de Montreal, "Dr. Zev Rosenwaks believed that the procedure/pregnancy took, but that wasn't the case. We found out some days later. We were shocked...

"We are living the reality of the majority of couples who have to use (IVF). The process can be long and arduous. But today, we are full of confidence. Celine is more determined than ever... You know Celine. She doesn't let go."Angelil admits his famous wife has been through so much in her bid to fall pregnant again, but the couple is not deterred and will travel to New York again to undergo further IVF treatment.

He adds, "I admire all the women who go through such a tough process. Since April, she has undergone numerous examinations, multiple hormone injections and blood tests. Celine and I didn't get discouraged... we put our faith in life and in the stars."

Pakistan Today

Doctors embrace social networking

In the waiting room, the patient's family members circled a Blackberry. About every 15 minutes, Dr. Carlos Wolf of Miami Plastic Surgery gave them a few keystrokes of information about how the patient was doing.

``M is asleep,'' one of Wolf's nurses typed at 9:13 a.m. on June 3. ``We will start surgery soon.''

Less than an hour later, the nose job was complete.

``Beautiful,'' the nurse typed. ``She's going to love it.''

Twitter, Facebook and YouTube aren't just for entertainment anymore. Wolf and doctors around South Florida and the rest of the country are using the social networking tools to bring patients' families and the general public into operating rooms, sometimes sharing step-by-step medical procedures. They favor the real-time updates and videos as a way to reduce the fear factor of surgeries and educate people about the realities of certain procedures, especially new ones.

Earlier this year, surgeons at a Detroit hospital used Twitter to report the blow-by-blow steps of an operation to remove a kidney tumor. In any given month at JFK Medical Center in Atlantis, Dr. Beth-Ann Lesnikoski likes to use Twitter as an educational tool during surgeries to treat breast cancer. Last month, anyone with Internet access could watch live as Dr. Harlan Selesnick repaired a knee ligament at Doctors Hospital in Coral Gables, courtesy of the Baptist Health South Florida website, which posts webcasts of surgeries on a regular basis.

Some physicians, such as Dr. Camil Sader, a South Florida surgeon, have gone so far as to create their own iPhone apps.

BEDSIDE MANNERS

Wolf says he masks patients' identities by using just one of their initials, and the posts are vague enough that strangers may have trouble figuring out what kind of operation is being performed.

``At this point, it's really to make those patients, family and friends feel comfortable,'' says Wolf, who has been practicing for more than 20 years. ``We don't have a two-way conversation. The most important thing is for me to concentrate on what I'm doing.''

And if something were to go wrong in surgery? Wolf says he or a nurse would step out to speak with the family -- just like in the past.

``People think of social media as being cold,'' says a South Florida mother whose teenage daughter lay on the table when Wolf performed his first surgical tweeting session. ``Although I couldn't see it, I felt like I was close to my daughter. It's modern-day bedside manner.''

But not everyone is comfortable with physicians posting updates from the operating room -- especially when tweets and webcasts are available for public consumption.

``If it doesn't serve the patient, using it is unacceptable,'' says Dr. Erika Schwartz, an internist and medical director of the South Florida-based health insurance agency Cinergy Health. ``Sometimes, we all get carried away with the novelty of something.''

Still, Schwartz has a Facebook page and encourages patients to communicate with her via e-mail. She says she has cut some of her patients' healthcare costs by answering questions electronically instead of requiring office visits.

``The Internet is a great opportunity to create a better connection between doctors and patients,'' Schwartz says. ``I'm a big fan of social networking. It reaches people. There's a lot of information that can be shared. But it's got to be done with respect to the doctor-patient relationship.''

When a patient sent her a medical question using Facebook, Schwartz says, she made a point not to answer it there.

At JFK Medical Center in Palm Beach County, Lesnikoski's inaugural tweets were designed to contrast the effect of breast cancer on a woman in her 40s and a woman in her 90s; she was operating on one of each that July day. The only information she revealed about the patients was their age.

Before the surgery, Lesnikoski prepared a series of facts about breast cancer that could be tweeted to her 70-plus followers, along with basic information about the surgery, from her account, drbethjfk.

Lesnikoski, who has a background as a medical educator, says every surgery is a highly prescribed process, so there are traditional stopping points that can be used to tweet without interrupting the operating team's concentration. She says the hospital is now looking into tweeting during surgery as a way to keep families informed about a patient's progress.

``Surgeries can last from 45 minutes to 2 ½ hours,'' Lesnikoski says. ``These families will get updates every 20 minutes. The patients we've done our focus groups with have loved this concept.''

BRIEF IS BETTER

Dr. Donna Bilu Martin of South Beach Dermatology has been sharing skin facts and product information this year with her Twitter account followers. It's a compressed version of information she might send out in an e-mail -- but tweets don't clog up someone's inbox or get stuck in a spam filter.

``We can do this without being annoying,'' says the dermatologist, who tweets under the user name drbilumartin.

``The risk of melanoma -- the most deadly form of skin cancer -- increased by 75 percent in people who started using sunbeds regularly before age 30,'' she tweeted last month.

In another post, she shared information about a drug recently approved to hide wrinkles.

While Twitter identities are the latest tool in some doctors' medical bags, Dr. Camil Sader now considers his iPhone a medical necessity.

Sader, who specializes in laparoscopic surgery in Broward and Palm Beach counties, sometimes visits 180 patients at four hospitals in a single week. Tracking which patients he saw, their prognosis and other details about their care had become a paperwork nightmare.

When Sader couldn't find a simple and secure database program, he created one. It's an iPhone app called ``Dr. Rounds'' and it debuted in July. The information now stored in it can be formatted into an e-mail and be sent to his office manager for billing. Or it can be sent to other physicians watching over Sader's patients.

``It makes all the difference. At the end of the week, I press a few buttons and I get a report of what I did rather than shuffle through seven to 12 pieces of paper to see `How many times did I see Mr. Smith?'' '' Sader says.

BY NIRVI SHAH