Hey readers!
This week, in class, we looked at John Oliver's most recent episode about charter schools, broke down his argument, and are creating our rebuttals against his points. Apart from the experience being very entertaining, I also enjoyed it because I realized that when I listened to John Oliver, I often simply assumed he was always right because I love watching his show. I guess AP Seminar skills have to applied at all times... My guard will now be up at all times!
Anyways, this week in my research project, I reviewed a lot of sources about current errors in laboratory diagnostics and technology. I also talked to one of my relatives who is a pathologist in the Phoenix area, and she said that I could come tour the laboratory where she works sometime in the next 2 weeks, which is very exciting for my literature review. It has been really hard to find exactly what instruments/techniques hospitals and laboratories are currently using for tests, since they vary so much. However, by looking at what currently is being used, I can establish a criteria for precision, speed, and form for analyzing HemaDrop samples. Since HemaDrop must be at least as good as what is currently available to be viable.
Two sources that I investigated were very very in conversation with each other. They concerned the issue of hospital-acquired anemia (HAA). The relevance of HAA to microliter blood analysis is that HAA often occurs in very sick patients at the hospital, since they require lots of blood testing to diagnose and monitor their conditions. However, these two sources, one a response to another, provide contradicting explanations of the causes of HAA. I somehow got access to their personal, private, and heated text conversation! Here it is! The links to the articles are here (Hospital-acquired Anemia: The Contribution of Diagnostic Blood Loss by Dr. Van der Bom, et al.) and here (Impact of an Educational Intervention on the Frequency of Daily Blood Test Orders for Hospitalized Patients by Dr. Rajiv Thakkar, et al.).
This week, in class, we looked at John Oliver's most recent episode about charter schools, broke down his argument, and are creating our rebuttals against his points. Apart from the experience being very entertaining, I also enjoyed it because I realized that when I listened to John Oliver, I often simply assumed he was always right because I love watching his show. I guess AP Seminar skills have to applied at all times... My guard will now be up at all times!
Anyways, this week in my research project, I reviewed a lot of sources about current errors in laboratory diagnostics and technology. I also talked to one of my relatives who is a pathologist in the Phoenix area, and she said that I could come tour the laboratory where she works sometime in the next 2 weeks, which is very exciting for my literature review. It has been really hard to find exactly what instruments/techniques hospitals and laboratories are currently using for tests, since they vary so much. However, by looking at what currently is being used, I can establish a criteria for precision, speed, and form for analyzing HemaDrop samples. Since HemaDrop must be at least as good as what is currently available to be viable.
Two sources that I investigated were very very in conversation with each other. They concerned the issue of hospital-acquired anemia (HAA). The relevance of HAA to microliter blood analysis is that HAA often occurs in very sick patients at the hospital, since they require lots of blood testing to diagnose and monitor their conditions. However, these two sources, one a response to another, provide contradicting explanations of the causes of HAA. I somehow got access to their personal, private, and heated text conversation! Here it is! The links to the articles are here (Hospital-acquired Anemia: The Contribution of Diagnostic Blood Loss by Dr. Van der Bom, et al.) and here (Impact of an Educational Intervention on the Frequency of Daily Blood Test Orders for Hospitalized Patients by Dr. Rajiv Thakkar, et al.).
So it seems like these two contradicting sources agreed on the gap in the research -- HemaDrop! I think this conversation is really interesting because it describes the goals of all biomedical research: getting more information from less invasive procedures.
Hope you enjoyed the exclusive convo! I am very excited for this week as I will be hearing back from the pathologist, and I found a great source on analysis techniques.
Cheers,
YP
(673 -- including the text messages, which I wrote as well)
Looking good - the one thing I did not catch is who was talking, and which paper they authored each as their source of data. That would be very useful in order to be able to to dig deeper - I would like to see the papers with the actual graphs and numbers - such as hematocrits - measured as function to time/7 ml blood draws that they base their discussion on.
ReplyDeleteHi Dr. Herbots,
DeleteThat is an excellent point. I forgot to add the links to the papers in the post. I will edit that in now!
Thanks,
Yash
hihi! Wow Yash HOW DID YOU HAVE ACCESS TO THOSE SECRET CONVOS? Damn, your hacking skills must be on point? I really liked how you, I mean, er, the researchers, battled this out. They attacked each other's methods, but ended up agreeing on a solution that would combine both their conclusions. Interestingly enough, your paper seems to be that perfect solution? Weird. The fact that both these studies focused on different means to reduce HAA, but not finding a cohesive solution alone was really cool to see. Your research adequately fits that gap in the research being done clearly. This is kind of stretch but is there way you can prove HemaDrop would result in less HAA cases without being a conjecture of what you expect to happen due to the definition of HemaDrop itself? What are alternative methods of ensuring this will happen? I guess this is something you are going to introduce in your methods to prove how much less invasive HemaDrop is as a procedure, and putting it in the context of HAA was really necessary, so these two sources will probably be pretty fundamental to your argument? But, "HAA Squad" really? Like even the researchers are getting triggered? Please tell me they all did not mini dab after reaching a joint solution. :(
ReplyDeleteWord Count: 216
YASH, you BIG BOI BALLER!
ReplyDeleteYour sources, although opposing one another, when viewed in tandem, showed a really innovative solution to the problem of HAA, HEMADROP. I have to applaud you on finding such fundamental sources to your research question (well done ANNA!). I think your blog post did a very good job of showing the (literal) conversation between two sources and the nuances that each My question to you is have you found any reasons for why microliter blood analysis may not be as effective as conventional techniques? If you have, how does that information figure into your literature review? I feel like if you have such information, you can include it in your methodology as what not to do or something of that nature!
Swaggy V
(128 words)
My favorite part of the post is when one source says to the other "u did not just go full chicken v egg." I also wondered what you had to go through to produce that conversation. Did you use your mother's phone and then rename "Yash" to HAA Squad? If so, have you changed your name back to Yash in her phone? I need the details.
ReplyDeleteI like how the conversation shows the need for Hemadrop. As with Ved, my question is have you found any other alternative techniques for mitigating HAA in patients?