Chandigarh, 10th November,2011: The 52nd Annual conference of Indian Society of Hematology and Blood Transfusion , began today at prestigious institute of North India, PGIMER, Chandigarh with participation of more than 8oo delegates from all over India. The morning proceedings started with the Inaugration of Continuing Medical Education by Dean PGI, Prof. Amod Gupta. On the occaision, Dr . O.P.S. Kande, Member of Punjab Medical Council spoke about the initiative taken by the council to help the doctors of this region to remain updated in the rapidly advancing field of medicine for delivery of best possible care to both rural and urban population of the Punjab. It is mandatory for the doctors working in non-educational health setups ,to attend the programmes like CMEs, Conferences for which they would be awarded credit points for maintaining their practicing lisencure. The present CME would carry the highest credit points accredited by Punjab Medical Council for these kind of educational activities.
The Main conference was inaugurated by Professor John M Goldman held at Bhargava Auditorium hief guest for the function, an Emeritus Professor of Haematology at Imperial College London and editor of Bone Marrow Transplantation , a former editor of The Haematology Journal and an associate editor of European Journal of Haematology. He was the first to do bone marrow transplantation in patients with CML using peripheral blood stem cells and started allogeneic transplant for CML in 1980. He developed the PCR technology for monitoring of residual disease.
National guidelines on management of Immune-thrombocytopenia ( low platelet disorder) was released on the eve of inauguration . Dr Prantar Chakraborty explained about the need for having our own Indian guidelines to manage our Indian patient, till now we have been following the guidelines made in west where the situation is much different than what is encountered here in our own country. Interacting with the media he discussed in detail about the process of formulating these guidelines and informed that Indian Society for Hematology and Blood Transfusion Medicine has decided to come out with one guideline every year focusing on one disease at a time.
Eminent speakers from abroad and various parts of India shared their practical experiences in diagnosing and managing common and important blood disorders. In a symposium dedicated to chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML), Professor John Goldman from Imperial college, London, traced the history of development of oral cancer drug, commonly known as Imatinib, which has revolutionized the treatment of this particular cancer by increasing their survival by many years. For those patients who are nonresponsive this drug newer agents like Dasatinib, Nilotinib and Busotinib may result in significant benefit. Dr Prashanth Ganeshan , oncologist , from Adyar institute, Chennai said that about one-third of patients with CML do not take their medicine regularly which contributes to the poor out come in them.
Dr Tapan Saikia, of Prince Ali Khan Hospital,Mumbai, discussed about the Multiple Myeloma , a disease mainly affecting older population and manifest as anemia, increased calcium and in advanced cases with bone disease and kidney failure.Prof. Pratibha Amare , from prestigious Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai, spoke about the genetic abnormalities associated with this condition.
Dr Jayadharan Rao of Christian Medical College, Vellore spoke about an inherited common bleeding disorder –Hemophilia- a condition which results in prolonged bleeding in males only where as females serve as carrier but does not manifest the disease. But rarely this condition may not be inherited and arise de novo. He discussed about the genetic diagnosis of this disorder to identify families with high risk of Hemophilia.
Prof. Tejinder Singh talked about the newer machines –hematology autoanalysers which provide rapid and precise results in laboratories with high patient load but one should be aware of pitfalls of these machines.Dr Shanaz Khodaji spoke about the role of lab in diagnosis of acute myeloid leukaemia in resourse constraint settings. Dr A dasgupta and Dr Ritu Gupta discussed challenges in the diagnosis of lymphoproliferative conditions and their spectrum respectively.
Nursing staff attended workshop on handling the central venous access lines. Department of hematology provided hands on training on newer diagnostic modalities like, RQ-PCR, Flowcytoimetry and detection of Coagulation abnormalities in different workshops which saw the participation of delegates with full enthusiasm.