Week 3 - Arnold Chen

 

            This week, I attended the infectious disease division conference. They were discussing some case studies of infectious diseases, which included a case of mucormycosis and a separate case of histoplasmosis. Mucormycosis is a fungal infection that can affects the sinuses, the eye, and can even propagate to the brain. The presenter also went through the different microbiology and lab results associated with the patient. One of the risk factors of mucormycosis is diabetes, so one of the doctors also suggested treating the underlying diabetes in addition to the mucormycosis. The doctor I was shadowing also mentioned to me that Covid-19 has been observed to increases the risk of the mucormycosis fungal infection (termed the “black fungus” infection), which has been on the news and has seen a surge in India. The other case study was related to histoplasmosis, another case study. This is a case involving both histoplasma and an autoimmune system. Turns out that since the patient is taking immunosuppressing drugs, the immune system weakened to the extent such that histoplasma starts appearing. The solution is to lower the dose of immunosuppressing drugs and provide antibiotics for the histoplasmosis. I thought this was an interesting case because it demonstrates the importance of testing the optimal treatment dosage and carefully monitoring the patient, while adapting and responding to new conditions that might appear.

            I also went to MRI imaging sessions this week. The first session involves observing an imaging phantom being scanned by MRI. This specific phantom contains different concentrations of gadolinium ( a contrast agent). The post docs also explained some of the principles of MRI, including the fact that the main magnetic field of the scanner aligns the protons in the object and radiofrequency pulses tipping the magnetic moments. We also got the opportunity to have our brains and cervical spines scanned and experienced what it feels like to be in a MRI scanner from a patient’s perspective.

            In terms of my clinical project, the project involves building an app that can take a photo -> ask for user input on patient information -> upload image with the user-specified name to a database. Last week, I built a page, and now I have figured out how to navigate from page to page. Another consideration is that whatever the user inputted has to be “remembered” when the user navigates away from the page. I have tested out these concepts separately and will need to combine into one app eventually. I have also started implementing the camera functionality in the React Native Expo framework and adding Zoom and camera flipping functionalities. 












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