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BMJ No 7106 Volume 315 Letters Saturday 23 August 1997 Internet is useful for information on rare conditionsEditor,The recent letters about the medical uses of the internet do not mention its usefulness in providing information that is time sensitive in patients' care.(1) We were asked to anaesthetise a child with Costello syndrome (of which around 20 cases have been recorded) for an emergency laparotomy at night. On that night the child's father offered all references (but not texts) on the syndrome from the page he maintained on the world wide web. The child's chief signs were vomiting from obstruction, dehydration,
and cardiac arrhythmias, all of which are important to an
anaesthetist. The anaesthesia was marked by a difficult intubation
under e The text of the case report was also posted on the page that the father
maintained on the web (http://sargon.mmu.ac.uk/helaina.htm). It has
been accessed by another hospital in Britain treating a child with the
same condition, and by an oncologist who was faced with the very
specialised problem of a new tumour in a child with the syndrome. It
has also been used by another member of our staff, who reanaesthetised
the child.
Newsgroups discuss problems within their remit when questions can be
posted and answered within a few hours. The internet also allows
medical minority interest groups to access information of critical
interest to them (http://sargon.mmu.ac.uk/rindex.htm) so that morbidity
in these rare conditions can be lessened.
Oliver R Dearlove
Consultant
paediatric anaesthetist
Andrew Sharples
Consultant in paediatric
intensive care
Royal Manchester Children's Hospital, Manchester M25
2HA
Colin Stone
Computer support
technician
Department of Clothing Design and Technology,
References
1 Journals and the internet [letters.]
BMJ 1997;314:1351-2. (3 May.)
2 Dearlove O R, Harper N. Costello syndrome. Paediatr
Anaesth (in press).
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