Even through a lot of silliness, there comes some (Goan) sense - if one looks closely at the responses to my post.
To Mervyn's point, Goans (mostly women) have long figured out what I wrote. Goans do what Mervyn writes because .... repeated experience has told them that chicken soup does work for 'pneumonia'. They certainly could give the pneumonia patient a bowl of sorpatel?:=)) The smart Goan women have developed their own test of "chicken soup non-responders" when they decide to take the patient to the doctor. This is not dissimilar to what I tell patients about Cranberry juice. Use of this juice for this purpose is a practice undertaken by all societies, where Cranberry is grown - from Soviet Union and Poland to USA. Santosh (astutely) suggest antibiotics for "elderly pneumonia patient". (see below). Fully agree. This suggest Santosh would not rush with antibiotics for a "NON-elderly pneumonia patient", unless of course they have some factor that puts them at increased risk. So how would Santosh treat a non-elderly pneumonia patient (who is not at high risk)? Likely answer: 'Chicken soup' or some home-made concoction by Dr. Mom. So thanks, for pointing out the "standard of care" is to prescribe antibiotics for selected cases. And by inference, not for every case of pneumonia, where anything else, including herbs etc etc may work just as well as antibiotics or chicken soup; relying on the body's immense ability to heal itself. I hate to point out, in some responses, you do not read or understand the subtleties or gist of what is written, or what you are responding to. I hope you do better reading scientific literature. The high risk patients with pneumonia should use the 'chicken soup' only as adjunct therapy. In some of these, neither should the average allopathis family doctor manage pneumonia, like in patients with AIDS, organ transplant or other immune deficiency disorders. These patients are best referred to an infectious disease specialist or one very familiar with handling pneumonia in these cases. This discussion is not about pneumonia management. Yet the simple diagnoses demonstrates that physicians are not / should not be merely "pill pushers". One of the most important roles, for an allopathic doctor in the management of pneumonia, is to make sure that the pneumonia is not masking an underlying lung cancer - be it in a male or female; be it a smoker or non-smoker. Twenty percent of lung cancers occur in non-smokers. This important information may or may not be obtained by web-surfing for "pneumonia management.." To summarize whatever one does, the important thing is to appreciate the limitations of ones treatment and ones own experience - which is not obtained by net-surfing or reading "Medicine Made Easy":=)). This is my final post on this thread! Those in the back-bench of this 'medical class', in lieu of writing silly posts, are now free to chase the girls ... catch them if you can.:=)) Regards, GL ---------------- Mervyn Lobo In my experience, most Goans with pneumonia will go to the doctor only AFTER they figure out chicken soup is not working on them. ------------ Dr. Santosh Helekar wrote: I want to ask Gilbert if, as a physician, he would recommend that a person who has been diagnosed with pneumococcal pneumonia be treated with chicken soup alone.. The standard of care today mandates that an elderly pneumonia patient be treated with modern antibiotics within 8 hours to substantially reduce the chances of 30 day mortality. ......Dr. Gilbert Lawrence In case of pneumonia, reserve the antibiotics only to those who do not respond to 'chicken soup'." ======================== Message: 3 Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 19:55:06 -0700 (PDT) From: Mervyn Lobo <[email protected]> Subject: [Goanet] Chicken - soup To: "Goa's premiere mailing list, estb. 1994!" <[email protected]> Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 "In case of pneumonia, reserve the antibiotics only to those who do not respond to 'chicken soup'." ......Dr. Gilbert Lawrence Dr. Santosh Helekar wrote: > I want to ask Gilbert if, as a physician, he would recommend that a person > who has been diagnosed > with pneumococcal pneumonia be treated with chicken soup alone. The standard > of care today > mandates that an elderly pneumonia patient be treated with modern antibiotics > within 8 hours to > substantially reduce the chances of 30 day mortality. Folks, In my experience,? most Goans with pneumonia will go to the doctor only AFTER? they figure out?chicken soup is not working?on them. ? It is funny (to me) to find out that there are Goan doctors who will even contemplate 'chicken soup' as medication. ? ? Mervyn1650Lobo
