Right now I'm just searching it on google scholar and I've read online medical dictionary definitions of it, but I feel like I'm missing a deeper understanding. What are the best resources for me to consult?
Thank you!
Posted Oct 4, 2016, 3:41 AM UTC
Not to sound snarky, but the reason you're missing a deeper understanding is because you don't know medicine.
Like any other discipline, understanding concepts in medicine is predicated on having studied and having a working knowledge of other concepts as well. It's hard to explain myelofibrosis on a deeper level to someone who doesn't have at least basic understanding of cell biology, genetics and haematology - not to mention the other body systems that are affected by bone marrow dyscrasias.
I'd watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLsegxXzaiE
followed by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YEtWOxweRg
these two videos deliver the info at a level of a med student who's never heard of myelofibrosis. Some of it may go over your head but it's as straightforward as you're gonna get without dumbing it down too much.
Consider also that he/she might not be looking for that level of understanding. After all, you don't need a rigorous understanding of the underlying mechanisms of a disease in order to work towards creating better treatments or supporting the patient populations, which seems the most likely path for a lawyer.
Before medical school I knew a woman who was the CEO of a small biotech startup making drugs for a particular GI disease. Her working knowledge of the drug and how it worked was literally laughable. She hardly knew what a peptide was, but she understood enough to hire the right people and eventually get an effective therapy through FDA trials.
Doing the science or medicine directly is a different story. I was hired as a engineering researcher out of college for a company working on drug delivery for solid tumors. I didn't know the biology and was only just getting into it. I thought I had a good understanding of cancer and the tumor environment, but I was horribly mistaken. You really need to know how the entire body works in order to start to think intuitively about how a particular disease manifests.
Lmao what the fuck do we know that this guy can't learn in 15 mins of pathoma? Myelofibrosis = burn out. Bone marrow cancer ->>> lots of new cells growing, the bone marrow stem cells burn out >>>> bone grows into the space that items empty because all the stem cells there are gone. Boom, myelofibrosis
You need to find a good review article in a good journal like NEJM. Do not expect to understand everything in it but that will include the most important and relevant new information.
[deleted]
thanks
In my experience, there's no good way for someone without the training to make sense of the medical literature out there easily. In some ways, the ability to do so is where a lot of the value lies in the first two years of medical school. Without the "vocabulary" and the scaffold of medical knowledge, it is difficult to achieve a great understanding especially of a rare idiopathic condition like myelofibrosis.
The wikipedia node looks relatively detailed. What exactly do you want clarification on?
There are different aspects of the disease that you have to consider. If you want to understand the underlying cause of the disease, then UpToDate, Robbins Pathology (any version, any book) and their ilk will suit you well. If you want medical considerations/symptoms, then google will get you really far. If you want to understand what it's like living with a disease and to get a sense of the day-to-day of medical conditions, youtube can't be beat (see Lesch Nyhan for instance).
This is exactly what I was looking for.
I dunno dude, what kind of "deeper understanding" are you hoping to get? Is the fact that you're a law student supposed to be relevant?
Sometimes an article says it's caused by hyperparathyroidism. Sometimes hypoparathyroidism. Sometimes pseudohypoparathyroidism. Sometimes pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism.
Some articles claim neoplasm of megakaryocytes is necessary for diagnosis. Other articles don't even mention it.
I just want to understand what this disease is. Are there any texts or reviews that give broad-level overviews of a disease, all its various causes, and how you tell them apart? What are the best repositories of information on diseases? How do med students search this kind of stuff?
That's what I want to know. Not a lesson on myelofibrosis specifically. I just want to know how med students learn. Where do I go?
edit: parathyroid, not thyroid, my mistake
We learn a lot of basic terminology to describe biologic processes (i.e. what the name myelofibrosis means). We learn physiology (how the body works in normal circumstances) and then we learn what things can disrupt that (diseases). This is how we understand how disturbances from one disease can influence other diseases or cause new ones
For example (and I don't really know anything about myelofibrosis so this is more of an educated guess), any time you have increased cell replication or other abnormal cellular processes going on, there's an increased risk for cancer. Disturbances in thyroid function can influence cell activity in the bone, so that is my reasoning why myelofibrosis would be associated with both hyper and hypothyroid
That's because myelofibrosis in general is often more a symptom than a disease entity in itself. It can happen with any hematologic cancer, or any process that increases fibrous deposition in the one marrow. In general we would think about the other symptoms of each potential cause to differentiate them based on the patient's presentation. If there is no identified cause then you have chronic idiopathic myelofibrosis which is maybe what you are thinking of? (I am not sure) That is a specific hematologic cancer.
How do med students learn? As below, the physiology, pathology and cell biology foundation first. Yes I googled plenty in med school (and now), but having that background (or searching for a new way to understand background concepts) allows us to understand what we are looking up.
I'm not at all saying lay people can't obtain this type of knowledge; plenty of parents of my patients with chronic or serious disease, for example, have a great understanding of their kid's disease process and needs and will often look up the latest research. But I think you need to start with the basics first. For example, I would start by educating a parent or patient on the function of the bone marrow, and what "fibrosis" means within the body, when discussing myelofibrosis. If it was associated with thyroid dysfunction I would talk about the role of the thyroid. Etc. At the next visit I might go into more details that are relevant, such as hormones and receptors.
Articles that describe the various etiologies of a disease process or symptom do exist, and you may want to add "differential diagnosis" to your search. We/meddit might also be able to help better if you explained why you wanted this information to better target our responses.
[deleted]
Because just because you can search for information doesn't mean you have the pre-requisite knowledge necessary to actually understand what you're reading. He's looking for resources geared towards someone at his level of training (none) and there's nothing wrong with that.
Just reading the Wikipedia page, it's obvious that there's no way someone without a scientific background will be able to really understand this article
Actually I'm primarily looking for information about how to search for information. What are the best methods or sources to get the broadest survey of a disease, instead of reading single articles at a time.
Because for example to a lay person it makes no sense that a condition can be caused by both hyper- and hypo-thyroid.
Doesn't make sense to me either
Bingo. Or more specifically, if there are any ways that the two different causes manifest themselves differently on a broad level besides their immediate effect (i.e. the different hormone concentrations).
The problem with google is that it often gives information that is aimed at patients with the condition. Perhaps ktool is looking for something more complex?
Because I'm not a medical student and I don't have direct knowledge of how you operate. This was helpful though thank you, it shows I'm not missing much
R/medicine might work out better for you. R/medicalschool seems to be mostly for memes and discussing medical school subculture.