Dr. Maria Papadopoulou MD

Doctors are healers.   Not typists.   Not data clerks. But in today’s clinics, the screen steals the show. → Eyes on the monitor.   → Fingers on the keyboard.   → Minutes lost to admin. The patient sits.   Unseen.   Unheard. Care is not just a diagnosis or a prescription.   It starts with a look.   A pause.   A moment of real connection. Yet, paperwork keeps pulling doctors away.   Every click and form takes time from the bedside.   The human part of medicine slips through the cracks. This is where Connected Care changes everything. AI can handle the notes.   AI can fill the forms.   AI can track the details. Doctors get back what matters most:   Time with their patients.   Time to listen.   Time to see the person, not just the chart. Research shows that when doctors make eye contact, patients feel safer.   They trust more.   They heal better. The best care starts with being seen.   Not just scanned and sent on your way. Here’s how Connected Care brings back the human touch: → AI-powered documentation, so doctors can focus on people.   → Less time on screens, more time face-to-face.   → Fewer errors, because the system remembers every detail.   → Happier doctors, because they do what they trained for.   → Better outcomes, because patients feel heard. This is not just about tech.   It’s about restoring what matters in medicine. Because healing starts with a simple truth:   You need to be seen to feel better. Let’s give doctors back to their patients.   Let’s put care back at the heart of healthcare. #ConnectedCare #PatientExperience #DigitalHealth #AIinHealthcare

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CT Artifacts – Its Cause, Appearance, and Remedy 👇👇👇 Motion Artifact • Cause: Voluntary or involuntary patient movement • Appearance: Blurring or ghosting • Remedy: Immobilize patient, use faster scan time, sedation if necessary Beam Hardening Artifact • Cause: Differential absorption of low-energy X-rays • Appearance: Dark bands or streaks between dense objects • Remedy: Use beam hardening correction algorithms, optimize scan parameters Metal Artifact • Cause: High-density metal implants or dental fillings • Appearance: Bright streaks, starburst patterns • Remedy: Remove external metal if possible, use MAR (metal artifact reduction), dual-energy CT Partial Volume Artifact • Cause: Averaging of different tissue densities within a voxel • Appearance: Blurred or inaccurate depiction of tissue interfaces • Remedy: Use thinner slices, optimize slice orientation Ring Artifact • Cause: Detector malfunction or calibration error • Appearance: Concentric rings in image • Remedy: Recalibrate system, replace faulty detectors Aliasing Artifact (Undersampling) • Cause: Inadequate projection sampling • Appearance: Fine stripes or misregistration of edges • Remedy: Increase sampling, improve reconstruction Out-of-Field Artifact • Cause: Anatomy extends outside scanning area • Appearance: Streaks or shading near image edges • Remedy: Ensure full anatomy fits in scan field Edge Gradient Effect • Cause: Sharp differences in adjacent tissue densities • Appearance: Streaks or overshoot near bone/air interfaces • Remedy: Use appropriate reconstruction kernel, adjust window settings Windmill Artifact (Z-Axis Aliasing) • Cause: Helical scanning with wide collimation • Appearance: Windmill-like streaks, especially in thin slices • Remedy: Use optimal pitch, reduce detector collimation Stair-Step Artifact • Cause: Multiplanar reformatting of thick axial slices • Appearance: Step-like edges on sagittal or coronal views • Remedy: Use thinner slices, perform volumetric acquisition Cone Beam Artifact • Cause: Wide-area cone beam in multi-slice CT • Appearance: Distorted image edges, shading • Remedy: Use correction algorithms, limit cone angle Incomplete Projection Artifact • Cause: Truncation of data at edge of field • Appearance: Bright streaks or distortion at periphery • Remedy: Increase scan field of view, reposition patient Cupping Artifact • Cause: Beam hardening within a uniform object • Appearance: Center appears darker than periphery • Remedy: Beam hardening correction, calibration Double Contour Artifact • Cause: Patient movement or improper reconstruction • Appearance: Duplicate borders or outlines • Remedy: Improve immobilization, ensure correct reconstruction. #CT #CTartifacts #cause #remedy #appearnce #CTtech #radiotech #imagingmodality #CTmodality #radiologyimaging #radiodiagnosis #radiographersCT #UGstudents

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The future of orthopaedics is here — and it might not be human. This month’s Bone & Joint Journal features three papers exploring how AI could transform orthopaedic care — particularly for children with cerebral palsy: 🔹 Hip surveillance in children with cerebral palsy in the UK 🔹 Fully automated measurement of paediatric cerebral palsy pelvic radiographs with BoneFinder 🔹 Navigating the barriers and facilitators to implementation of AI in healthcare AI won’t replace us — but it will change what we do, and how we do it. Especially in screening, where scalable approaches could make a real difference. The video? AI-generated too. 📰 Read more: https://lnkd.in/eQW6fGhq #ArtificialIntelligence #CerebralPalsy #OrthopaedicSurgery #Radiology #PaediatricOrthopaedics #DigitalHealth @BoneJointJ @NIHR @British Society for Children's Orthopaedic Surgery

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Serum Ferritin is a useful test to guide treatment in patients presenting with features of Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) 1. RLS commonly causes pain, discomfort, cramping, crawling or other abnormal sensations in legs (and hands in some cases), which gets worse at nights or during periods of inactivity. 2. Temporary relief in symptoms occur with jerking movements of legs, or walking. 3. Sleep disturbance are common in people suffering from RLS. 4. Iron deficiency plays a major role in causation of RLS. 5. Symptoms of RLS correlate more with brain iron levels rather than blood iron levels. 6. Brain iron may be low, even if blood iron levels are normal. 7. Serum ferritin level, therefore, is the most valuable test to assess the brain iron status. (As direct brain iron assessment requires specialized brain imaging, not always possible in the clinic). 8. As you can see, in our patient too, serum ferritin was very low (8 ng/ml), even though the blood iron level was normal. 9. In patients with RLS, who have low ferritin levels, iron supplementation is very useful in relieving symptoms of RLS. 10. In patients who do not respond to oral iron treatment, intravenous iron (injections) should be given. 11. Among the RLS medications, gabapentin or pregabalin should be the first choice among patients with low ferritin levels. This is because failure of dopaminergic drugs (ropinirole or pramipexole) due to augmentation is more common in people with low ferritin. Take home message 1. Serum ferritin is a useful test to assess brain (and body) iron deficiency status. 2. Serum ferritin levels can be used to guide treatment in people with RLS. 3. Iron supplementation (along with RLS medications) are needed among those with low serum ferritin levels.

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Want to specialize in seizures? You need a 4-year neurology residency, even if you'll only ever treat seizure patients. Want to become an endoscopist? You need a 3-year GI fellowship - even if you'll never touch liver disease or inflammatory bowel disorders. Many neurologists end up specializing in just headaches or just Multiple Sclerosis. Many GI doctors focus exclusively on inflammatory bowel disease. But they all still did the full multi-year training in everything else related to their specialty. Compare this to any other field: A computer programmer who knows C can learn Python with one course. An accountant can get tax certification in months. A marketing professional can pivot to digital strategy without starting over. Medicine has no micro-fellowships. No 6-month or 1-year focused training programs that let you specialize and reliably gain credentialing at a hospital without the full burden of traditional fellowships. This rigidity has consequences. Doctors cannot easily diversify within medicine or pivot to new interests without massive time and financial investment. So they look outside medicine for creative outlets and professional growth - startups, consulting, content creation, entrepreneurship. The surge in doctor-side businesses is about a system that makes it nearly impossible to evolve within your own field. Imagine if we had micro-credentials in medicine - focused, practical training for specific skills or subspecialties such that a doctor trained in one speciality could, within a reasonable timeframe and cost, take on new skills, such as endoscopy or diagnosis and management of seizures. Doctors could grow, adapt, and find new professional fulfillment without leaving medicine entirely. We'd keep more talent in healthcare and give physicians the career flexibility many others profession already have.

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Oral and maxillofacial surgery (OMFS) is a surgical specialty dealing with a broad spectrum of pathology affecting the head and neck. Despite a rising burden of head and neck conditions, exposure to OMFS in the undergraduate medical curriculum remains limited. This has consequences for medical undergraduates’ competence and confidence in managing related conditions and the recruitment into this specialty. Our recently published paper has investigated this issue and we discuss future strategies which are needed to address a concerning fall in recruitment to the specialty. Link to download here: https://lnkd.in/eTRR85uJ Thanks to my amazing co-authors for all their hard work to make this study possible: Ibrar Perwaiz, Alexandra Mackenzie, Umar Rehman BMBS, BSc, MSc, MClinEd (Dist),MRCS MAcadMEd, FRSPH; and Mohammad Sarwar

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