Listening to Nguyen Thi My Dieu read aloud case particulars made Dr. Ernest Talarico Jr. smile Thursday afternoon.
Dieu, one of Talarico’s Vietnamese students taking part in his fourth annual medical seminar at Purdue Northwest, is still getting used to English medical terms, so having her volunteer to read to the class proved to him how far she’s progressed. Her growing confidence will serve her well later in the month, when she and the students head to Purdue’s West Lafayette campus on July 30 to present research they’ve been conducting.
“Listen to how she’s picked it up,” Talarico said, beaming. “That’s amazing.”
The students, several of whom were from Tan Tao University just outside of Ho Chi Minh City and the others from Lake Central and Homewood Flossmoor high schools, were presented a medical case of a man with bilateral cardiomyopathy that later turned to hydrocephalus. While learning the case’s physiology, they also learn the bedside manner of it all and how to answer questions from the patient and his family, Talarico said.
This year’s case was especially suited for the Vietnamese students because heart disease is on the rise there, he said.
“The case was a middle-aged man who had trouble getting up the stairs. As we go through x-rays, we found that he has bilateral cardiomyopathy with an underlying cause of hemochromatosis, or iron in his heart,” Talarico said. “The students then discuss the ethics of transplantation and handle questions such as, ‘Is my dad going to die?’”
The case, which is based on a real medical case, took a turn for the worse when the patient develops the brain infection, which is a sign of his body rejecting the transplant, Talarico said. The students are then tasked with coming up with the correct treatment.
“Today, the students got to look at an EKG and cardiac echo results, so this is information they can take back to Vietnam so when the technology gets there, they know how to implement it.”
That’s not to say Vietnam has no industrialized medicine, because it does, said Talarico, who first went to Vietnam nine years ago. Lack of access, however, is the issue for many Vietnamese.
“They learn more than just the medicine; it’s a trading of cultures,” he said. “Then they go back and increase the quality of care.”
And heart disease is becoming a bigger issue in Vietnam because there’s more Westernized fast food, he said.
Omar Hijaz, a recent Lake Central graduate who’s headed to Purdue West Lafayette next month, took the seminar to get a jump on his pre-med studies. Hijaz is planning to study orthopedic sports surgery, but largely for a different reason than being a former athlete.
“Two years ago, my family and I went to Palestine to visit other family in my parents’ home village for two months, and its nickname is ‘Little America” because it’s people who retire and return home,” Hijaz said. “There was one doctor with no clinic for the whole village, so he went from house-to-house every day. Then there was an attack on a nearby village, and more people came.
“There are so many underprivileged people. It was eye-opening, and so studying orthopedic sports surgery will be helpful with a variety of injuries.”
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.