REVIEW – Procedures – Lumbar Puncture by MeisterMed
As the iPhone matures as a smartphone platform, the quality and quantity of medical apps is slowly improving. MeisterMed is known for its medical apps on the Palm platform, mainly in iSilo format. From laboratory medicine to psychiatry to ENT, MeisterMed has been in the game for some time.
I was pleasantly surprised to find Procedures – Lumbar Puncture in the app store. As someone who routinely has to do this procedure, it piqued my interest as a learning tool for junior doctors. In general it achieves this task, but not without some caveats.
Lumbar puncture is a standalone app which cuts straight to the chase. The main screen opens up with just 2 options:
The procedure details button gives you a step-by-step instructional guide to performing a lumbar puncture, including indications, contraindications, complications, equipment and even coding. I found this section to be informative and easy to understand. A navigation bar including shortcuts to search and a place to write notes is present at the bottom of the page at all times, which is quite convenient, although I guess would be of more benefit if there were more procedures in the one program.
To top things off, a video is included, and unlike Blausen’s Human atlas, it does not require the internet to load the video. The video is narrated throughout and is useful to watch before doing your first one. I would have liked to see the anatomical landmarks drawn in, but that’s nitpicking really.
Overall, Procedures-Lumbar puncture is a step forward, and I would love to see more of this kind of app for the iPhone. There are so many procedures in Medicine often taught on-the-job and it’s great to have a reference guide to consult. It would suit rural GPs, first year registrars, interns and medical students.
Of course as with any app it’s not perfect. I passed it around to some of my emergency physician colleagues, and one common criticism was the lack of any guide to needle selection, This is pretty important given that paediatric LPs would most certainly require a different needle, and similarly body build in adults also varies significantly. I think the target audience would need this information, although I appreciate in some countries they would just use what’s in the kit.
The other issue is with the lack of illustrations in the Procedure details section. It would be nice to see some simple diagrams highlighting anatomical landmarks with dashed lines to illustrate their use in triangulation of the LP site. A picture definitely helps one memorise how to do the puncture.
All being said, there is very little to fault from a factual point of view, and we aren’t spoilt for choice on the app store for procedure guides! I give this app a 4/5. It is a must-have for any interns/junior doctors who will have to do this procedure at some point. I hope MeisterMed has other procedure guides up their sleeve – I would love to see some guides on CVC and PICC insertion.
Link to Meistermed Procedures: Lumbar puncture
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About the author, David: Dave Choy is a surgical trainee in Australia. He has an avid interest in PDAs pertaining to use in medicine. He runs a small consulting business helping medical staff select and use PDAs. |
Not that it’s terribly difficult to load up itunes, but it might be nice if this review included commentary on the program’s price and an itms link. For those wondering, price is $2 (worth it? not to me, and I’m pretty sure I’m the target audience). Link: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=329647296&mt=8
Thanks for your input. I have put a link to Meistermed’s Lumbar puncture webpage in this review which was done by Dr. David Choy.
If you ask me an app like this for the price of a good cup of coffee is worth it.
Thanks for the great review and for the suggestions which we’ll look at incorporating into the next update.
In my neck of the woods (San Jose/Silicon Valley) you could buy this App twice over for the price of a good cup of coffee.
One of my goals is to keep this App very affordable so that it’s accessible to health care professionals at all levels of training and in parts of the world where doctors aren’t paid much.
I’d welcome any additional feedback and suggestions from other users either here, by e-mail (can be sent from the feedback page within the App) or in the reviews in the App Store.
My co-author and I have several more procedure Apps in the works and a compilation which will include a bunch of them all in one App.
Thanks for your comments. You are right, I should put a link, and the next one will have a link. Re: pricing, I don’t think $2 is unreasonable for this app. Yes, it’s only got one procedure, but then again this is the ONLY app which has this procedure documented for iPhone. Also think of it in other terms – you wouldn’t have been able to buy this on ANY other platform for this kind of price, be it Palm, Windows Mobile, Android etc. Free would be nice, but given the amount of effort required to make something like this, I think it’s worth a few dollars. Med students I have shown it to have downloaded it.
It might not be worth it for you, but I know it would have saved my ass if it had been available for my first LP.
We’ve posted a second App in the series – Procedures: Subclavian Line. There may be a review coming soon to a PalmDoc blog near you but if you want to check it out now, here’s it is:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=331515637&mt=8
Hope you like it.
Lumbar Punctures hurt. I had one. I was crying. And I am a professional boxer!
This App is now free in the App Store. Get it now while it lasts.