Doctors attend the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh lecture on Thursday. Picture by Ashok Sinha

A click of a mouse and AIIMS-Patna students were in Edinburgh on Thursday.

The health hub students haven’t mastered the art of being in two places at once. Instead, they sat through the telecast of a lecture by doctors at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh on obesity.

AIIMS-Patna’s medicine department organised the live telecast of the lecture in the United Kingdom.

The doctors in Edinburgh elaborated on obesity related disorders and explained how the condition increased the risks of developing diseases such as oesophageal cancer, liver disease and colon cancer.

This was the second time that a programme of the Edinburgh institution was telecast live at AIIMS- Patna. The last telecast was on November 6 — that was on cardiology.

Apart from the AIIMS-Patna faculty and students, senior residents and doctors of Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences and Patna Medical College and Hospital attended Thursday’s lecture.

The senior residents were all praises for the initiative.

“Associated with the brand of AIIMS, we are getting the exposure we had expected. In two and odd hours, we got to know the latest updates on obesity-related disorders from the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh faculty, which we would not have found in the books. The Edinburgh institution is popular because of its FRCS (Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons) programmes,” said Abhishek Kumar, a senior resident at AIIMS.

The AIIMS director, G.K. Singh, said the live telecast of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh lecture was another milestone for the health hub.

He said: “The live telecast is telling on AIIMS-Patna’s connectivity to the world’s top-class medical institutions. This is just the beginning. In the coming days, series of lectures of notable universities across the world would be telecast live.”

Divulging details of the obesity telecast, Ravi Kirti, a doctor in the medicine department, said: “David Haslam, one of the doctors associated with the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, spoke on the growing health related problems because of obesity. He showed pictures of prehistoric figurines of very fat human beings, hinting that the problem of obesity was an ancient one. Professor Kenneth McColl mentioned that obese people were more likely to have heartburn and cancer of the food pipe. Ewan Forrest and Stuart McPherson talked about liver problems from obesity. Professor Mark Hull talked about the role of diet, while Professor Colin Rees spoke on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (in which non-alcoholics develops fatty liver) and its management.”