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about POSSUM

POSSUM is a computer-based system that helps clinicians to diagnose syndromes in their patients. The POSSUM team is lead by Professor Agnes Bankier at The Murdoch Childrens Research Institute Melbourne. It contains information on more than 3000 syndromes, including multiple malformation chromosomal and metabolic conditions and skeletal dysplasias. The comprehensive mediabase includes x-rays, diagrams, and histopathology slides.
POSSUM was originally launched in 1987 and is currently used by about 500 centres around the world.
Using POSSUM, clinicians can search for syndromes
based on a patient's traits or by syndrome name to assist them
in making a diagnosis or to learn about syndromes.
Syndrome commentaries provide detailed information about clinical attributes, differential diagnoses, radiology and genetics. You can also link via the internet to OMIM (Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man) for more information about a syndrome. You can 'snapshot' pictures for a syndrome and organise them on your desktop for useful comparisons. The POSSUM software and its 30,000 images are available on CD ROM so you can run it on your laptop or notebook computer. In the past two years POSSUM has been re-developed as a web-based program - POSSUM Web - at last also accessible to Mac users. Log-in software and the image database will be distributed on DVD to subscribers, to access the data on the web. We are updating the database continuously and the data will be uploaded every two months.