Medicine:
Virginia Postrel has this fascinating piece in the Atlantic about why hospitals should be designed to be more attractive -- not just the drab taupe to which we have become accustomed: Thank God for intravenous Benadryl, which knocks me out...
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Posted on March 25, 2008 12:30 PM • 2 Comments •
In honor of President's day I have some interesting Presidential pathology to present. I want to talk about Andrew Jackson and his myriad of diseases. To say that Andrew Jackson had medical problems would be the understatement of the century....
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Posted on February 18, 2008 11:22 AM • 1 Comments •
I completely agree with this public service announcement at MDOD: if you have the flu, do not go to the emergency room. The flu is caused by a virus. There is nothing the doctor in the ER can do to...
Posted on February 7, 2008 11:02 AM • 6 Comments •
Although typically Americans have greater and more rapid access to surgical procedures than people in other countries, we do not possess a uniform superiority in the speed of health care access. One excellent example of this is visiting the Emergency...
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Posted on January 21, 2008 11:41 AM • 2 Comments •
Shelley has an exquisite example of why radiologists no longer do double-takes: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on intestinal obstruction caused by ingestion of a condom filled with alcoholic beverage and its successful transcutaneous...
Posted on December 10, 2007 1:44 PM • 2 Comments •
I don't know if people heard about this, but a participant in the Olympic trials prior to the NY marathon died suddenly: A triumphant United States Olympic trials marathon turned somber yesterday morning when Ryan Shay, a 28-year-old veteran marathoner,...
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Posted on November 6, 2007 1:27 PM • 11 Comments •
The British, innovators in casual medicine
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Posted on September 20, 2007 9:51 AM • 3 Comments •
A woman who fell when she was four and got a pencil in lodged in her head has one of the craziest MRIs ever (on the right, click to enlarge): Margret Wegner fell over carrying the pencil when she was...
Posted on August 7, 2007 2:54 PM • 9 Comments •
Oh wow: Men are 12 times more likely than women to sustain severe human bite injuries for which surgery may be necessary, according to a study published in the July issue of the Emergency Medicine Journal. Injuries are most likely...
Posted on June 20, 2007 10:00 AM • 2 Comments •
Hi everyone, and welcome to Grand Rounds, vol. 3 no. 22. The Oscars are this Sunday, and -- since I know we all look forward to this yearly 4-hour marathon of farcical self-absorption -- this edition of Grand Rounds will...
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Posted on February 20, 2007 7:00 AM • 11 Comments •
Who knew: While public perception may frame surfing as a dangerous sport, new research begs to differ. In the first study of its kind, researchers have computed the rate of injury among competitive surfers and found they are less prone...
Posted on January 2, 2007 10:06 AM • 1 Comments •
On Wednesday evening, Senator Tim Johnson (D) -- the junior Senator from South Dakota -- suffered what appeared to be a stroke and was rushed to the hospital. At the hospital, he was diagnosed with intracerebral hemorrhaging as the result...
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Posted on December 15, 2006 10:21 AM • 4 Comments •
CNN's headline reads Flatulence on plane sparks emergency landing: It is considered polite to light a match after passing gas. Not while on a plane. An American Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing Monday morning after a...
Posted on December 6, 2006 5:00 PM • 1 Comments •
Trushina et al from the Mayo Clinic have made a big advance in understanding the etiology of Huntington's disease. Huntington's disease is a progressive and ultimately fatal disease that is characterized by uncontrollable limb movements and progressive dementia and psychosis....
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Posted on December 1, 2006 10:53 AM • 2 Comments •
Benjamin Zycher, fellow at the Manhattan Institute, questions of the wisdom of allowing Medicare to negotiate prices with drug companies. Actually what I don't like about this debate is that is called "negotiating" drug prices. There is no negotiation that...
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Posted on November 29, 2006 3:44 PM • 4 Comments •
Women are more susceptible to Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) even when the type of the stressful event is controlled for: Males experience more traumatic events on average than do females, yet females are more likely to meet diagnostic criteria for...
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Posted on November 20, 2006 10:47 AM • 6 Comments •
The most commonly cited causes of the obesity epidemic over the last 30 years are decreases in physical activity and increased consumption of unhealthy foods: the Big Two. For these as causes, we have what can only be described as...
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Posted on November 17, 2006 11:14 AM • 5 Comments •
On The Colbert Report last night, Stephen Colbert talked about an article about uterine transplants for The Word. Scientists now claim that there is nothing technically to prevent us from performing a womb transplant, even to the point that you...
Posted on November 15, 2006 11:09 AM • 1 Comments •
The answer is that it increases lymphocyte motility, helping to fight the infection: Nobody likes coming down with a fever, but feeling hot may do a body good. Researchers report online 5 November in Nature Immunology that a fever in...
Posted on November 15, 2006 10:51 AM • 1 Comments •
We're mad as hell, and we are not going to take it anymore: In recent years, women's health has been a national priority. Pink ribbons warn of breast cancer. Pins shaped like red dresses raise awareness about heart disease. Offices...
Posted on November 14, 2006 9:47 AM • 2 Comments •
Saliva, is there anything it can't do? A new painkilling substance has been discovered that is up to six times more potent than morphine when tested in rats -- and it's produced naturally by the human body. Natural painkillers are...
Posted on November 14, 2006 9:41 AM • 2 Comments •
Here is an audio recording of the oral arguments in the case of Gonzales vs. Carhart (as an mp3). Gonzales vs. Carhart is a case about the federal partial birth abortion ban: The Supreme Court on Wednesday heard oral arguments...
Posted on November 9, 2006 11:19 AM • 1 Comments •
I meant to post this early, but the Neurophilosopher has an excellent history of Alois Alzheimer, for whom the disease is named: On November 25th, 1901, a 51-year-old woman named Auguste Deter (below right) was admitted to the hospital, and...
Posted on November 8, 2006 10:48 AM • 0 Comments •
Suck on that title. Anyway, this is actually an important public health issue. Circumcision cuts your STD risk: Circumcised males are less likely than their uncircumcised peers to acquire a sexually transmitted infection, the findings of a 25-year study suggest....
Posted on November 8, 2006 10:43 AM • 5 Comments •
Eugene Volokh has written an article in the Harvard Law Review arguing that abortion is constitutional. This is not shocking. The Supreme Court has made clear that abortion is constitutional. However, he is arguing -- rather than from the point...
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Posted on November 6, 2006 9:20 AM • 1 Comments •
I hadn't actually known this, but the creator of the Dilbert cartoons, Scott Adams, was diagnosed about two years ago with a rare disease called spasmodic dysphonia. Apparently he just recovered -- in spite of overwhelming odds against that happening....
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Posted on October 26, 2006 9:48 AM • 26 Comments •
Virtual colonoscopy is more comfortable. Just thought you should know: Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center researchers have found that "virtual" colonoscopy using a computer tomography (CT) scanner is considerably more expensive than the traditional procedure due to the detection...
Posted on October 25, 2006 11:31 AM • 7 Comments •
Unbelievable: Not even a medical emergency can pull some men away from a television showing their favorite sports teams, a U.S. study has determined. University of Maryland emergency physician David Jerrard tracked nearly 800 regular season college and professional football,...
Posted on October 11, 2006 1:51 PM • 1 Comments •
I was sorry to hear this story. A high school student in Colorado Springs, CO died suddenly on the football field. There was no apparent cause. Autopsy revealed that the boy had an enlarged heart: A preliminary autopsy conducted by...
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Posted on October 10, 2006 9:46 AM • 0 Comments •
Have you ever seen a cyst fly? A team of French doctors planned to slice a cyst off a man's arm Wednesday in the world's first zero-gravity surgery, operating aboard an airplane soaring and diving in and out of weightlessness....
Posted on September 27, 2006 1:19 PM • 0 Comments •
Walmart is cutting prices on generic drugs in Florida as a test program: - Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, said on Thursday it would cut the prices of nearly 300 generic drugs to $4 per prescription starting in...
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Posted on September 22, 2006 10:09 AM • 4 Comments •
This is absolutely unacceptable. 6 medical workers are on trial in Libya under the accusation of infecting children with HIV, and if convicted they could be executed. While expert testimony and scientific evidence was presented at the trial, this evidence...
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Posted on September 20, 2006 11:29 PM • 1 Comments •
I feel really bad for this guy: Surgeons in China who said they performed the first successful penis transplant had to remove the donated organ because of the severe psychological problems it caused to the recipient and his wife. Dr...
Posted on September 19, 2006 4:02 PM • 2 Comments •
GNIF Brain Blogger has a good article describing the DSM -- Diagnostic and Statistcal Manual of Mental Disorders -- that is used by psychiatrists to diagnose mental health issues of all types. Drawbacks and benefits are discussed. In spite of...
Posted on September 12, 2006 10:44 AM • 0 Comments •
I talked earlier this year about a patient who recovered from a coma after 20 years. In that post, I discussed how -- with respect to the diagnostic criteria -- the difference between a persistent vegetative state and a minimally...
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Posted on September 11, 2006 9:07 AM • 3 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
I found this article interesting, if for no other reason than people seem to be misunderstanding what it says and what it does not say. The article by Leigh and Jencks for the Kennedy School of Government is entitled "Inequality...
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Posted on August 20, 2006 11:56 PM • 7 Comments •
It is like sweat and balls hot out, so I have a little personal story -- or rather my Dad's personal story -- to tell about heat waves. My Dad is an Emergency Room doctor, and he has been working...
Posted on August 3, 2006 1:02 PM • 0 Comments •
Floyd Landis, most recent winner of the Tour de France, has tested positive for testosterone use:...
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Posted on July 27, 2006 11:39 PM • 40 Comments •
A study reveals that an increasingly large number of Americans are too fat to fit in MRIs and have X-rays that lack resolution: More and more obese people are unable to get full medical care because they are either too...
Posted on July 27, 2006 12:24 PM • 6 Comments •
...depression. This is related to something they make medical students memorize. When someone comes in with hypertension, it is always good to check whether the person has renal artery stenosis because this is one of the few causes of hypertension...
Posted on July 26, 2006 5:34 PM • 0 Comments •
If you go in for a mammogram and they see something that looks suspicious, odds are you are going to have to undergo a procedure called ductal lavage. Ductal lavage uses a fine needle to rinse the ducts of the...
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Posted on July 15, 2006 4:30 PM • 2 Comments •
Surgeons are experimenting with ways to use cryogenics to aid in surgery. If you can put someone in suspended animation, it would make the process of surgery much easier. Here is a description from Wired Magazine about such an experiment...
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Posted on July 15, 2006 4:14 PM • 1 Comments •
"Why would I ever care about heart attack screening, Jake?" This is a reasonable question so let me put it this way: The ACS [American Cancer Society] recommends the following screening ages: 20 for breast cancer with mammography from age...
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Posted on July 10, 2006 2:03 AM • 3 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
That's not good: A new analysis that compares two common inhalers for patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) finds that one reduces respiratory-related hospitalizations and respiratory deaths, but the other -- which is prescribed in the majority of...
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Posted on July 10, 2006 1:19 AM • 0 Comments •
The American Journal of Psychiatry has this very interesting case, but first you should know some background. There is a pathway in the brain that is commonly referred to as the reward pathway. It is referred to as the reward...
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Posted on July 9, 2006 11:37 PM • 2 Comments •
Prosopagnosia is a rare disorder that can result from strokes where the individual is unable to recognize faces but maintains the ability to recognize other non-face objects. Disorders like prosopagnosia suggest to neuroscientists that the machinery for processing faces in...
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Posted on July 7, 2006 4:52 PM • 2 Comments •
Anabolic steroid abusers get gingival overgrowth (that would be big gums), or so says this study in the Journal of Periodontology:...
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Posted on July 5, 2006 9:39 PM • 1 Comments •
When a man wakes up after a 20 year coma, you know that people are going to pay attention. Particularly after the Terry Schiavo business, I think it is important to add some facts to this debate as early as...
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Posted on July 4, 2006 7:41 PM • 2 Comments •
Neurodudes has an excellent article on software intended to reduce medical errors. Just from my limited personal experience, I would say that such software would be useful if people understand that it is limited in scope. There are three general...
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Posted on July 4, 2006 4:28 PM • 0 Comments •
Future Pundit reports on research that demonstrates -- shockingly enough -- that vegetables are good for you. Alert the media I say! Anyway, I wouldn't even mention it, but I love this line by him: Most people do not eat...
Posted on June 22, 2006 12:06 AM • 0 Comments •
A study by researcher David Holben in the latest Preventing Chronic Disease (never heard of it) shows that so-called "food insecure" Appalachians are more likely to be obese and have obesity-related disease....
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Posted on June 19, 2006 11:56 PM • 1 Comments •
PLoS Medicine is reporting a paper that compares the declining suicide rate in the US to the increasing number of prozac prescriptions since the drug's introduction in 1988. They find that the two are very well correlated:...
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Posted on June 19, 2006 11:37 PM • 4 Comments •
Researchers report that drinking coffee cuts the risk of cirrhosis of the liver from alcohol -- by 22 percent per cup each day -- but they stopped short of saying doctors should prescribe coffee for that reason. The report from...
Posted on June 13, 2006 9:28 PM • 0 Comments •
Focus on the Family, a conservative social organization located in Colorado Springs, CO, has decided to oppose the mandatory vaccination of young girls for Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), a virus linked to the formation of cervical cancer. Recently the FDA...
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Posted on June 12, 2006 1:34 PM • 8 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
Here is a interesting idea about how to treat pain without addicting people to pain killers. There is some back story to this business that you should know before we discuss why this is a cool idea, though. Opioid drugs...
Posted on June 9, 2006 4:18 PM • 3 Comments •
Jake Young is a MD/PhD student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine focusing in Neuroscience. He is due to graduate in 2032. He received a BS and a MS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University -- where he spent most of his time drinking heavily and building vegetable catapults instead of learning information that would now be eminently useful. When he is not failing terrifically to perform his sworn duties, he enjoys watching bad movies, ethnic food, and running.
