December 31st, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in Opinion, Research
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I came across this article the other day regarding use of the daVinci robot to perform base of tongue surgery for obstructive sleep apnea.
For those who don’t know, the daVinci robot system made by Intuitive Surgical is a robotic system whereby the surgeon directs the arms of the robot to perform surgery in difficult-to-access areas of the body.
My feeling is that using a robot to perform sleep apnea surgery is way overkill akin to using a $50,000 sniper rifle to kill an ant on the wall.
Everything the daVinci robot can do can also be done without the robot with equivalent patient outcomes. In fact, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*
December 25th, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in News, Opinion
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I admittedly snorted out loud when I read a New York Times article earlier last week regarding increased physician distraction due to electronic devices, especially with the advent of the smartphone with its emails, text messages, calls, and other alerts that ping intermittently throughout a typical work day.
There is no question that electronic devices distract physicians as the article pointed out… But that’s like complaining about a leaky faucet when there’s a flooded basement and a hole in the roof.
The bigger problem that should be mentioned is hospital bureaucracy which probably creates just as much if not more unintended distractions for physicians and nurses.
What many patients and lay public may not realize is that Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*
December 20th, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in News
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According to Boston News, in early December 2011, a carpenter accidentally discharged a nail gun and embedded a 3.5 inch nail in the bottom of his neck. Based on the CT scan included here, it appears the nail entered the neck dead center given the clear appearance of the windpipe.
Based on the location, the anatomic sequence of nail piercing is as follows:
Skin –> Thyroid Gland –> Trachea –> Esophagus Back Wall –> Cervical Vertebral Body
The damage to skin, thyroid, and trachea is not a big deal… In fact, one can consider this a mini-tracheostomy. Minimal bleeding would be expected.
However, the hole between the trachea and esophagus is another matter which may heal well… or not. The esophagus Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*
December 10th, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in Medblogger Shout Outs, Research
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An interesting blog article from the folks at Compete came to my attention recently. Compete for those who don’t know is a fantastic analytics site to see how ANY website is doing in terms of popularity (number of visitors in a given time period). The basic data is free. For more in depth information, there’s a charge.
For example, for our practice’s website, here is the Compete data I pulled which is pretty accurate based on my own analytics information:
My nearest local competitor in terms of website popularity is the hospital, Fauquier Health System: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*
December 5th, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in Opinion
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Would YOU as the patient see a doctor who is a well-known jerk, abuses drugs, gives the wrong diagnosis more often than not, and is known to like ordering very invasive tests??? Be honest…
The other week, a patient with a chronic cough exclaimed to me that she wished the fictional character Dr. House of TV fame actually existed in real life, because he was somebody who can diagnose anything.
I looked her straight in the eye and told her that somebody like Dr. House in the real world would be a physician nobody would want to see for many reasons:
- In the real world, patients expect doctors to have the correct diagnosis from the beginning (might forgive one wrong diagnosis). Dr. House seems to always get things wrong multiple times before he gets it right. I seriously doubt most patients would have stuck around as long as they do on the TV shows before going elsewhere. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*
