March 26th, 2010 by DrWes in Better Health Network, Humor
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He was 60-year-old man who underwent surgery for an implantable cardiac defibrillator (ICD) approximately 3 years prior who was returning to the clinic for routine followup. He felt well and had no other complaints.
He was connected to the EKG and the programmer’s wand was placed over the device. I interrogated his device and when the initial screen appeared, there it was — a single shock from his device, received two weeks ago.
“Mr. Smith, are you aware that you had an ICD shock about two weeks ago?”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you call us?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did it bother you?”
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
There was a pause. I looked up from the programmer and took a quick look at him. He was looking away. Instantly, I realized the answer. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
March 9th, 2010 by DrWes in Better Health Network, Health Tips, Research
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This week, coffee seems to be good for the heart:
“People who are moderate coffee drinkers can be reassured that they are not doing harm because of their coffee drinking,” said Arthur Klatsky, the study’s lead investigator and a cardiologist at Kaiser’s Division of Research.
These “surprising” data are to be presented at the AHA meeting March 5th. (You’ll have to wait until then to get the REAL scoop, it seems.)
But a quick Google search on Dr. Klatsky’s earlier studies using the same questionaire database shows the problems with using questionaire data to make such sweeping conclusions. Take, for instance, these findings from 1973: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
October 6th, 2009 by GruntDoc in Better Health Network, True Stories
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I sent a guy with a normal EKG to the cath lab. Let me tell you my side of the story.
Dude was minding his own business when he started having crushing, substernal chest pain. I see dude by EMS about 45 minutes into his chest pain. He’s had the usual: aspirin, 3 SL NTG’s an IV, a touch of MS (I can abbreviate here, as it’s not a medical record) and is continuing to have pain.
He describes it like you’d expect (elephants have a bad rep in the ED), and looks ill. Frankly, he looks like a guy having an MI. Sweaty, pale, uncomfortable, restless but not that ‘I’ve torn my aorta’ look. The having an MI look.
Every EM doc knows the look. I didn’t ask about risk factors.
On to the proof: the EKG. EMS EKG: normal. ?What? Yeah, maybe there’s some anterior J-point elevation, but not much else. Our EKG: Normal. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at GruntDoc*
