Better Health: Smart Health Commentary Better Health (TM): smart health commentary

Latest Posts

Variations In Retrieving A Foreign Body From The Stomach

I have observed extreme variation in how my colleagues manage GI foreign-body retrieval from the stomach. Some always use general anesthesia and endotracheal intubation; others (myself included) use conscious sedation. Some use an overtube to withdraw the object into if possible; others simply pull it up to the endoscope and use the endoscope to guide it through the esophagogastric junction and upper esophageal sphincter. The reasons for this variation are clearly related to the perceived risk of airway compromise or gastrointestinal wall injury during withdrawal of the object from the stomach.

So my questions to you are:

1)      When do you ask for endotracheal intubation during foreign-body retrieval?

2)      Do you use an overtube when removing foreign bodies from the stomach, and, if so, always or in what situations?

3)      If you don’t use an overtube, what technique do you use during withdrawal of the object?

4)      What is your favorite “tool” or endoscopic accessory to grab objects from the stomach?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this issue.

*This blog post was originally published at Gut Check on Gastroenterology*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

Read more »

How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

Read more »

See all interviews »

Latest Cartoon

See all cartoons »

Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

Read more »

The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

Read more »

Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

Read more »

See all book reviews »

Commented - Most Popular Articles