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

Latest Posts

Food Allergies: Treating Severe Allergic Reactions

EpiPen An allergic reaction in an outdoor setting can rapidly become a life-threatening emergency. While most of us think of food allergies as annoyances, they can be quite serious or even life threatening. Itchy skin rashes can progress to breathing difficulty, swollen soft tissues (e.g., lips, tongue, throat) that compromise the airway, and low blood pressure or even shock. Therefore, it’s important to be familiar with the signs and symptoms of severe allergy and to be prepared to respond rapidly in the event of an emergency.

An EpiPen (an epinephrine auto-injector)

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has released Food Allergy Guidelines for healthcare professionals to help guide the care of patients with life-threatening food allergies. The full guidelines can be found at http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/foodallergy/clinical/Pages/default.aspx. Here are some key points: Read more »

This post, Food Allergies: Treating Severe Allergic Reactions, was originally published on Healthine.com by Paul Auerbach, M.D..

What You Need To Know About Snakebites

Eastern coral snake Eastern coral snake, photo courtesy of Norman Benton, CC-BY-SA 3.0

The Wilderness Medical Society held its annual meeting at Snowmass last summer July 23-28, 2010. There were numerous terrific educational sessions. In a series of posts, I am going to highlight some of what we learned from the presenters.

Jonathan Allen gave a presentation on venomous snakebite management. Here are some facts to remember:

Snakebite Statistics

Approximately 15 percent of the 3,000 snake species worldwide are dangerous to humans. There are annually 400,000 to 2,000,000 envenomations from snakebite worldwide, with 20,000 to 100,000 deaths. In the U.S., there is at least one species of venomous snake in every state except Alaska, Maine, and Hawaii. There are approximately 20 venomous species, including pit vipers and coral snakes, and an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 venomous snakebites each year, including six to 10 deaths. Perhaps only 20 percent of bites are reported.

Deaths from snakebites typically Read more »

This post, What You Need To Know About Snakebites, was originally published on Healthine.com by Paul Auerbach, M.D..

Challenges In Humanitarian Medical Care

An aid worker gives medicine to Haitian child in Léogâne Aid worker administers medicine to Haitian child in Léogâne.With the current wave of natural disasters and international conflicts extant in the world today, the number of people engaged in global humanitarian relief, including medicine, is growing. As a result, there have arisen special concerns for providing medical care and other types of assistance during humanitarian efforts. At the Wilderness Society summer annual meeting in 2010, Cindy Bitter, MD, led a round table discussion entitled “Challenges and Controversies in Humanitarian Medicine.” I will use materials she prepared for the syllabus to offer some observations about the general topic of humanitarian medicine, which is very often practiced in outdoor settings that are austere.

Current estimates state that, worldwide, there are more than 5,000 organizations providing humanitarian aid at a total expense of $15 billion. Medical assistance is given in many situations, including natural disasters, conflict and refugee care, provision of basic medical needs in low-resource areas, surgical missions, local resource development, and sanitation and nutrition projects. In 2009 alone, there were Read more »

This post, Challenges In Humanitarian Medical Care, was originally published on Healthine.com by Paul Auerbach, M.D..

Superfocus Glasses May Improve Vision In The E.R.

A man wearing superfocus glasses.

As I write this post, I’m wearing my new Superfocus glasses. I was given the glasses by the company to demonstrate, and they are nothing less than remarkable. I’ve used them mostly in two very common settings for me—indoors and outdoors. In both situations, they performed very well.

Superfocus lenses work by mimicking a young, healthy human eye. Each lens is actually a set of two lenses (flexible and firm). The flexible, inner lens has a transparent membrane attached to a rigid surface, sandwiching a small amount of clear fluid. The bridge (across the nose) connecting the lenses allows you to adjust the shape of the flexible lens. Slide the tab along the bridge to find the exact correction for the particular user. The intent is to achieve clear, undistorted vision within any lighting or distance.

You can learn a great deal from the Superfocus website about the benefits of adjustable lenses, how to obtain the glasses, and so forth. I won’t reiterate information from the website, but rather discuss how I have used these glasses and discuss their performance based on my own experience.

First, I used them during my work in the E.R. as a physician. Read more »

This post, Superfocus Glasses May Improve Vision In The E.R., was originally published on Healthine.com by Paul Auerbach, M.D..

SCUBA Diving With A Disability

Charles James Shaffer (U.S. Navy) learning to SCUBA | Charles James Shaffer (U.S. Navy) learning to SCUBAOutdoor recreation is intended for everyone, and can be enormously beneficial for persons with disabilities. I am in awe of disabled skiers, climbers, divers, and others who have learned to coordinate their bodies and take great enjoyment and a sense of accomplishment from their wilderness activities.

It behooves everyone in the healthcare profession to be aware of certain special medical concerns for persons who are disabled physically or emotionally. Additionally, family members and friends are often well aware of what they can do to help in providing a joint effort to support the disabled.

At the 2010 Wilderness Medical Society annual meeting in Snowmass, Colorado, JenFu Cheng, MD (a pediatric rehabilitation specialist from NJ), gave a wonderful presentation on the medical aspects of (scuba) diving with a disability. He pointed out that there may be up to nine million certified recreational scuba divers in the United States alone. His presentation, rather than focusing on persons who are fully capable physically and emotionally, examined the lesser-known benefits of being in the water for individuals in need of additional support. For instance, aqua therapy (largely enacted in swimming pools) takes advantage of the buoyancy of water to allow a range of mobility that is not possible on land. For example, aquatic exercise has been shown to improve lung capacity and mobility skills in children with cerebral palsy. Read more »

This post, SCUBA Diving With A Disability, was originally published on Healthine.com by Paul Auerbach, M.D..

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