July 3rd, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Humor, Research
Tags: Fainting From Laughter, Gelastic Syncope, Heart, Heart Rate, Intrathoracic Pressure, Sitcom Syncope, Tilt Table, Vasovagal Syndrome
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Laughter is the best medicine, and now, here’s the best medicine to treat laughter. Fainting from laughter happens, albeit rarely, and is probably a vasovagal response, reports a case series in the medical literature.
Dubbed “Sitcom Syncope,” the series of three patients and a literature review of other cases evaluated patients who reported loss of consciousness during vigorous laughter. The series was reported by Prashan H. Thiagarajah, MD, an ACP Associate Member at the Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pa., and colleagues in Postgraduate Medicine.
The three patients reported seven fainting spells induced by vigorous laughter that were witnessed friends or family.
All patients were hospitalized and underwent a complete history and physical, 12-lead echocardiogram, chest radiograph, routine blood analysis, transthoracic echocardiography, Holter monitoring, carotid duplex study, stress testing, polysomnography, and head-up tilt table testing. In each cases, structural heart disease and cerebrovascular disease were ruled out. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
June 29th, 2011 by Edwin Leap, M.D. in Humor, True Stories
Tags: Emergency Medicine, Epinephrine, Epipen, Fun, Pets, Physician, Rattle Snakes, Red Neck, Wasps
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A physician friend of mine recently bragged that, while driving along a rural South Carolina road, he had stopped, chased a timber-rattler into the bushes, located said rattler, then urinated on it.
‘I wanted to say I had peed on a rattlesnake!’ He beat a hasty retreat (and I imagine a hasty zip-up) when the snake rattled and struck at the air. Who can blame Mr. Snake?
You can take the redneck to medical school, but you’ll just get a redneck with a medical degree.
Which brings me to me. I have to work on our tool-shed/work-shop in the morning. The tool-shed/work-shop is, however, over-run with red-wasps. I counted no less than ten nests inside. These are irritable, contentious creatures with no love of humanity. If they were humans, they would be Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
June 28th, 2011 by Happy Hospitalist in Humor, Opinion
Tags: Billing, Critical Care Medicine, Doctor Patient Relationship, ICD-9 Codes, ICU, Physician Preferences, Sedation, Ventilation
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You ever wonder what doctors really think but are afraid to say out loud? Here’s one example:
“I wish all my patients were on a ventilator”
There’s a reason vented and sedated patients are considered desirable. In addition to the obvious economic benefits of
There are the less talked about, but equally pleasant side effects most hospitalists, ER doctors, cardiologists, gastroenterologists, pulmonologists, surgeons, infectious disease doctors, endocrinologists, psychiatrists, rheumatologists, dermatologists, nurses, respiratory therapists and physical therapists wouldn’t admit, but would agree, without hesitation. As a general rule:
- Patients on ventilators are just faster, easier and more pleasant to take care of. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist*
June 15th, 2011 by DrRich in Humor, Opinion
Tags: 2300mg, Dietary Guidelines, FDA, Food Additive, Government, Health Expert, Hypertension, Institute of Medicine, IOM, Regulating Salt Intake, Salt, Sodium Restriction
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Q. What is the difference between a public health expert and Il Duce?
A. Mussolini was not nearly as arrogant as a public health expert.
In prior posts, DrRich related how two major publc health efforts over the past few decades – the effort to put all of us on low-fat diets, and the effort to reduce everyone’s cholesterol levels – have amounted to massive experiments, based upon insufficiently-tested assumptions and surmises and hypotheses which the experts arrogantly (and incorrectly) determined to be fact, and which were conducted upon the entire American population without its knowledge or consent.
These public health experiments cost billions of dollars, needlessly transformed large swatches of American industry, and (at least in the case of low-fat diets) likely produced significant harm to the citizenry. Furthermore, despite such results, these misbegotten public health efforts have inured Americans to the notion that it is right and proper for government experts to determine for each of us what we must and must not eat.
DrRich now feels obligated to call his readers’ attention to yet another experiment which these same public health experts have launched, an experiment under which each of us – once again – is to become an unwitting research subject, an experiment whose results are unpredictable, but which has a realistic chance of producing harm to many of us. DrRich speaks, of course, of the new US dietary guidelines, published earlier this year, regarding sodium. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Covert Rationing Blog*
June 12th, 2011 by DrWes in Humor
Tags: Beep, Cardiac Electrophysiology, Lost Pager, Medical Error, Missing Pager, Paging Yourself
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It happens to every doctor at some time in their busy career: the missing pager. Usually, discovering the locale of the digital disrupter is quite simple: you simply page yourself provided, of course, that the contraption is not on “vibrate” mode.
And so it was with me some time ago.
The scene was a familiar one: rushing off to work, heading out the door while contemplating the upcoming caseload of the day with my mind wandering off to great medical thoughts when, suddenly, I reached to my hip to find that I had forgotten my pager.
Dang.
So back to the house I go and scramble for the telephone. My wife, hearing the door opening calls back from upstairs: “Something wrong, dear?”
“No, just forgot my *@#$&#*& pager. No biggie.”
So I called the paging number and waited. (Why it takes so long for electrons to travel to space and back is beyond me.) Some time later I heard in the distance: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
