Remember “cooties” in grade school? You know, the germs or disease that girls gave boys or boys gave girls in grade school if they touched? Well, it seems they’re becoming an epidemic. Thank goodness someone checked for “cooties” on the Stanley Cup:
The NHL champion Blackhawks’ beloved trophy stopped by the Chicago Tribune newsroom, and so we took the opportunity to do something the Cup’s keeper said had never been done: We swabbed it for germs. We sent the samples to the Chicago lab EMSL Analytical, which found very little general bacteria and no signs of staph,salmonella or E. coli. “It’s surprisingly clean,” lab manager Nancy McDonald said. Just 400 counts of general bacteria were found, she said. By comparison, a desk in an office typically has more than 10,000.
No staph species detected? Hmmm. I think there was a sampling error…
-WesMusings of a cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist.
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
It’s no secret that the U.S. has a weight problem and with chain restaurants serving up meals with thousands of calories in a single dish, it’s easy to understand why. Watch “CBS Doc Dot Com” to see which meals you should try to avoid — or at least share.
Scientists at Arizona State University have developed a new method of non-surgical brain stimulation using pulsed ultrasound that enhances cognitive function in mice, and may one day be used to non-invasively treat patients with mental retardation, Alzheimer’s disease and other central nervous system (CNS) dysfunctions.
In intact motor cortex in mice, ultrasound was found to stimulate action potentials and elicit motor responses comparable to those only previously achieved with implanted electrodes and related techniques. It also activates meaningful brain wave patterns and the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in the hippocampus — one of the most potent regulators of brain plasticity. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
I seem to be asked more often these days if I do vulva reduction surgery. I’ve even been asked if I “refresh” vaginas (in which I refer them to their gynecologist.) I’m happy it’s a extremely small part of my practice.
I’m also happy to see that the current issue of Reproductive Health Matters is taking a close look at cosmetic surgery, especially female cosmetic genital surgery. Read more »
Every day in the emergency department I am confronted by pain. In fact, the treatment of pain is one of the most important skills emergency physicians, indeed all physicians, possess.
For instance, I recently cared for a child with sickle cell disease who was having a pain crisis which involved severe leg pain. His life is one of frequent, intense pain. I gently, and repeatedly, treated his pain with morphine until he had relief. I see hip fractures; all broken bones hurt. I am thrilled to alleviate that discomfort. Pain is one of the things I can fix, if only temporarily. It makes me happy to see the relaxed face of a man or woman with a kidney stone or migraine, who suddenly smiles and says “thanks!”
But pain is also the source of so much subterfuge. Emergency department are full of individuals who use controlled substances for recreation. I know because they have pain that is entirely unverifiable. They have terrible right flank pain with no gall-bladder, no pancreatitis, no kidney stone (documented by CT), no pneumonia or rash. They have nothing to cause the pain. And yet, dose after dose of narcotic later, snoring in their ER stretcher, they look up at me with hazy eyes and say, thickly, “Cann I gettt somethinn elsss for paaiin…it hurtssss so…bad. zzzz. Itzzz a tennn.”
So I began to wonder about science and the pain scale. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Scientists at Arizona State University have developed a new method of non-surgical brain stimulation using pulsed ultrasound that enhances cognitive function in mice, and may one day be used to non-invasively treat patients with mental retardation, Alzheimer’s disease and other central nervous system (CNS) dysfunctions.
