November 11th, 2011 by BruceCampbellMD in True Stories
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Traveling makes one modest – you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.
-Gustave Flaubert
We have come to Kenya, expecting to work outside of our “comfort zones.”
Our patient has arrived from miles away, riding on the back of her husband’s bicycle. She has an enlarging, bleeding mass growing off of the side of her neck. There are no pathologists available, so we are uncertain what kind of tumor it is, although it appears to be a cancer. She has been wearing a scarf to hide the mass for the past year; her head covering is speckled with blood.
We are anxious. Unexpected things can happen in an operating room this far from home. We expect Read more »
October 15th, 2011 by American Journal of Neuroradiology in Research
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Cerebral vasculitis is a known cause of ischemic and hemorrhagic strokes and has been described as one of the rare but important causes of corpus callosum infarction. Biopsy-proved giant cell arteritis causing callosal infarction is an exceedingly rare finding because a tissue specimen is usually not obtained and conclusions are drawn on the basis of clinical and radiologic findings alone. We present a case of callosal infarction, which evolved and eventually affected large portions of both cerebral hemispheres.
A 63-year-old woman presented to our hospital with left-sided numbness and neglect, cognitive changes, and apraxia. One month earlier, she was found to have a C-reactive protein level of 8.0 mg/dL (normal <0.5 mg/dL) and 75% stenosis in both femoral arteries. These results prompted Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at AJNR Blog*
July 22nd, 2011 by JenniferKearneyStrouse in News, Opinion
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A report released recently by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America’s Health issued some grim warnings about the current and future state of the U.S.’s obesity epidemic.
Bluntly titled “F is for fat: How obesity threatens America’s future 2011,” the report found that obesity rates rose in 16 states since 2010 and that more than 30% of people are obese in 12 states, compared with one state just four years ago. The South is still the worst-faring region—nine out of 10 states with the highest obesity rates are located there.
The report compared today’s data with data from 20 years ago, when no state’s obesity rate exceeded 15%. Now, only one state—Colorado—has a rate below 20%. The report also points out that despite the increased attention paid to obesity by government (not to mention the media), no states posted a decrease in rates over the past year. Diabetes and hypertension rates have also risen sharply over the past two decades, the report said.
Recommendations to address the problem include preserving and in some cases restoring federal funding for obesity prevention and implementing legislation to improve nutrition in schools, among others.
Meanwhile, two researchers are making headlines for proposing a more extreme solution: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
