Vascular diseases that present as obstructive atherosclerotic arterial disease

Conditions
May 23, 2011

by Joe F. Lau, MD and Jeffrey W. Olin, MD

Physicians who perform percutaneous endovascular procedures encounter a multitude of vascular diseases that may masquerade as obstructive atherosclerotic arterial disease. While atherosclerosis is clearly the most common condition seen, complex inflammatory, genetic or structural processes may either not be amenable to an endovascular approach or actually be harmful and thus lead to outcomes that are not …

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Pay attention to the color and smell of your urine

Conditions
May 20, 2011

Most of us are uncomfortable talking about our waste products, urine and feces. However, changes in the color and odor may signify disease that can be treated or prevented. This article will review causes of discoloration of urine and when there is a change in the odor of urine.

For hundreds of years doctors have looked at urine as a barometer of what is happening in the body. The urine can …

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Going through Netter’s to teach medical students pelvic anatomy

Education
May 20, 2011

I recently had the opportunity to go to the anatomy lab and help the first years go through the pelvic anatomy.  What a blast!  There is nothing like dissecting a cadaver to tune up one’s surgical anatomy skills, and helping young eager medical students through it is a great experience.

Prior to going into the lab, I spent many hours going through Netter’s atlas to brush up on the anatomy so …

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Prevent foot fractures while wearing heels

Conditions
May 17, 2011

As 30-year-old New Yorker Carrie Donnelly began her bachelorette party in her new black open-toe five-inch heels, she fell, her foot going one way and her ankle the other.

“When I woke up the next day, my ankle was throbbing and had become extremely swollen,” she said. It was a month before her wedding—the last thing she wanted to do was to walk down the aisle in a cast.

Super-high heels like …

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Transfusing a Jehovah’s Witness during surgery

Physician
May 13, 2011

I was in practice about five years and was about to do a radical nephrectomy on a patient.

I met with the patient and his son in my office and the son informed me that he and his father were Jehovah’s Witnesses and that he didn’t want his father to receive any blood or blood products before, during, or after surgery. I asked the father if that was his wish and he …

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Why the ophthalmologist and optometrist conflict should concern patients

Physician
May 10, 2011

If you need laser eye surgery in the state of Kentucky, or a little cosmetic work around the eyelids, it now behooves you to ask your prospective surgeon the following question before signing the operative consent form:

“Say doc, did you go to medical school?”

Kentucky joined the company of Oklahoma earlier this year as the second state to conflate optometrists and ophthalmologists. Only ophthalmologists are the sort of doctors who graduated …

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Physicians coping after a medical error

Physician
May 10, 2011

A failed treatment, a surgical complication, a medical error, a patient death. When the going gets tough, even the toughest clinicians should get help.

Physicians and nurses who feel personally responsible for a medical error or a patient’s injury face an immediate quandary—their next patient. In the midst of your angst and guilt, do you suck it up and soldier …

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How to use an iPad in the OR during surgery

Tech
May 9, 2011

by Felasfa Wodajo, MD

The iPad has received a significant amount of attention in the health care arena since its introduction last year.

The attraction is fairly obvious; it is a portable, lightweight, powerful computing device with an intui-tive interface and a large library of built-in applications. In fact, major medical schools such as Read more…

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Recovery may be predicted with a perception of the inner pulse

Physician
May 6, 2011

An excerpt from The Inner Pulse: Unlocking the Secret Code of Sickness and Health.

by Marc Siegel, MD

The Pulse of Recovery

People are like stained-glass windows.  They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.
–Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

The inner pulse can keep beating—loudly—long after doctors, researchers, and their monitors predict …

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Explaining why belief in pseudoscience is often evidence resistant

Conditions
May 4, 2011

What links belief in tarot cards, UFOs and vaccine rejectionism? Yes, they are all forms of superstitious or magical thinking, but are there characteristics that predict who will believe in such nonsense? That’s one of the questions that psychologists Marjaana Lindeman and Kia Aarnio seek to answer in their paper, Superstitious, magical, and paranormal beliefs: An integrative model.

Lindeman and Aarnio postulate that believers in superstition, paranormal phenomena and pseudoscience make …

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Should nurses be fired for fatal medication errors?

KevinMD
May 2, 2011

Kimberly Hiatt was a pediatric critical care nurse who accidentally gave an infant a fatal overdose of calcium chloride last year.

By accounts, it was a calculation error. A human mistake.

After the incident, the hospital fired her.

This past April, she took her own life.

Although it cannot be concluded that the tragedy was directly responsible for her suicide, the incident clearly …

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