I’ll Be So Lucky To Practice This Long
Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category
Saturday, November 22nd 2008
World's Oldest Neurosurgeon
Tuesday, November 4th 2008
Kim Jong-Il(l)
The Real Question Is If He’s Even Still Alive?
The reclusive dictator of North Korea hasn’t been seen in a while. He recently missed a major military parade, which was just another step in many national spying agencies calling into question his health. Now word is spreading that his son has recruited a French neurosurgeon to travel to North Korea.
New doubts over the health of North Korea’s “Dear Leader” have arisen after Kim Jong Il’s eldest son was filmed in Paris apparently soliciting the services of a top brain surgeon.
The footage, shot by the Japanese Fuji Television, has rekindled conjecture that Mr Kim is gravely ill and has possibly had a stroke.
The footage shows a man, identified by North Korea watchers as “undoubtedly” Kim Jong Nam, entering a Parisian clinic for a discussion. Two days later, an unnamed French doctor was filmed arriving at Charles de Gaulle airport in a car owned by the North Korean mission to Unesco. When asked, the doctor did not deny that his destination was Pyongyang.
There are obviously too many reasons why one would need a neurosurgeon to start speculating on Mr. Kim’s health. However, going over the conjecture The Times makes that Mr. Kim may have had a “stroke.”
If Mr. Kim has had a stroke and we’ve reached a stage where surgery may be a necessity then the North Korean dictator is at a dire point. A decompressive craniectomy or digging around to remove an intraparenchymal clot or performing a “strokectomy” to decompress, make it very unlikely the dictator will ever return to rule over North Korea, assuming he is to survive.
It may be quite a while before more substantial word on Mr. Kim’s condition (or even word of his death) out of the most closed society on earth.
Wednesday, October 29th 2008
Interservice Advertising
Advertising apparently influences everything we do. It’s so prevelant in society that it is making its way onto the hospital wards. I noticed these in the ICU during a rotation. Literally advertisements from competing services (general surgery and ENT) fishing for consults for trachs.
The flyer literally says ‘Same Day Service’ and ‘Also – Peg Tubes’.
Anyway, I just thought it was funny.
Thursday, September 18th 2008
Good To See Freedom Being Protected
The irony is killing me.
The Transportation Security Administration’s intrusion of individual privacy represents one of the biggest modern American civil liberty violations. Now their new primary operational center has been renamed the ‘Freedom Center’. I cannot make this shit up.
Can You Feel The Freedom Being Protected?
In anycase, here is the TSA on the renaming.
Sunday, September 7th 2008
Tastes Like Cough Syrup…
Maybe I should stop drinking so much Red Bull.
[A]ccording to Dr. Scott Willoughby, of the Cardiovascular Research Center at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and Adelaide University, the results of the study were alarming.
“After one can it seemed to turn the young individual into one with more of the type of profile you would expect to see with someone with cardiovascular disease. People who already have existing cardiovascular disease may want to talk to their physician before they drink Red Bull in future,” the scientist said.
Okay, so the study is a joke with something like 30 participants and the reporting of it on this website is a joke as well…so maybe I’ll just keep chugging.
Sunday, August 31st 2008
I Am Happy To Be Here
It Is Sad Part Of My Personal Philosophy Is Summed Up In A Commercial
I truly believe we live, as a society, in a State of Fear. Politicians, media, religious groups and others all play off of it. It is a pessimistic, depressing view of the world. The theme is: everything is to be feared; tomorrow is going to be terrible unless you do what I say.
What bullshit.
Now, I have my personal religious faith. But even if there was nothing else, existence is amazing. There is something incredible to even being part of the universe. Even if your personal time is fleeting there is something tiny, nearly unmeasurable, but tangible in you having been. Think of how huge the universe is and yet, to have witnessed what I have in this tiny, tiny part of it that I can behold is amazing. The fact you are even here reading this is a wonderment. It is incredible.
Not to get all morbid or stoic or eastern. How could just a single day of consciousness not be worth death even if there was nothing else to follow? To witness even the mediocrities of life, even the hard parts and the suffering, is a gift and nothing less.
We really have to stop taking the world around us for granted. There should be so much optimism rather than fear. Oh well, I guess our predilection for pessimism is and of itself a pretty interesting and cool thing to ponder and wonder over.
Friday, August 22nd 2008
Civil Jury Trials: Restoring Our Faith in Humanity
A young woman in Iowa has had a jury of her peers find in favor of her for $1.5 million in a case against her ex-boyfriend. As you might expect, if it is to be posted on this blog, the nature of the verdict and award are…stunning.
The plaintiff claimed the defendant gave her human papillomavirus. HPV comes in many flavors (serologies). Two of those serologies (6 and 11) cause more than 90% of all “common” genital warts, which despite cosmetic and comfort concerns are not a serious threat to your health. There are many forms of the virus which are associated with cervical cancer but serologies 16 and 18 account as the etiology for approximately 70% of cervical cancers.
In this case in Iowa this woman claims she contracted at least on HPV virus associated with the warts and at least one associated with cervical cancer. Here is the story over at On Point,
Karly Rossiter, 25, has been diagnosed with both strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV), one of which causes genital warts and the other cell abnormalities that can lead to cervical cancer. In a petition filed in March 2007, she alleged that Dr. Alan Evans, a Muscatine, Iowa, dentist, infected her during their 18-month relationship and failed to warn her to take appropriate steps to protect herself from infection.
So there are several weird things about this case.
First, the defendant was not tested for HPV and his status is unknown. The claim that the plaintiff contracted the infection from Dr. Evans was based solely on her announcement that she had only been with two men in her life and Dr. Evans was the most recent.
Second, and in line with the first point, the plaintiff claims a strange time table for the development of symptoms.
In April 2005, she learned that she could have the virus and about a year after the New Year’s Day encounter with Evans she developed genital warts.
The average time to the development of warts from infection is 2-3 months. 1 year is not too far astray. Also not too far astray is that at least 30% of low-risk HPV infections don’t clear and the women get reoccurences of genital warts from the same infection. Maybe she was infected before. And a lay jury was burdened with making that determination? Give me a break.
Third, the notion that this infection is worth $1.5 million is beyond belief. And that is if there was some proof this infection was due to the defendants actions (or lack thereof).
This woman is likely to clear her low-risk HPV infection (which caused her genital warts) and if she doesn’t, this remains a largely cosmetic issue. And this woman is very, very, very unlikely to get cervical cancer from her HPV infection.
For all of the media surrounding the HPV vaccine attention cervical cancer is not an epidemiological emergency. In fact one of the questions surrounding the vaccine is if it is really needed, if it is really cost effective considering the low incidence of cervical cancer in the U.S.
Here are the numbers: 30% of the women in the plaintiff’s age range (20 – 25) are infected [PPT] with at least one high risk form of HPV. 30%! Yet there will be only 11,000 (and that really is a small number when you think about the number of women in this country) new cases of cervical cancer in this country.
Yes there is an increased risk she has been burdened with but life is full environmental factors which increase our risk for cancer – such as when she was sitting out on her porch and a diesel pick up came through billowing exhaust. I would feel comfortable betting that, with regular health maintenance, the plaintiff will not suffer from invasive cervical cancer as a result of this infection.
Jury decisions like this make me cringe. But this case is nothing new.
Sunday, August 17th 2008
McCain Calls Majority of Americans Stupid
This Would’ve Been An Interesting Scene To Be At
In some non-healthcare related news, there is a report going around the blogosphere that John McCain, during a private fundraiser on Friday, August 8th, essentially called the vast majority of Americans morons. The original reporting seems to be from the OSI Gazette blog.
When joking about lopsided tax breaks at dinner, he purportedly justified it by saying, “People who make under $80,000 are too stupid to understand taxes anyway.”
If the report is real, joke or not you have to ask if this guy can keep his mouth shut.
I Like The Beach Boys As Well But Yikes…
Sunday, August 17th 2008
Most Children Oppose More Healthcare for Children
Saturday, August 16th 2008
How Much Is Wasted In U.S. Healthcare?
Talk About Being Wasteful…
A PriceWaterhouseCoopers report estimates that the American healthcare system wastes $1,200,000,000,000 a year.
That is a huge estimate, much larger than any I’ve ever seen but you’ve read it right…1.2 trillion dollars a year is wasted according to PriceWaterhouseCooper. Now granted, their estimate is based solely on accounting of existing figures which previous, more independent, researchers have used to come to different figures on U.S. healthcare waste. As the WSJ Health Blog says,
PricewaterhouseCoopers also boosts the number by adding a category called “behavioral” waste, which includes the $200 billion costs of obesity and overweight and $100 billion for “non-adherence” to medical regimens generally. (Click on image at left to read PwC report.)
In anycase, no matter the number it highlights that the American system remains the least efficient in the world.
