Would You Like A Drag With Your Bottle Of Milk?
Ambulance Chasing Through The Wall St. Journal
Watch Your Sack
House and Silliness
Placebo Journal Update
Gary Coleman
Shrooming For Anxiety
MRSA Shirt Special
Disney Vacation Points Healthcare
1. Would You Like A Drag With Your Bottle Of Milk?
There is a video
of an Indonesian kid smoking a cigarette that is causing quite a stir recently.
The two year old boy is having a grand old time as he hangs outs with his
buddies and sucks one down. Little
Ardi Rizal got his first drag from his dad at age 18 months and now smokes
40 cigarettes a day. I forget sometimes the recommended daily allowance of
cancer for a toddler but isn't that a little too much? Confirming the addiction
potential of cigarettes, his mother says he beats his head against the wall
unless he gets nicotine. This part of the world has a wee bit of a problem as
studies have shown that poor families spend more on cigarettes than on books and
education. Wow. As for little Ardi, he is tired of all the attention. He just
wants to get back to betting at the racetrack, drinking at the local pub or
chasing fast women. He declined to be interviewed for this blog but instead
responded, "Hey, go (expletive) yourself!" Thanks, Ardi.
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2. Ambulance Chasing Through The Wall St. Journal
In an article
on May 4th in the Wall St. Journal there was huge investigative piece about
hospitals using surgical robots more for marketing and competition than for the
overall good of the patients. This doesn't mean that the robots don't have their
place in an experienced surgeon's hands but I highly recommend you read it to
understand how a NH hospital got caught up in the craze. I was so amazed to hear
about this new type of arms race that I did a spoof in the next Placebo Journal called Hospital Robot
Wars (see above image). Anyway, below was a particularly disturbing part of
the article:
One of
the surgeons featured in the hospital's robot advertisements was gynecologist
Elizabeth Chase. In one newspaper ad in which she posed with a smiling patient,
Dr. Chase was quoted as saying that the robot enabled her "to perform intricate
surgery more safely."
On March 2, 2009, Dr. Chase proctored
another Wentworth gynecologist new to the robot, Rebecca Ann Banaski, during a
routine hysterectomy. During the surgery, Dr. Banaski accidentally cut both of
the patient's ureters with the robot, people familiar with the operation
say.
The ureters are the tubes that connect the kidneys to the bladder.
Cutting both ureters is considered a rare and serious surgical complication
because it can cause the kidneys to shut down. The patient, a woman in her 40s,
had to undergo four more procedures over the following eight months to repair
the damage, the people with knowledge of the matter say.
After the
incident, Wentworth-Douglass made Drs. Chase and Banaski undergo remedial
training on the robot, the people familiar with the matter say. Dr. Chase was
also temporarily barred from proctoring others and placed under the oversight of
another surgeon when she resumed using the robot, they say.
When I first read this
I even said to myself, "Dude, someone is getting sued for that". I call myself
Dude a lot. Bad Big Lebowski habit that I can't seem to get rid of.
Wouldn't you know it that I opened the paper the other day (May 28th) and the WSJ
is reporting that the unnamed woman in the case (Sherry Long) has now filed
a lawsuit against the hospital and the two surgeons. The hospital says it has
not been served but believe me, if the WSJ says you've been served then
You've Been Served! Okay, not a fan of that movie. Back to my point,
and I do have one, does anyone else believe that just maybe a lawyer was reading
the original WSJ article and said to himself or herself, "Ka-ching" (cash
register sound)? I do. That is called ambulance chasing of the digital kind. You
know what? I actually don't begrudge him or her since it really sound like Mrs.
Long needed the help. Sometimes lawyers are needed.
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3. Watch Your Sack
Another teenager has lost his testicle to "sack tapping". What has this
world come to? I had never heard of this sport
but it seems all the rage in Minnesota. David Gibbons, 14, was changing
classes in his high school when he was attacked by another teenage who punched
his scrotum. One urologist in the article claims to have to amputate around 3 to
4 testicles a year due to this game. They are pushing for a ban on this habit
because as the doctor states, "It's lost its humor. It's not a game anymore.
People get hurt." I think they need to make some billboards saying such things
as:
- "Got a sac?"
- "Don't hurt'em - let'em keep their scrotum."
- "There are so many other ways to have a ball....and keep one, too."
- "Don't be a nut and lose your nuts."
- "Sac tapping ends up in testicle whacking!"
Anyone else have any ideas?
Editor's Note - After writing this I was informed that my teenage sons play
a similar game at school called "bag tagging". I am so out of the loop.
4. House and Silliness
I rarely watch the show House. Sorry. I see medical stuff all day
so I am not very enthusiastic about seeing it again at night. Then again,
House doesn't really portray what I do. I understand that if they don't
entertain the audience then their show will sink. With that in mind they take
liberties with the facts and embellish what House, the doctor, is able to do.
Fine. Marc
Siegel is an associate professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center and
wrote about the House finale in the LA Times. Check it out. He talks about
an amputation without anesthesia, a cardiac arrest, a compartment syndrome and a
fat embolism that occurred all in one patient and she was only 25 years old! Oh
yeah, a crane fell on her causing all this. You've never? The twenty-five years
olds that I see as patients have multiple comorbidities, too. I just had someone
with obesity, hypertension, diabetes, tinea cruris, and halitosis. I guess that
wouldn't make for good TV, though.
Anyway, there is one reason I do like the show. Check out the picture of
one of the dudes from House. Yes, he is reading the Placebo Journal. No, the image is not
manipulated but I did add the comparison picture on the top right. This makes me
famous, right? I didn't think so. Back to the patients with halitosis and
diabetes for me. 5. Placebo Journal Update
 The June issue is just about done printing and should be on its way shortly. Do not despair. If you are ready to start subscribing to the only medical journal that will make you laugh then click below:
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6. Gary Coleman
Poor little Gary Coleman died. He was an interesting person who led a
pretty tough life after the his hit show went off the air. Word on the street is
that he died from an intracranial hemorrhage. Talk about Diff'rent
Strokes for...well, you know what I mean. Coleman suffered continuing ill
health from the kidney disease that stunted his growth and had a host of legal
problems in recent years. I am not sure whether any of this led to his death but
rumor has it that before lapsing into a coma from the hemorrhage his last words
were, "Whatchu talkin' 'bout, Circle of Willis?"
You will be missed, Gary, and I
apologize for that last joke. That was in bad taste. Only those in the medical
field will get it, though. RIP, my man.
FOLLOW this link to comment on this story 7. Shrooming For Anxiety 
Pot may be all the rage right now but get ready for some shrooms!
Psilocybin, the active ingredient in 'magic mushrooms' is being used in a New
York University study to see how it works for anxiety and patients are loving
it. You
can read how patients are taking psychedelic trips in this LA Times article.
They mention a study "published in 2008 found that even 14 months after
healthy volunteers had taken a single dose, most said they were still feeling
and behaving better because of the experience." Who knew all these drugs were so
helpful? Heck, let's break out the black tar heroin and get healthy! Okay, maybe
that is over the top but I found it funny that one researcher mentioned in the
piece is trying to enroll 32 people. Dude, just go to one Grateful Dead concert and you will find
all the subjects you would ever need. I guarantee Jerry Garcia, somewhere in the
ether, is laughing at all this so-called science. FOLLOW this link to comment on this story
Doug Farrago MD King of Medicine
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