How Long to Observe After Severe Allergic Reaction (Anaphylaxis)?

A severe allergic reaction affecting multiple different body systems is known as anaphylaxis . Such anaphylactic reactions adversely affect the skin/mucosa, breathing, gastrointestinal, heart rate, and blood pressure. The key thing to remember is that an "ordinary" allergic reaction is localized whereas anaphylaxis is general affecting beyond one body system. With anaphylaxis, epipen administration is one of the first and BEST intervention. Other complementary medications to t…

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3D Printed Masks to Protect Athletes with Nose or Facial Fractures

Mask and Image Made by Technology in Motion Over the past few years, the medical 3D printing technology has exploded with researchers being able to print a new ear, trachea, and even the skull to implant into patients. However, a more common application of medical 3D printing technology is to create custom, form-fitting facial protection masks for athletes who have suffered from facial and/or nasal fractures . With such protection, an athlete could potentially resume play within weeks rathe…

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7 Signs of Helicopter Parenting in the Exam Room

Image courtesy of photostock at  FreeDigitalPhotos.net The Millennials are the primary beneficiaries (or victims) of parents who have the means and ability to obsessively guide, educate, and most importantly, over-protect them from the world/life. Such helicopter parents ultimately raise kids into adults who researchers feel at worst never learn to cope with adversity, lack the ability to make hard decisions, and are prone to anxiety disorders. It is from the education perspective that m…

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Toddler Dies from Ear Infection

Stock Image Unrelated to Blog Article In March 2015, Hope Delozier who was 18 months old, died from an untreated left ear infection. According to media reports , the ear infection first started about 2 weeks prior to death. The parents elected to treat the child with a homeopathic approach and herbal treatments. Unfortunately, this treatment approach did not work and child became sicker. On the day she died, she apparently did not wake up from a nap and mom noted that the breathing was la…

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Medical Alarm Fatigue

Alarms are an important part of clinical care as it serves as a warning to a possible medical error or an impending medical emergency. But when they occur frequently, most of which end up being "false-alarms," they become worse than useless and actually contributes  to an unsafe patient environment because a life-threatening event may be missed due to such sensory overload. In one fascinating research article performed in an intensive care unit (ICU) where the sickest of the sick…

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Why are Magazines So Old in Doctor Waiting Rooms?

It certainly is a complaint in our practice... Why is it that magazines in doctor waiting rooms (including ours) tend to be so outdated??? And not just old, but the "boring" ones? One factor is that an office staff member has been negligent in replacing old magazines with new ones. Another is that... gasp... patients are stealing the new ones??? Researchers in New Zealand set out to study this common complaint and did find that new magazines tend to "disappear" resultin…

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Why Aren't Medical Research Papers Available for Free?

Policy Guidelines for the Development and Promotion of Open Access, UNESCO Medical research abstracts are freely available to read from databases like pubmed , but if you want to read the entire paper, only very rarely are they available for free. That's a big bummer for small community physicians as well as lay public who want to know more about a particular medical condition or research findings. Your options are to drive to a medical school library and copy it... or contact one of …

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Lisa Marie Presley Throat Cancer Scare

Image from Wikipedia The National Enquirer reported 1/20/14 that Lisa Marie Presley suffered a throat cancer scare when she was told by a medical expert that "the 45-year-old singer’s throat is so severely ravaged that ... the damage could lead to deadly esophageal cancer!" [ link ] The National Enquirer, which is not know for stellar journalism, goes on to report that she has been pushing her voice hard in order to succeed as a singer like her more famous father Elvis. In spi…

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Don't Like a Research Paper? Sue the Journal and Authors...

What is a lawyer to do if medical research produces results that make it more difficult to win lawsuits? Why you sue the medical journal and the researchers who authored it. And you ask the medical journal to retract it. And than you ask for a court order forbidding the report to be entered as evidence in future litigation. Sound like a joke? Wish it was, except it happened... is happening... A Boston lawyer has sued the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology for a case re…

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Vocal Cord Tear Silences R&B Singer Frank Ocean

Image by Fred von Lohmann from Wikipedia On July 25, 2013, R&B singer Frank Ocean was forced to cancel his entire Australian concert tour due to a small vocal cord tear. After singing his opening night with a sore throat during which he reportedly sounded "noticeably off-key," he seeked medical attention and was informed of the unfortunate condition of his vocal cord. Listening to his voice on this YouTube video recorded during this fateful concert, his voice actually doe…

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Medical Translator Commercial...

I'm sure many patients would like a medical translator like this one shown in this humorous commercial. In case you haven't seen it yet...

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Pinterest for the Medical Office

For some time now, I've been struggling to figure out how to use Pinterest social media as it applies to a medical practice. Pinterest is a pinboard-style photo-sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, and hobbies. Users can browse other pinboards for images, 're-pin' images to their own pinboards, or 'like' photos. Pinterest is also one of the newest and hottest social media platform, especiall…

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Infographic on Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA)

Check out this great infographic by Aviisha Medical Institute (generated from information by PubMed.gov, Medscape, and BioMed Central) on the numerous adverse consequences that can arise from the onset of Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA). [Thanks to @ hobsonent who brought it to my attention.] Here's another one regarding how important sleep is:

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Do Surgeons Swear When Operating?

Surgeons, whether deserved or not, have a reputation of being mean-spirited and foul-mouthed as a group overall. It does not help that TV shows and movies perpetuate this reputation. Well, a study was actually carried out to see if surgeons are truly foul-mouthed or not and published their findings in the British Medical Journal in 1999. Using a grading system based on how bad the swearing is, researchers secretly tallied how often surgeons used profanity in the operating room. The obs…

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Obtaining "Authorship" for Improved Search Rankings

As most specialists in search engines know, good and original content is important for search rankings.  However, these two elements are sorely lacking when it comes to medically-related articles. "Good" Medicine by its very nature is complex and full of jargon that is difficult for the lay person to understand. Furthermore, even if jargon-free many medically related articles are too ambiguous and often do not answer questions which people specifically search for. So, when a phys…

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ENT Uses Laser Resulting in Patient Death

In 2010, an ENT used a Sharplan laser with an Omniguide Sidefire Adapter to address a superficial lip hemangioma. The tip of the laser probe was inserted through a small incision made to one side of the hemangioma and activated. Seconds later, the lip and surrounding tissues immediately swelled up indicating trapped gas. A second incision was made in an attempt to release the buildup of gas (analagous to popping a balloon to release air). A short time later, the patient's vital signs dr…

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Keyword Optimization for Medical Websites

As a general rule of thumb, physicians are terrible at running a business... including their own practice. This unfortunate inability also extends to managing practice websites. When it comes to websites, most physicians take the attitude of "if you build it, they will come" which is doomed to failure. The better way of phrasing it would be "only if patients can find you, they might come." Finding you is the first step... And one important element of accomplishing th…

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HIPAA Compliant Text Messaging (for Free)

Let's face it... Physicians love to text message given it is fast, easy, and convenient. However, regular instant messaging (SMS, MMS) that comes with your smartphone is not secure, saved unencrypted on a server somewhere (forever), and most importantly not HIPAA or HITECH compliant. Enter the encrypted and HIPAA compliant messaging services. Though most of these services cost a nominal fee per month, there are a few and growing number of services which offer free and secure instant…

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57 Maggots Removed from Woman's Ear

92 years old woman with Alzheimer's was found to have 57 maggots in her ear sparking a lawsuit. Read more from media reports. Beyond the gross factor and questions regarding how this was allowed to happen, this story does bring up some interesting teaching points and the medicinal properties of "maggot therapy". Media reported the patient suffered from earwax build-up and had "an enlarged ear canal from surgery performed decades earlier." This  surgery was …

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Is Patient Abandonment in the Operating Room Ever Justified?

I ask this question mainly because there WAS an ENT who WAS sued for NOT abandoning his patient in the operating room [ link ]. No way to verify, but additional details can be found in this facebook post . Imagine this hypothetical scenario (as details from original case are not available)... You are an ENT surgeon in a rural community hospital performing a fairly difficult but elective sinus surgery on a 12 years old child with cystic fibrosis with extensive pan-sinus nasal polypoid d…

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