America’s favorite neurosurgeon/T.V. doc has caught the dreaded H1N1 (and so has his camera man). He was on a trip to war-torn Afghanistan when he started feeling sick and developed a painful cough and other symptoms, which he initially blamed on the stress of working in 100-degree heat in a bulletproof vest. However, his symptoms quickly escalated, and he was diagnosed with swine flu.
Dr. Gupta describes his experience on his blog, Paging Dr. Gupta:
I was nauseated and my entire body hurt. I tried to explain away my symptoms with lots of different excuses. You don’t sleep much while covering a war. My bulletproof jacket didn’t fit perfectly and was very heavy. There was a lot of dust and dirt, and maybe I had what the Marines referred to as the Kandahar Krud. It turned out to be none of those things.
You can read about his entire experience on his blog. Here’s wishing the good doctor a speedy recovery (though it sounds like he’s pretty much there already).
Still no word from the swine flu twitter feed about its latest victim.
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Image: iStockphoto
Thirteen-year-old Nicholas Rossi took a nasty fall off his bike and hit his head. After picking himself up, he felt fine, so he went home. But when his mom spotted a large bump forming on his cranium, she rushed him to the nearest hospital in their rural Australian town.
The general practitioner on call, Rob Carson, recognized that the boy had fractured his skull, causing a potentially fatal blood clot— the type of brain injury similar to what killed actress Natasha Richardson.
The hospital didn’t have the necessary tool for proper brain surgery, so Carson went to the closet and nabbed a standard power drill. Before drilling into the boy’s skull, he phoned a Melbourne-based neurosurgeon for advice. He then performed the surgery, relieving enough pressure to save Rossi’s life.
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Sure, drugs are too plentiful, prescribed too often, and promoted too heavily. But we’re not above saying that taking a pill can sometimes be a great idea. Like this one, from Proteus Biomedical in Redwood City, California: an ingestible microchip [insert Innerspace joke here] that can be added to any capsule or tablet without altering the medicine and performs an EKG when you swallow it. Made of food ingredients (so it’s non-toxic, though not necessarily vegetarian-safe), the chip reportedly:
has digestible sensors that are made of food products and are activated by stomach fluids. Once swallowed, the sensors can send a digital signal through the body to a receiver. The receiver date- and time-stamps, decodes, and records information about the drug and the dosage. It also measures and reports heart rate, activity, and respiratory rate.
According to USA Today, the receiver could come in the form of a bandage that transmits data to a cellphone, so caregivers or relatives could get a text letting them know when and what pills their charge has taken—or whether they’ve taken them at all.
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Image: iStockPhoto
Kudos to technology! A British surgeon volunteering in the Democratic Republic of Congo performed a complicated shoulder amputation by following text messages from a colleague in London. Dr. David Nott had never before performed a forequarter amputation, a procedure done only about ten times a year in the U.K. and requiring the removal of the shoulder blade and clavicle.
His patient was a 16-year-old boy whose left arm had been ripped off and was developing a dangerous infection. Nott knew it was a do or die situation. So he texted Professor Meirion Thomas, a colleague in London who had performed the surgery before. Thomas texted back step-by-step instructions, explaining where to make the incisions and how to divide major nerves and arteries. The text instructions ended with “Easy! Good luck.”
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