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Who still uses a pager?
Seven years ago, a medical student asked me why doctors still used pagers. I blogged about the reasons pagers were favored such as excellent reception in all parts of the hospital including radiology,...
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Three unusual cases
You couldn’t do again it if you tried A 42-year-old man was stabbed in the right chest and was mildly hypotensive on arrival. A chest tube was inserted and returned 500 mL of blood. After an ultrasound...
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Unusual Cases Part 2
Patient eel thyself A 50-year-old man presented to a Hong Kong emergency department with abdominal pain. He had signs of peritonitis on physical examination. An x-ray of the abdomen revealed the...
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State rules surgeon whereabouts must be documented
Last week the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine ruled that surgeons must chart every time they enter and leave an operating room and who took over for them when they were absent....
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Next time you eat a club sandwich, think about this
A 2014 review collected 136 case reports of accidental toothpick ingestion over an 85 year period. While swallowing a toothpick is a rare, the damage is often significant because the long narrow pointy...
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Should speed eating contests be banned?
The eating contest season is almost over. As far as I can determine, there was only one deaths this year. A 41-year-old California man died in August while participating in a taco eating contest at a...
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Third leading cause of death revisited
Ever since the publication of the infamous 2016 BMJ opinion piece by Makary claiming medical error should be considered the third leading cause of death in the US, the debate on the true incidence of...
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Top 10 harms patients experience in hospitals
More made-up news about patient harms. Following up on last month’s post on the fallacy of medical error as the third leading cause of death in the US, here is another wrinkle on the topic. A website...
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Bilateral pneumothoraces after acupuncture
A woman in New Zealand suffered bilateral pneumothoraces (collapsed lungs) after undergoing acupuncture treatments for arm and wrist pain. Needles had been placed at Jian Jing points (see Figure 1) in...
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Unusual cases Part 2
Trampolining is not a team sport A 12-year-old boy was jumping on a backyard trampoline and thought it would be fun if all of his friends bounced on it together. When they did, the trampoline dipped...
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Unusual cases part 3
A 60-year-old woman presented to an emergency department with chest pain. At a wedding the day before, she had eaten wasabi thinking it was avocado and experienced chest pressure, which did not go...
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Unusual cases part 4
Do not put stuff in your urethra A 14-year-old Chinese boy placed some magnetic beads in his urethra and thought he could get them out by himself. After attempting to remove them by inserting even more...
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About that trip to Mars…
Astronomer and co-recipient of this year’s Nobel Prize in physics Didier Queloz doesn’t think we can escape the effects of climate change by moving to another planet. Habitable planets—if they even...
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Doctor sues former hospital for defamation
Dr. William Husel is suing Mt. Carmel Health System and its corporate parent Trinity Health for defamation. Last June, he was indicted for murder in the deaths of 25 critically ill patients he was...
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Nobel Prize winner insults all doctors
by Physician’s Weekly blogger, Skeptical Scalpel At the annual meeting of the American Economic Association, Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton said to the Washington Post, “Physicians are a giant...
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Third leading cause of death revisited
Ever since the publication of the infamous 2016 BMJ opinion piece by Makary claiming medical error should be considered the third leading cause of death in the US, the debate on the true incidence of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Top 10 harms patients experience in hospitals
More made-up news about patient harms. Following up on last month’s post on the fallacy of medical error as the third leading cause of death in the US, here is another wrinkle on the topic. A website...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bilateral pneumothoraces after acupuncture
A woman in New Zealand suffered bilateral pneumothoraces (collapsed lungs) after undergoing acupuncture treatments for arm and wrist pain. Needles had been placed at Jian Jing points (see Figure 1) in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Unusual cases Part 2
Trampolining is not a team sport A 12-year-old boy was jumping on a backyard trampoline and thought it would be fun if all of his friends bounced on it together. When they did, the trampoline dipped...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Doctors without scruples
by Physician’s Weekly blogger, Skeptical Scalpel A pregnant 28-year-old Bakersfield, California woman, admitted to a hospital on January 9 with contractions, died after receiving an unspecified amount...
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