Not Too Old For Surgery

My general philosophy is that age alone is rarely a contraindication to surgery. In fact, elderly patients generally have less physiologic reserve, and often do better with an early surgical approach to most problems.

While many elderly do fine with traumatic brain injury, and require only observation, with little to no intervention, a recent study in the Journal of Neurosurgery shows that patients over 80 years old, did as well as their younger counterparts after surgery for intracranial hematomas.  While the length of stay increased as well as the complications in the elderly group, the overall mortality and return to functional status did not differ.

More info

Diana's Death- Looking Back

From CBS News:

Glamorized in life, Princess Diana continues to be scrutinized 10 years after her death.

An early-morning traffic accident in a Paris tunnel killed Diana's companion, Dodi Al-Fayed, and the driver of their car. But Diana was conscious after the accident and did not appear to be seriously hurt. In truth, she was bleeding internally.

Had the accident occurred in the United States, Diana would have been rushed to a hospital. However, the French have a different system: They first try to stabilize the patient at the scene. Still, as CBS News correspondent Erin Moriarty reports, that difference doesn't explain the series of missteps and delays in Diana's medical care that experts say never should have happened.

After I watched this clip on the CBS News, I was in awe at the horrible care that the Princess had received. I had heard it was the custom to send the Doctor out to the scene of the accident in Europe, which is not usual in the states. An anxious trauma patient needs to have hemorrhagic shock excluded long before any sedation is even considered. They used up their "golden hour" long before she ever got to the hospital. Her care is a good argument for "scoop & run" in these types of situations.

Medicine Tag
Health Tag

 Save This Page

Protecting Children

Parents shopping for school supplies probably haven't thought to include body armor on their lists, but after recent school shootings including April's Virginia Tech massacre, two companies are marketing armored backpacks and uniforms.

"Back in '99 following the Columbine shootings, me and my buddy Joe Curran — both of us are parents of two children — wondered if there was anything out there in the world to protect children in school if there was a shooting," Mike Pelonzi, co-inventor of My Child's Pack, a bulletproof backpack, told ABCNEWS.com.

More.

It's a sad day in America when this is what is needed to keep a child safe at school.

Medicine Tag
Health Tag

 Save This Page

The Video.

Listening To iPod Can Be Shocking

From The Register:

A 37-year-old Canadian jogger suffered "multiple injuries to his head" after ill-advisedly standing under a tree during a thunderstorm while listening to his iPod, the Vancouver Sun reports.

The unnamed victim, reportedly an active church musician and enjoying "religious music" at the time of the incident, was struck by lightning near Vancouver in June 2005. The impressive list of injuries he suffered has just been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and includes burns tracing a pattern from his chest, where he was packing his iPod, to his ears - following the path of the device's earphone cables.

Just one more way that the iPod can be hazardous to your health.

Medicine Tag
Health Tag

 Save This Page

Heeling to the Floor

From ABC News:

Even if one hasn't had firsthand experience zipping across sidewalks on a pair of shoes with wheels in the heels, most everyone is familiar with "heeling," as the activity is called.

Now, doctors are worried that the footwear may put young users at increased risk of sprains and fractures, and a new study may further justify their fears.

According to a study released today in the current issue of the journal Pediatrics, 67 children were treated for injuries from footwear known as Heelys and similar products at Temple Street Children's University Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, over a 10-week period last summer.

I've seen plenty of kids in malls rolling around on these things to wonder why they don't fall. Unfortunately, it looks like they do.

Medicine Tag
Health Tag

 Save This Page

Save Jaws!

From The Concord Monitor:

Year after year, beach season brings accounts of harrowing shark attacks as people around the world plunge into the surf to escape summer's heat.

But the reality is that these fearsome predators kill an average of four people worldwide every year, while humans kill anywhere from 26 million to 73 million sharks annually, according to recent calculations by an international team of scientists.

With the latter toll mounting rapidly in recent years, there has been a growing realization that something must be done to prevent sharks from disappearing from the planet.

Two weeks ago, Mexico, which has a large shark fishery, enacted a new law that protects three species, bans the practice of shark "finning" - slicing off the fins of a newly caught shark and tossing the animal back in the ocean to die - and requires authorities to monitor the activities of large shark-fishing boats. Early next month, officials from around the globe will meet in The Hague, Netherlands, to decide whether to put tight new controls on the trade in two heavily fished species, spiny dogfish and porbeagle, under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

I don't think they're going to make a series of films of the shark being saved from the fisherman.

Medicine Tag
Health Tag

 Save This Page

DIY Nail-gun Injuries

From ABC News:

There has been a huge spike in the number of consumer nail-gun injuries as more and more do-it-yourselfers arm themselves with the powerful tools.

A study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows annual nail-gun injuries to consumers treated in U.S. hospital emergency rooms have soared by about 200 per cent since 1991.

Lead author Dr. Hester Lipscomb says that of 37,000 annual nail-gun injuries, about 40 per cent were among consumers.

We Say: I've seen one that went right into the tibia, and another that went through the sternum, missed the heart, but ended up needing heart-lung bypass to get it out from behind the right pulmonary vein. Seriously, if folks don't know what they're doing, they should just stick with a hammer.

Medicine Tag
Health Tag

 Save This Page

Smarter Clothing

From Defense Tech:

A New Zealand-based performance athletic company has developed a fabric they say can actually analyze trauma to the body and beam telemetry data to a control center so medics will know where and how severely a trooper has been hit.

More.

At first glance, it seems like a great idea. However, they should probably direct their efforts towards better bulletproof vests and such as prevention is better than treatment. Also, no word on how well the embedded electronics hold up to gun fire.