Don’t be surprised if patients start asking more questions than usual about awareness under anesthesia. We can all thank a recent article in The Atlantic magazine, with a large-print headline on the cover: “Awake Under the Knife”. Written by a UCSF medical student in preclinical training, the article not only assures everyone that awareness can happen, but takes pains to point out that anesthesiologists can’t always prevent it.
The ...
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How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
-Annie Dillard
I wish I could add up all of the moments I spend waiting for things to happen.
I wait for computers to boot up. I wait for computer screens to load. I wait for programs to ask for and accept my user name and password for the umpteenth time so I can view a CT scan and then re-enter a different ...
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When I think of Big Joe, I see his overalls, and how he filled them. And how a couple of months after I operated on him, there was room for both of us in there. Big Joe: farmer, salt of the earth, tough, stoic. On the day I met him, if it'd been Halloween, I might have tried to stick a candle in him. That's how orange he was. My ...
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This series is brought to you by MedPage Today.
1. ACOG Takes on Sexual Coercion. Clinicians need to offer "discreet and confidential contraception" to patients who have been coerced into pregnancy by intimate partners because of a "known link" between such coercive behavior and violence.
2. J&J Projects 37% Revision Rate for Hip Implants. An internal study by Johnson & Johnson into failure rates of its ...
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Skill to do comes of doing.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are in the last steps of getting surgery arranged; the counseling is complete and the consent is on the clipboard. Just as the patient is putting pen to paper, she asks, “When I’m asleep, you’re not going to let some trainee practice on me, are you? I mean, I wouldn’t let the brand ...
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This series is brought to you by MedPage Today.
1. Checklists May Improve 'Crisis' Care in the OR. Using a checklist helped assure compliance with processes set up to handle a crisis situation -- such as a cardiac arrest or massive hemorrhage -- in the operating room.
2. Smartphone Apps Not Reliable for Melanoma Dx. Four smartphone applications that purport to distinguish between benign lesions and ...
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Losing weight can decrease the incidence of several chronic and debilitating diseases, as well as their associated complications and risks during the surgical period. Additionally, it can facilitate recovery after surgery. Obesity increases the risk for:
“Will this case take very long?”
“If the surgery gods are with me we should be done in an hour.”
The above brief exchange took place between me and the anesthesiologist attending to my patient on a recent surgery. The patient was a middle aged woman who was about to undergo surgery to relieve a small bowel obstruction. She had been visiting her husband in a distant city where he was working ...
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Some physicians will make over 7 times what the average college dropout will earn over a lifetime. Even within medicine there are significant differences in lifetime earnings between primary care, surgery, and specialty care. With the recent Powerball lottery jackpot at a record high, there was a lot of daydreaming going on recently for many Americans, maybe even some doctors: What would you do if you actually won it all? ...
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I had a conversation with a family practice physician today, a man who is far closer to the end of his career than the beginning. He is part of a private practice group that recently was sold to one of the larger hospital groups in the area, which put him on a salary, but also allowed him to work only three days per week. He stated that the decrease in ...
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"A comprehensive and extremely useful roadmap for doctors."
-Eric Topol, MD, author of The Creative Destruction of Medicine
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