HealthExecNews » Lighter Side

Heart dropped on ground used in (successful) transplant

Carol Katarsky — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:00:45 +0000

Paging Dr. Butterfingers. Doctors in Mexico used a heart that had been dropped on the ground (literally) on its way to the hospital for transplantation. More troubling, the patient who received the heart, Erika Hernandez, hasn’t been told that her new heart made a brief detour to the floor before it was placed inside her chest. Doctors said they were leaving it up to her family to pass on the story.

Of course, since Hernandez is reportedly thriving after the procedure, she may not be too concerned about the details of how the heart got to her.

The heart was donated by the relatives of a man who died in a car accident. It traveled nearly 300 miles by ambulance, plane and helicopter to get to Hernandez’s hospital, while national news reported on the case. Traffic was stopped to allow the helicopter to land near the hospital. After disembarking, one of the staffers wheeling the heart’s cooler stumbled. The cooler’s lid flew off and the heart landed in the street.

The medics quickly grabbed the heart, which fortunately had been wrapped in plastic, put it back in the cooler and continued on their way.

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Woman’s breast implant saves her life during stabbing

Carol Katarsky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:00:30 +0000

Medical procedures sometimes have unanticipated downsides — in this case, a patient received an unexpected benefit.

A Florida woman credits her recent breast implants with saving her life.

The woman said she was stabbed repeatedly in the chest by her former fiancé’s current girlfriend.

Doctors say the saline implant — a procedure which she had had performed just three months earlier — protected her from serious injury, because the walls of the implant and the saline kept the knife from piercing deeper into her chest or damaging her heart

The implant did not survive the attack.

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Woman cures her own cancer — by coughing it out

Carol Katarsky — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:00:42 +0000

The phrase “coughing up a lung” is about to take on an entirely new meaning. Claire Osborn, from Coventry, England, had a coughing fit so hard, it actually removed a 3/4-inch tumor.

Awhile back, the otherwise healthy 37-year-old woman felt a strange tickle in her throat, and then coughed up a small “liver-colored” piece of tissue. Concerned, she immediately went to her doctor’s office.

The doctor sent the tissue to be analyzed — it turned out to be a metastatic adenocarcinoma that had probably formed in glandular tissue in the back of her mouth.

Follow-up tests to prep for chemotherapy showed that the cancer — which is usually aggressive — was seemingly totally removed. Doctors couldn’t find any trace of a remaining tumor. They theorize the cancer grew on what was essentially a “stalk” which was removed by her coughing fit with nearly surgical precision.

Doctors did perform a small procedure to surgically remove any cancer cells that may have been missed by the scan.

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Patient with nail in brain stops to post X-ray on Facebook

Carol Katarsky — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:00:54 +0000

Medical professionals can get in heaps of trouble for posting patient info on Facebook — but patients do it themselves happily. Last week, Dante Autullo of Orland Park, Illinois, was building a shed and using a nail gun overhead when he felt a sharp impact “like a punch” on the side of his head.

At first, he thought he’d been cut by a stray nail whizzing by. His girlfriend inspected the small wound, cleaned it with peroxide and Autullo continued with his work for the day, including some snow plowing. The next day, when he awoke from a nap feeling nauseated, his girlfriend suggested they go to the hospital to play it safe.

When doctors showed him the X-ray of his head with a 3 1/4″ nail nestled deep in the middle of his brain, Autullo assumed the doctors were playing a practical joke on him.

He was sent to Advocate Christ Medical Center in nearby Oak Lawn for emergency surgery. Along the way, Autullo took a few minutes to post the X-ray to his own Facebook wall. Autullo is now recovering well from the surgery with no apparent permanent damage or loss of function. He did lose a part of his skull during the extraction though, which was replaced with titanium mesh.

Doctors say the nail missed the part of the brain that controls motor function by mere millimeters. The lack of pain-indicating nerves in the brain itself explain why Autullo felt the impact to his skull, but no other pain from the nail being embedded in his head.

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Pen removed from patient after 25 years — and it still writes!!

Carol Katarsky — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:00:20 +0000

This case is a medical marvel — and a stunning promotional tool for some pen company. A 76-year-old woman went to the doctor complaining about weight loss and some other gastrointestinal symptoms.

Routine testing discovered she had diverticulitis, and a follow-up CT scan showed she had a foreign body in her stomach. It turned out to be a pen.

The woman told her doctor that about 25 years earlier, she had been poking at a spot on her tonsil with the pen when she slipped, fell and accidentally swallowed the pen. At the time, both her husband and her doctor dismissed the possibility and said she must have been mistaken. (X-rays taken at the time showed no pen in her gut.)

On this most recent visit to the doctor, the pen was removed — and found to still work. Her symptoms have gone away, and the hospital is using the case as a teaching example of two rules: 1) Abdominal X-rays don’t show every single foreign object, and 2) Even if a patient’s story sounds unbelievable, it may just be true.

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Paging Dr. Joker: No fat jokes about patients

Carol Katarsky — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 10:00:18 +0000

It may have seemed like a good idea to mock obese patients in print, but one surgeon-turned-comedian discovered the joke was on him.

John D. Kelly IV is an orthopedic surgeon at the University of Pennsylvania. He also writes a humor column for Outpatient Surgery Magazine, in addition to do doing stand-up comedy in his free time. He even has a web page devoted to the issue of “healing through laughter.”

Recently, those two worlds got a little too close for comfort.

Under deadline pressure, Kelly says he quickly assembled a bunch of one-liners for his August humor column. Many of the jokes were retreads from Rodney Dangerfield and other well-known comedians. Kelly referred to obese patients as “behemoths.” And under the premise of warning doctors that performing surgery on obese patients might be dangerous, Kelly used such comedy “classics” as: “You should worry about performing surgery on the super-sized if … there is a comma in your patient’s body weight… a patient wears his wristwatch on his finger…[or] has more chins than a Chinese phone book.”

Hysterical!

Also: Cruel and unprofessional!

In a totally unsurprising turn of events, Kelly and the magazine received criticism from sources far and wide, including patients, patient and health advocates, bloggers and the subscribers to the magazine. (The article was eventually pulled from the magazine’s web site.)

Kelly has since issued an apology in the magazine and has been in touch with bloggers who reported on the dust-up. “I blew it. I was not respecting the dignity of my patients. I didn’t recognize that this is a different audience than the comedy clubs. Of course, I will revamp my comedy routines now that I know the potential hurt some jokes can inflict,” was part of the apology he sent to a blogger at FormerFatDudes, a blog about gastric bypass surgery and related topics.

Officials at Penn also issued a statement saying Kelly’s statements don’t reflect the consensus view of the health system.

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Baa-aad medicine: Meet Alfie, the cancer-detecting sheep

Carol Katarsky — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 10:00:01 +0000

A British sheep named Alfie is being credited with diagnosing his owner’s cancer and sending her to the doctor for treatment.

Emma Turner of Wroughton, Wiltshire says that last October, her usually mild-mannered pet sheep Alfie repeatedly head-butted her in the chest. Alfie was so worked up, it took three people to settle him down. A nasty bruise with a lump in the middle of it developed the next day, and Turner went to the doctor to have it checked out.

At the local hospital, doctors examined the lump and discovered Turner had early stage breast cancer. According to Turner, the doctors said the lump probably would’ve gone undiscovered for years — and spread to other parts of her body — if Alfie hadn’t forced the issue and sent her to seek treatment sooner.

Turner has undergone chemo and is scheduled to get a mastectomy. Her prognosis is good. She fully credits Alfie with saving her life. And for skeptics, she points out that Alfie has been his usual sweet-tempered self since the one and only case of head-butting last fall.

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Newest dread disease: Blackberry neck

Carol Katarsky — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 10:00:15 +0000

Over-reliance on your smartphone could leave you with an ugly mess.

At least that’s the claim of a New York City aesthetician who’s created a new “Blackberry facial.” The deep exfoliation treatment is allegedly designed to prevent and treat wrinkles formed on the neck when people spend too much time with their heads bent down looking at their phones, tablets and other tech gadgets.

Does it work? For the people who pay $200 for 45 minutes of steaming, oxygen and special laser pulses, we certainly hope so.

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Cops called on patient for paying doc with pennies

Carol Katarsky — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 10:00:32 +0000

Pro tip: Doctors are stressed enough about their reimbursements. Adding fuel to the fire by paying with coins won’t help anyone.

That’s the lesson learned by Jason West, of Vernal, Utah, who went to the Basin Clinic to dispute a $25 charge. After confirming that the clinic would accept cash payment, West allegedly threw 2,500 pennies on the counter and floor and told clinic staff to count it.

Staff, concerned about his behavior, called police who issued West a citation for disorderly conduct. The citation carries a fine of up to $140 — more than five times the disputed bill.

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You’re not getting fatter — you’re still growing

Carol Katarsky — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 10:00:10 +0000

Can’t fit into your high school jeans any more? Blame your ongoing growth spurt. The morning trip to Krispy Kreme for a doughnut and coffee may not be helping your waistline stay slim, but new research indicates that at least some of the middle age spread is actually due to our still-growing pelvises (pelvii?).

Researchers at University of North Carolina School of Medicine studied CT scans of nearly 250 people and found that a person’s pelvic width continues to expand long after they’ve reached their maximum height. Researchers theorize that even without gaining any weight, that pelvic expansion can add an average of three inches to a person’s waist between the ages of 20 and 79.

The study was published in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research.

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