If romantic fiction is any guide, any doctor looking for love would be advised to be an emergency room surgeon or deliver babies rather than practise colon resection or remove in-grown toenails. So says Irish Psychiatrist Brendan Kelly, who has probed at length into the burgeoning literary field of medical romance. In an offbeat letter …
Category Archives: Medicine
Painkiller is number one drug in India
According to the latest ORG survey Diclofenac painkiller brand Voveran is the most used drug in India displacing cough medications which till now were the topmost brand. This has already been the trend in other markets. One not so surprising drug in the topmost brand is Liv 52 an ayurvedic preparation from Himalaya. As reported …
In queue
In a very busy emergency we were attending to a RTA (road traffic accident) victim having serious head injuries and other multiple injuries in terminal condition; totally ignoring a drunk having minor injuries who was waiting for his turn for a while. After hanging around observing his comment was- ” If he had been wearing …
Chief O Complaint
Actual conversation (translated from Hindi) with a patient having Gastritis. Me: So what brings you here. He: I came by bus. Me: No, No. Whats your complaint? He: My wife; she sent me. Now the situation was begging for a leading question so- Me: You are having abdominal pain? He: Oooh yes. and then the …
Gone to the dogs
Wonder what it was with dogs last week. Attended no less than seven or eight cases of dog bite in a single day. all shape and categories. Most didn’t require much other than cleaning of wounds and advise regarding vaccination and antibiotics. The situation of rabies being what it is in our country I always …
Attending a summon
This week I attended a court for summon as a witness. I had treated a person who was assaulted by his neighbour for some petty reason about 4 years back. No great damage – a few laceration and abrasions which I had stitched and dressed and subsequently discharging him the same day. Armed with the …
Dengue for surgeons
Despite what is in the textbooks Dengue patients do not always develop rashes till the platelet levels have fallen waay down and even then hemorrhage may be sudden. Today i saw a patient in emergency who was complaining of pain in right upper abdomen and had fever for last 2 days. I had a suspicion …
Fever with headache
This being the dengue season all patients coming to the emergency with headache, fever or bodyache are sifted through with extra precaution. Going by numbers the incidence till now has been less than what it was in previous years but hasnt be low either. Depending on the clinical presentation and symptoms dengue can be divided …
A Complication
Last week a patient presented with one of the complications of operation for gall bladder stones in my emergency. Fifty five year old female was referred from a private hospital about 100km in the interior following development of jaundice. She was operated about a month and a half back for Cholecystitis with cholelithiasis by Laparoscopic …
New CPR technique
This months issue of American Journal of Emergency Medicine describes a new method of resuscitation by abdominal compressions only. As is quite well known CPR by itself is not very effective: succeeding in only a percentage of patients when instituted. The purpose of study was to determine the amount of coronary perfusion obtainable with OAC-CPR …