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When Dr. Google wins
In a recent poll by The Physicians Foundation, more than 6 in 10 doctors surveyed said their patients were influenced by misinformation and/or disinformation at least a moderate amount over the past year
Rural physicians appeared to experience the phenomenon more often than urban doctors
Nine out of 10 doctors said the problem is that medical misinformation gleaned from the internet has increased over the past five years
Half of doctors said they felt confident they could identify and correct patients’ bad information when they met them during appointments, but a larger issue remains unresolved: It’s a lot easier to get medical information (good or bad) on the web than it is to see a doctor
Body of knowledge
Your liver has at least 500 known functions
Stories for the waiting room
In 2015, a 52-year-old tourist was swimming in the Red Sea when he collided with a school of fish. It was quite a sight. Not so much what happened next: A few days later, the man developed a swollen and droopy eyelid that wouldn’t heal
A doctor’s visit revealed an area of inflammation called a granuloma on his eyelid. Granulomas are small clusters of macrophage cells that congregate to wall off foreign substances or infections that the immune system cannot eliminate. The man underwent surgery to correct the issue
But doctors ended up removing more than the granuloma. They found two mysterious “tubular structures,” which a biologist later identified as the jawbones of a halfbeak, a small fish that dwells in shallow, warm coastal waters. The fish get their name from their distinctive jaws, in which the lower jaw juts out significantly farther than the upper, resembling a long needle. Like a chin, it does not move, but rather serves as a specialized sensory device for detecting prey
The halfbeak jawbones had become embedded in the muscles controlling the man’s eyelid, immobilizing it and causing it to drop. Once removed, the patient’s eyelid recovered quickly
No word on what happened to the hapless halfbeaks, but they probably weren’t smiling
Doc talk
Trepanation — the deliberate drilling, cutting or scraping of a hole into the human skull. As the oldest known surgical procedure in human history, it has been performed for millennia for both medical purposes (like relieving pressure from traumatic brain injuries) and spiritual or ritualistic reasons. One of the oldest examples dates to 7,300 B.C. at the site of the village of Vasilyevka in Azerbaijan
Mania of the week
Habromania — a form of insanity characterized by delusions of a pleasing nature
Life in Big Macs
One hour of showering burns 136 calories (based on a 150-pound person) or the equivalent of 0.2 Big Macs. It also wastes more than 130 gallons of water
Best medicine
Wife: Well, what did the doctor say?
Husband: He said I’ve got attention deficit something or other
Observation
“I like long walks, especially when they’re taken by people who annoy me.”
— Comedian Fred Allen (1894-1956)
Medical history
This week in 1867, the first U.S. gallstone operation was performed by Dr. John Stough Bobbs, known as “the father of cholecystotomy” in Indianapolis, Ind. While operating on his patient, Mary E. Wiggins, for a suspected ovarian cyst, Bobbs found the gall bladder to be inflamed and containing structures like “several solid ordinary rifle bullets.”
He opened the sac, removed multiple gallstones but left the gall bladder in place after closing the defect (cholecystostomy). Wiggins recovered and outlived Dr. Bobbs
Perishable publications
Many, if not most, published research papers have titles that defy comprehension. They use specialized jargon, complex words and opaque phrases like “nonlinear dynamics.” Sometimes they don’t, and yet they’re still hard to figure out. Here’s an actual title of an actual published research study: “The Perils of Bungee Jumping” by Marc J. Shapiro et al., published in Clinical Communications
At the time of publication in 1995, bungee jumping was a relatively new recreational phenomenon. Apart from the pretty obvious peril of jumping off high places attached to an oversized rubber band, the researchers found that injuries like bungee-related strains, bruising and perhaps the occasional stress attack were possible. They did note that the chance of serious injury was at least 1,000 times greater among parachutists than among bungee jumpers
Self-exam
Q: Do you know your normal body temperature, Celsius-wise?
1) 37 degrees C
2) 20 degrees C
3) 99 degrees C
4) 50 degrees C
A: 1) 37 degrees C (98.6 F)
Epitaphs
“I am a busy man. I don’t have time for this.”
— Wayne Everett Strickland (1927-2005)
LaFee is vice president of communications for the Sanford Burnham Prebys research institute
