Conversation Starters

Conversation Starters To Die For

Posts tagged 'medical'

Be Careful of Tylenol (safety for parents and kids!)

Dear all, Last month, we had lecture on liver injury (hepatotoxicity) and tylenol. Too much tylenol can lead to serious sickness. If you are taking tylenol or giving it to your children — check very carefully, make sure it is truly safe and the right time to take it. For those with liver injury or drinking alcohol, the suggested dose is approximately NO MORE THAN 2 grams every 24 hours. If you accidentally take too much tylenol, go immediately to the hospital and tell the staff that you …

Duration : 0:7:39

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Surgical Errors Part II: Wrong Site Surgery and Antibiotics

Dear All, I got a chance to listen to a talk by Dr. James Herndon, who is a past president of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgery (AAOS). He is a distinguished professor of surgery who wanted us to know more about things to improve upon in reducing surgical errors. Please put this information on your radar screen if you or your friend is going to get surgery because it might be of help. My video is on: 1) wrong site surgery (when the wrong place is operated on by accident) and 2 …

Duration : 0:5:17

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Nutrition Part II: Salt Guidelines, pink salt, table salt

Dear All, Some viewers of InvestServ's Fit365 "What is Nutrition" video have asked me whether pink salt is better than table salt. I thought in this video I would talk about how you can decide if this is true. How to Figure Out If A Health Claim is True: You can go onto the website, www.pubmed.gov, which is a search engine from the National Library of Medicine and National Institute of Health. This search engine has an index of all the papers from 4800 journals written in over 70 countries …

Duration : 0:5:12

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Surgical Errors Part I: leaving tools in the patient’s body

4/3/07 I went to a talk by Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon, author and professor at Harvard. He did a study looking at why doctors accidentally leave sponges, tools in a patient during surgery, called “Risk factors for retained instruments and sponges after surgery.”
N Engl J Med. 2003 Jan 16;348(3):229-35.
This video is aboout what I learned from him in this paper and from asking him a couple of questions.

For more of a written description:

http://bostonmedicalstudent.wordpress.com/2007/04/26/surgical-errors-part-i-leaving-tools-inside-the-patients-body-by-accident/

General idea behind these health videos:
I’m a first year medical student in Boston. Every day, I’m learning exciting and critical topics on medicine and health. But too often, the things I’m learning about never reach the public.

I wanted to try an experiment — sharing health information on youtube, with the sole purpose of trying to get more important health information to you all. Unlike some of the other health videos out there, mine are not about promoting a book, a diet, a pill, an agenda. I hope to answer your questions either through e-mail or through the video updates — please, please, (please!) e-mail me any questions and I will try my best to answer them by asking my professors and by citing credibles sources (JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, etc…)

e-mail:
unitedstatesmedicalstudent@gma il.com

I hope this experiment works — and if it fails, I hope someone sees these videos, says, “hmmm, these are bad videos, but I love the idea,” and decides to go for it.

_____________

P.S. I wanted to point out something important: I’m just a medical student, so my posts are hopefully conversation starters, but only conversation starters — not medical advice. If my posts intrigue you, please read more about the topic and discuss about it with your doctor. I’d be happy to send you the information in the journal articles I talk about. Also, the opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those of Harvard Medical School, its affiliated institutions, or Harvard University. Best wishes!

Duration : 0:3:33

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Grey’s anatomy episode: oxygen prevents amputation?

In the episode My Favorite Mistake, Christina decides to amputate the gentleman’s foot — but she didn’t consider another alternative (hyperbaric oxygen treatment). Please be careful of people who say hyperbaric oxygen is a cure-all — because it’s not (more rigorous research is needed). But I wanted to share this information as a possible consideration.

References:

1) “[hyperbaric oxygen] might have a role in reducing the risk of major amputation in patients with diabetic foot ulcers.”

Non-surgical and drug treatments. From the British Medical Journal 2006;332;900-903

2) Hyperbaric Oxygenation Accelerates the
Healing Rate of Nonischemic Chronic
Diabetic Foot Ulcers. Diabetes Care 26:2378–2382, 2003

General idea behind these health videos:
I’m a first year medical student here at the U.S.. Every day, I’m learning exciting and critical topics on medicine and health. But too often, the things I’m learning about never reach the public.

I wanted to try an experiment — sharing health information on youtube, with the sole purpose of trying to get more important health information to you all. Unlike some of the other health videos out there, mine are not about promoting a book, a diet, a pill, an agenda. I hope to answer your questions either through e-mail or through the video updates — please, please, (please!) e-mail me any questions and I will try my best to answer them by asking my professors and by citing credibles sources (JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, etc…)

e-mail:
unitedstatesmedicalstudent@gma il.com

I hope this experiment works — and if it fails, I hope someone sees these videos, says, “hmmm, these are bad videos, but I love the idea,” and decides to go for it.

____________

P.S. I wanted to point out something important: I’m just a medical student, so my posts are hopefully conversation starters, but only conversation starters — not medical advice. If my posts intrigue you, please read more about the topic and discuss about it with your doctor. I’d be happy to send you the information in the journal articles I talk about. Also, the opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those of Harvard Medical School, its affiliated institutions, or Harvard University. Best wishes!

Duration : 0:3:28

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Grey’s Anatomy Episode: Hiccups/Gastroplication/Acupuncture

This is my (medical student’s) response to the Grey’s Anatomy Episode, “The Other Side of Life.”

I wanted to find out what procedure Susan Grey had and what exactly happened.

Short medical summary:
Susan Grey had the hiccups! She first was given chlorpromazine, which is normally an anti-psychotic drug, but sometimes works to relieve hiccups.

Hiccups are a sign of some underlying problem and with Susan, her issue was one of acid-reflux — when acid goes from the stomach up to the esophagus (which is the tube that connects the mouth to the stomach).

Miranda decides to do a more drastic intervention called an endoscopic gastroplication
– which in real life has a high long-term fail rate! (go figure).

In the episode, the endoscopy leads to more complications — a bacterial infection of Susan’s heart valves called bacterial endocarditis. This infection became uncontrolled and evolved into probably what was sepsis, which completely overwhelmed Susan’s ability to recover from the infection.

For more information on “sepsis”:

http://www.clevelandclinic.org/health/health-info/docs/3800/3887.asp?index=12361

I thought I would throw out the idea of “hiccups” and “acupuncture” for your consideration, as it is something that seems to work in case reports. Several groups have reported anecdotal cases of success using acupuncture to relieve hiccup symptoms.

Case reports are less rigorous forms of research, based on observation. Doctors normally don’t make much of case reports. But given how acupuncture is usually very safe (if the acupuncturist is a certified one in the U.S.), I thought it would be interesting to consider it as a possible option and as an area of further research.

P.S. I wanted to point out something important: I’m just a medical student, so my posts are hopefully conversation starters, but only conversation starters — not medical advice. If my posts intrigue you, please read more about the topic and discuss about it with your doctor. I’d be happy to send you the information in the journal articles I talk about. Also, the opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those of Harvard Medical School, its affiliated institutions, or Harvard University. Best wishes!

Duration : 0:5:49

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Health and Medical School Questions

Dear All — I’m a first year medical student in Boston. Every day, I’m learning important topics on medicine and health. But too often, the things I’m learning about never reach the public.

I wanted to try an experiment — sharing what I am learning on youtube, with the sole purpose of trying to get more important health information to you all. Unlike some of the other health videos out there, mine are not about promoting a book, a diet, a pill, an agenda. I hope to explore your questions on health and medicine with you — please, please, (please!) e-mail me any questions and I will try my best to answer them by asking my professors and/or by citing credibles sources (JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, etc…)

my blog is:

www.bostonmedicalstudent.wordpress.com

e-mail:
unitedstatesmedicalstudent@gmail.com

I hope this experiment works — and if it fails, I hope someone sees these videos, says, “hmmm, these are bad videos, but I love the idea,” and decides to go for it.

Thank you for your time!

________

P.S. I wanted to point out something important: I’m just a medical student, so my posts are hopefully conversation starters, but only conversation starters — not medical advice. If my posts intrigue you, please read more about the topic and discuss about it with your doctor. I’d be happy to send you the information in the journal articles I talk about. Also, the opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those of Harvard Medical School, its affiliated institutions, or Harvard University. Best wishes!

Duration : 0:3:18

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First year medical school

Dear All,
This is a video about some of the first year medical school classes we are taking. Hope you enjoy it!
Jeff

for more random stuff, my blog is:
www.bostonmedicalstudent.wordpress.com

P.S. I wanted to point out something important: that the opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those of Harvard Medical School, its affiliated institutions, or Harvard University. Also, I’m just a medical student, so my posts are hopefully conversation starters, but only conversation starters — not medical advice. If my posts intrigue you, please read more about the topic and discuss about it with your doctor. I’d be happy to send you the information in the journal articles I talk about. Best wishes!

Duration : 0:7:53

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