Boing Boing » medical

Knife in man's back for 3 years

David Pescovitz — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 17:30:45 +0000

Billy McNeely of Canada's Northwest Territories was scratching his back when he noticed a pointy protrusion. Turned out to be the tip of a 7.5cm knife blade that was stuck in his back. For three years. Back in 2010, McNeely was stabbed in a brawl following an arm wrestling match. Since then, his back set off prison metal detectors and he's had pain, but he claims that physicians told him it was nerve damage caused by the injury. From BBC News:

But this week, McNeely, 32, was scratching his back as usual when his fingernail caught on something. His girlfriend took a look.
"I told Billy: 'There's a knife sticking out of your back.' I was scared. I was ready to pull it out with tweezers," Stephanie Sayine told CBC News.
McNeely is considering whether to file a lawsuit against the local health department.

"Knife taken from Billy McNeely's back after three years"

From Seizure to Surgery: first-person account of what it's like to have a brain tumor

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 20:46:37 +0000

Jess Hill has published the second part of a three-part series on what it’s like to have a brain tumor diagnosed, then surgically removed. Read: Magical Realism: From Seizure to Surgery. The earlier installment is here.

Building a "bionic man"

David Pescovitz — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 18:57:19 +0000

This is Rex, a $1 million "bionic man" built in the UK by roboticists Richard Walker and Matthew Godden. Rex was the star of a new Channel 4 documentary titled "How to Build A Bionic Man." Rex is outfitted with a variety of synthetic systems and appendages, from prosthetic limbs to a cochlear implant, artificial pancreas to retinal implant. He's now on display at the London Science Museum but will visit America in October to promote the Smithsonian Channel's US premier of the documentary, retitled "Cyborg/Frankenstein."

Surgeon Simulator 2013 game

David Pescovitz — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 17:37:37 +0000

Bossa Studios created the surgery game "Surgeon Simulator 2013" in a weekend. It's somewhere between Operation, advanced medical training simulations, and splatterpunk films. From the description on Steam Greenlight:

You are Nigel Burke... an ordinary guy, with no outstanding skills. Somehow forced to perform an array of vastly complicated procedures, using any tools available. Your goal will be to complete every operation in the quickest time possible, with minimal blood loss!

"Surgeon Simulator 2013"

First-person account of emergency hospital evacuation in NYC after Sandy power outage

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 13:48:44 +0000

Image: CBS News

One of the focal points of the storm emergency in New York City last night was New York University's Langone Medical Center: the hospital's main and backup power generators all failed, and hospital staff had to evacuate patients as power resources faded. All but 50 patients have been evacuated, and the remaining 50 are due to be transferred this morning. Those patients included 20 prematurely-born newborn babies who were in intensive care. This morning, CBS News has a first-person account from Dr. Jonathan LaPook, a CBS News medical correspondent (also a board-certified physician in internal medicine and gastroenterology).

Many patients were too sick to walk down the narrow staircase to the lobby. They were painstakingly carried on plastic sleds - one by one - by teams of four to five people from as high up as the 17th floor. I went to several of the floors with Dr. Mark Pochapin, the director of the Division of Gastroenterology at NYU. He was one of a team of people making sure that communication flowed and that everybody was accounted for. The intensive care unit was already evacuated when I arrived. Lit only by my flashlight, filled with crumpled blankets and other evidence of a hasty retreat, it appeared eerie to me - like a scene in a movie where a cup of still-warm-coffee tells the detective that somebody had been a room only minutes before. But this was undeniably real life and the clock was ticking as the team of workers raced to evacuate the patients.

Read more: "Inside NYC hospital's near disaster during Sandy" (CBS This Morning)

Father performs "Let it Be" to raise funds for his 11-month-old's cancer bills

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 14:39:46 +0000

[Video Link] "On July 5th, 2012, my 11-month-old son, Noah, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor," writes Mike Masse in the introduction to this YouTube video, a beautiful performance of the Beatles' "Let it Be."

Details on the fundraiser here.

In America, little boys have to start lemonade stands when their fathers get cancer. In America, fathers have to do what Mike is doing here when their sons get cancer.

No parent should have to bare their grief to the world, no matter how beautifully, to beg for money to cover the life-saving medical treatment their baby needs. As you see the beauty, be mindful of the injustice in our health care system this represents.

Cancer is one tragedy. The way our country treats people with cancer, even when they're little babies, is another.

(HT: Joe Sabia)

Breast cancer conversations on Twitter, visualized in real time

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 18:39:24 +0000

Here's a cool data viz project from GE that displays real-time conversational spreads about breast cancer on Twitter. (thanks, Laura Hollister)

iPhone app makes a game of monitoring pain for young cancer patients

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 21:50:38 +0000

[Video Link] Canada's Hospital for Sick Children (aka SickKids) and the Cundari creative agency are developing a iPhone app called "Pain Squad" to help monitor and report physical pain and emotional wellness in young cancer patients. Snip from a post on Springwise:

Using the narrative of a police force hunting down pain, users are inducted as a rookie officer working on the case. Patients fill out a daily survey – which asks questions relating to whether they felt pain that day, how intense it was and its location – and can progress through the ranks of the force when they keep their records updated. The concept was created by Toronto-based media agency Cundari, who got stars from Rookie Blue and Flashpoint – two primetime cop shows in Canada – to appear in videos that are unlocked when patients do well and progress the narrative. By gamifying the process, the app gives patients an incentive to keep a daily journal of their pain. The app is still in the testing phase but SickKids hopes to release it later this year.

When I was in the hospital for breast cancer surgery, nurses popped in constantly to ask how my pain levels were; when they knew I was sufficiently doped up but saw me cry, they figured I was going through emotional pain.

But my relatively brief hospital stay is nothing compared to the longer-term in-patient stays many cancer patients must endure. And with many forms of cancer, monitoring pain levels over time is critical because that information can reveal the progression or retreat of disease.

I can see how a handheld app might encourage better data gathering, and more accurate tracking, especially in younger people with cancer who have different levels of comfort in communicating their condition with (older, adult) hospital staff. I haven't played with the app, and the proof is in how the young people with cancer feel about it—but it sounds like a great idea.

(thanks, Maria Popova!)

“My breast has fallen off. Can you reattach it?”

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:08:28 +0000

Atlanta Magazine has an interview with Otis Webb Brawley, M.D., and an excerpt from his new book "How We Do Harm: A Doctor Breaks Ranks About Being Sick in America."

The excerpt tells the story of 53-year-old Edna Riggs, of Atlanta, Georgia. Fear of cancer, medical debt, and losing her job caused her to not seek treatment for her breast cancer until it reached a very advanced state.

(Graphic content, may be upsetting; via @rogersmatthew)

On the history of books bound in human flesh

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 18:15:05 +0000

From "the chirurgeon's apprentice," a fascinating and squick-inducing blog/website devoted to chronicling "the horrors of pre-anaesthetic surgery," an entry about the history of books bound in tanned human skin. Snip from details about the image shown above:

And then there were books which claimed to be made from the human flesh but were, in fact, not. One example comes from the Wellcome Collection in London [left]. It is a curious little notebook which professes to be ‘made of Tanned skin of the Negro whose Execution caused the War of Independence’. Presumably, this refers to Crispus Attucks, a dockworker of Wampanoag who was the first person killed by the British during the Boston Massacre. Immediately following his death, Attucks was held up as an American martyr. As a consequence of its alleged origins, this notebook has become a symbol of the American Revolution.

More. And if you enjoy tweets about 17th-century surgery, you'll want to follow Lindsey Fitzharris, the medical historian behind the "Chirurgeon’s Apprentice" website. (via Vaughan Bell)

Are you ready for your 3D mammogram?

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:50:18 +0000

Via my friend and fellow cancer-warrior Francesco Fondi of Wired (Italy), news that Fujifilm in Japan is launching what it calls "Real 3D Mammography," a medical imaging system that enables technicians to view mammographic images in a kind of 3D. The idea is to see and interpret the detail of internal anatomical breast structures more clearly than is currently possible with a 2D image.

The new system costs about $181K, and is designed to work with "Amulet f," Fujifilm's digital X-ray equipment for breast cancer screening (sold separately). I hereby volunteer to be a test hamster for this thing some day, even though I realize the radiation payload is a little higher with this than with current mammography. But wow, I'd love to see this level of detail about what is going on inside my body right now, as I go through chemotherapy.

Takuya Otani, reporting in Nikkei Electronics & Digital Health Online:

Because the three-dimensional structures of breast tissues can be checked all at the same time, it is possible to determine if a tumor mass is in contact with a mammary gland as well as to measure the depth of microcalcification, Fujifilm said.
When a picture of a breast is taken with the Amulet f, it takes two images from different angles. Then, by displaying the two images on a special LCD monitor and using polarized glasses, it becomes possible to see a 3D image.
The special monitor is manufactured by combining two LCD monitors and a part called "half mirror." (...)When the Amulet f is used to take pictures, a patient is exposed to X-ray radiation twice. But, with Fujifilm's own methods of taking and processing images, the total amount of X-ray increases by only 30-50%, compared with a normal mammography, the company said.

Read more. At the Fujifilm website, an explainer with images including the one shown above.

Two images are displayed on the two high-definition monitors. By wearing the polarized 3D glasses, a 3D image can be viewed through the half mirror.

Open medical knowledge saves lives: Oppose H.R. 3699

Xeni Jardin — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 15:41:01 +0000

Here's a terrific article by Gilles Frydman at e-patients.net advocating for opposition to H.R. 3699, aka The Research Works Act (RWA). The bill before Congress would seriously impede "the ability of patients and caregivers, researchers, physicians and healthcare professionals to access and use critical health-related information in a timely manner." (@timoreilly via @epatientdave)

Empowered health through technology: video contest with cash prize

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:05:01 +0000

The US Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is hosting a Healthy New Year Video Challenge with cash prizes of up to $2,000. They're soliciting short videos with the theme of a New Year’s resolution for improving your health or the health of a loved one, through technology.

"Videos must show how you will use information technology to achieve your resolution and how you plan to maintain it," according to the contest website. The sort of topics one might address (one per video) include obtaining your health records from your doctors and learning how to read and understand their contents, finding online support communities for a specific illness, or direct health improvement actions like using an electronic pedometer to track physical activity, or an iPhone app to count calories or monitor sleep cycles.

Submissions are accepted through February 16. You have to be a US citizen over 18 to participate. More rules here. (thanks, Lygeia Ricciardi!)