Warning: Don't Pick Your Nose with Chopsticks

Headlines: 14-month-old boy survives after chopstick pierces nose, lodges in brain

A young Chinese boy had to undergo brain surgery after a chopstick became stuck in his nose while playing.

Doctors say the 14-month old accidentally fell on it, piercing his nose and lodging inside his skull.
"It touched upon the deep area of his brain, four centimeters of the chopstick was inside his skull," Dr. Shun Wei told CNN. "The position of the chopstick was very, very lucky for him." Zhao Guilu was in another room washing dishes when she heard her son, Li Jingchao, crying and came running.

The boy was lying on the ground wailing with the stick protruding from his head.
"I rushed in and saw him lying on the ground," Guilu said. "He couldn't stop crying and I noticed a chopstick stuck in his nose."

The boy's panicked mother rushed the child to a nearby medical clinic, but doctors feared it was too risky to remove the stick. A relative offered to drive the the boy and his parents hundreds of miles to Beijing instead.

"I thought at that time, it is all over, my boy will die," father Li Guanglai said.
"During the 10 hours of driving, I felt depressed, I could barely breathe. I looked at my boy and his right side was numb, he was paralyzed."

Neurosurgeons in Beijing feared removing the chopstick would rupture an artery and got the child ready for surgery. Yet when they pulled it, it came straight out easily.

Doctors say the boy had a lucky escape, and he could have been permanently paralyzed or died if the stick has been a few millimeters to either side, or further in.
"I never thought it would be this successful," his father said. "This hospital gave him a second life."

Also, here is a rather irreverant take on the same news story:

Mona Lisa Could Have Used a Stiff Dose of Lipitor!!

Now I've seen everything! Mona Lisa with Hypercholesterolemia?? Say it ain't so.

Anway, some Itialian resarcher says he has evidence that this smirk on Ms. Lisa's face is somehow indicative of her underlying lipid disorder.

Read more about it in this article from the London Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/6939696/Mona-Lisa-smile-due-to-very-high-cholesterol.html

Drug-Disease Interaction: Heroin and Anthrax

Most would agree that heroin is a pretty dangerous drug. Unknown potencies can cause overdose deaths, even in experienced heroin addicts. Lack of sterile technique can lead to infections in the heart and lungs. And chronic use takes a toll on virtually every organ in the body.

Now, the contamination issue has reached a new level of concern.

In Scotland, 5 people have died and 6 more have become sick from shooting up heroin contaminated with Anthrax spores. Bummer!!

Check out the details at the following web site straight from the London Times newspaper: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article6977946.ece

Also, click on the video below for a creepy commentary on this issue posted on YouTube.

Pharmacy School Sucks

When I was coming along, if I used the phrase "that sucks" I would have had my mouth instantly washed out with soap. You see, in those days, the meaning of this phrase was quite literal.

Over the years, the expression has morphed into a much broader meaning, indicating that something is bad, disturbing, upsetting, etc. In fact, it is a modern day form of empathy. I have always teased with Dr. Kimberlin that she ought to teach this term. Thus, when somebody tells you bad news, instead of saying, "That must be frustrating" you can simply say "That Sucks!!" Or if someone is in dire straights (the condition and not the band) you can say, "it must suck to be you."

I was startled to see a commercial on TV in which "The 'S' word" was said out loud for all to hear. I must tell you, I winced when I heard it. But you know what? Sometimes things do suck. Even pharmacy school. But as badly as things might suck, there is always an answer, and many times that answer lies in the drugs we dispense (and sometimes take ourselves).

I hope you like this little parody.

Results of Meta-Analysis of Antidepressant Efficacy are Depressing (Especially to the manufacturers of these products)

A large meta-analysis of the effectiveness of antidepressants show them to be essentially ineffective for anything but the most severe forms of depression. Published in JAMA this week, here's what the press release from the journal had to day:

CHICAGO—An analysis of randomized trials indicates that compared with placebo, the magnitude of benefit of antidepressant medications varies with the severity of depressive symptoms, and may provide little benefit for patients with mild or moderate depression, but appear to provide substantial benefit for patients with very severe depression, according to an article in the January 6 issue of JAMA.

Antidepressant medications (ADM) are the current standard of treatment for major depressive disorder (MDD), but there is little evidence that they have a specific pharmacological effect relative to placebo for patients with less severe depression, according to background information in the article.

Jay C. Fournier, M.A., of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis to estimate the benefit of ADM vs. placebo across a wide range of initial symptom severity in patients diagnosed with depression. The researchers combined data from 6 large-scale, placebo-controlled randomized trials. The studies included 718 adult outpatients.

The authors found that the efficacy of ADM treatment for depression varied considerably, depending on symptom severity. "True drug effects (an advantage of ADM over placebo) were nonexistent to negligible among depressed patients with mild, moderate, and even severe baseline symptoms, whereas they were large for patients with very severe symptoms."

"What makes our findings surprising is the high level of depression symptom severity that appears to be required for clinically meaningful drug/placebo differences to emerge, particularly given the evidence that the majority of patients receiving ADM in clinical practice present with scores [measures of depression] below these levels."

"Prescribers, policy makers, and consumers may not be aware that the efficacy of medications largely has been established on the basis of studies that have included only those individuals with more severe forms of depression. This important feature of the evidence base is not reflected in the implicit messages present in the marketing of these medications to clinicians and the public. There is little mention of the fact that efficacy data often come from studies that exclude precisely those MDD patients who derive little specific pharmacological benefit from taking medications. Pending findings contrary to those reported here and those obtained [in previous studies] by Kirsch et al and Khan et al, efforts should be made to clarify to clinicians and prospective patients that whereas ADM can have a substantial effect with more severe depressions, there is little evidence to suggest that they produce specific pharmacological benefit for the majority of patients with less severe acute depressions," the authors conclude.
(JAMA 2010;303[1]:47-53.

Here's a Fox News Report:

Meltdown at McDonals (Hint: I'm not talking about the cheese on the Big Mac!!)

We've all had items at fast food restaurants that did not live up to our expectations. Reasonable people usually report this to the staff and they are given a replacement. Reasonable people, I said!! But, as we know all too well, some people out there are NOT REASONABLE.

Watch this video as an angry customer expresses her outrage at the restaurant's unwillingness to issue a refund instead of a substitute burger. Jeeeees!

(Note: The Elephant rampage sound track was added in post-production, in case you were wondering!)