Many Americans suffer from chronic pain. Whether this pain is due to muscle spasm, arthritis or diseases such as cancer pain medications are often prescribed. Non narcotic medications such as Ibuprofen or Tylenol should usually be started before narcotics. However, many pain sufferers are given ongoing prescriptions for drugs such [...]
In medicine there are guidelines, which are essentially a series of suggestions in how to manage certain illnesses. These are not set in stone as it is well known that human disease stubbornly refuses to be 100% predictable and because lawyers spend hours searching for any deviation by the doctor [...]
When I first started in emergency medicine, computers were rarely used. If I needed to look up a disease or a new treatment, I would often check out a textbook. Unfortunately, by the time the textbook is published, many of the treatments are already out of date. I would also [...]
Maggots are to be sure not one of nature's most pleasant creations. As an example, would you rather come across a swarm of maggots on a dead piece of animal flesh or a young doe prancing across a meadow? Yet, it is precisely the former, the maggots, which provide a [...]
Bedbugs are pretty nasty. Just imagine those little narly dudes having the time of their short lives, chowing down, if you will, as you lay immobile dreaming of some far off place. As unpleasant as this vision seems, it turns out that these creatures do not carry any known disease [...]
You can find snakes in the most unusual places. One time, while rock climbing I found myself just below a ledge about 100 feet above the forest floor. As I reached for a hold, I heard a rattle and sure enough, basking on a nice sunny piece of granite, was [...]
Nobody likes waiting for hours in a busy emergency room. Not only do the waits leave many patients angry and frustrated, waits can also cause delays in needed treatments and even result in worse outcomes. How then to speed things up without sacrificing thorough and appropriate care? The emergency room [...]
Last week I began a discussion about some of the reasons it can take quite a bit of time to be seen and treated, if you happen to be an emergency room patient. One very important issue is that as far as emergency care goes, it is not necessarily first [...]
Time is of the essence. At least according to Shakespeare and of course modern man. Ever been on a slow computer where the connections take more than the usual split second? What about waiting for that Big Mac, when it takes more than a couple minutes? We are accustomed to [...]
It's not just those wild and crazy dreams which distinguish sleep from the world of daytime activities. Blood pressure normally drops and levels of certain hormones may rise or fall. It has been shown that disruption of normal sleep as is seen in night shift workers increases the risk for [...]