Good ol’ Hippocrates…  His stamp has been permanently inked on all modern-day physicians in the form of the Oath that bears his name.  All physicians have recited a version of the Hippocratic Oath at some point in their medical training.  And even though these famous words were written over 2000 years ago, the relevance of Hippocrates’ words ring true in our modern medical landscape:

• “Do no harm”
• “There is art to medicine”
• “The maintenance of the utmost respect for human life”

But what about the other Hippocratic Oaths?  You know, the ones about food and exercise and their relationship to our overall health.  Never heard of them?  Well, it turns out they don’t really qualify as official “oaths”, but that fact shouldn’t diminish their importance. MORE

The doctor said I had a grade three concussion with vestibular damage and medically could not attend class for a few days and to “avoid reading/studying” in hopes that the concussion would not worsen. I felt like I was going to go into hypertension as I processed what this meant: I was currently studying 24/7 to gear up for midterms and my anatomy and physiology lab practical but I would have to stop all studying for a week. MORE

Nineteen of the top board alerts for Allergy & Immunology – pearls, tips, memory aids, and “secrets” from experts in the field.

1. Intranasal steroids are the single most effective drug for treatment of allergic rhinitis. Decongestion with topical adrenergic agents may be needed initially to allow corticosteroids access to the deeper nasal mucosa.
2. ACE inhibitors can cause dry cough and angioedema.
3. Beta blockers should be avoided whenever possible in patients with asthma because they may accentuate the severity of anaphylaxis, prolong its cardiovascular and pulmonary manifestations, and greatly decrease the effectiveness of epinephrine and albuterol in reversing the life-threatening manifestations of anaphylaxis.

MORE

The bottom line is that soaking a Hamstring graft during surgery in a Vancomycin saline solution (500mg Vancomycin in 100cc NS) has been shown to completely eradicate HS ACLR infection.  There are 4 relevant recent papers on this point below. The abstracts are linked below.  

1. et al found that HS grafts had a 1.52% infection rate vs 1.03% for BTB grafts. This half percent difference is obviously quite small but has caused some to avoid HS grafts
2. et al in 2012 found that soaking the grafts in Vancomycin during surgery eliminated infections, whereas without Vancomycin the infection rate was 1.4%. et al from this same group in Australia published a larger follow-up study in 2017 with essentially identical results
3. et al found that 22% of grafts were culture positive.

MORE