Category: medical news

Ectopic to the MAX

~ Pharmer

Phoenix woman gives birth to baby she carried in abdomen.

Nicolette Soto was able to carry an ectopic pregnancy and deliver a live baby  at 32 weeks.  The delivery of Azelan Cruz Perfecto , weighing in at 2 lb, 14 oz,  occurred at Banner Good Samaritan hospital in Phoenix, AZ.

This kind of success is unexpected, and most women will have the embryo  (with surrounding structures)  removed, or  have the embryo killed using methotrexate.  Under most circumstances of ectopic pregnancy,  a rupture will occur which could result in the death of the mother.

The article does not describe well the location of the fetus in this case.  Here’s the quote:

“Doctors said the pregnancy is rare.  They were still determining where the egg first implanted itself and where it grew outside the uterus, Holloway said.

Surgeons believe Soto had a corneal (sic) pregnancy, where the egg grew just outside the uterus. The area is surrounded by walls that are not supposed to stretch enough to accommodate a baby, said Rodney Edwards, one of Soto’s surgeons at Good Samaritan.”

If you want to learn more about the supposed  location of this fetus within the mom, google CORNUAL pregnancy. 

Perhaps technology will one day permit  routinely moving ectopic embryos to a safer location in the uterus,  allowing them to continue to develop.

Late News: the Electrolyte Shortage

~ Pharmer

Drugs For Critically Ill In Short Supply – Nashville News Story – WSMV Nashville.

Pharmer’s been telling you….  drugs for critical care, and for chemotherapy have been in short supply like never before.

Above is an article highlighting the severe  electrolyte shortage we’ve been juggling for many months at the hospital pharmacies.

TPN  (total parenteral nutrition) has been a big challenge as hospitals change and juggle products and ration in response to the shortages.  The multivitamin supplement and vitamin C supply  has been a problem since last year.   Patients are now having multivitamins added  into their  TPN formulations on a staggered basis.

Changing to different drug  products with different concentrations has increased the error rate as personnel adjust to the new concentrations.

The electrolyte shortage, in particular, is largely influenced by quality control and oversight issues at American Regent, one of the few suppliers of  these drugs.

The FDA, has not been effective in balancing the oversight of quality control with the risks of short or no supply of essential drug products.  This is is either by design, (to relieve the  financial pressure of medicare and social security), or just because it’s the usual inefficient government organization, or a bit of both.

Report: Doctors Refusing to Treat Overweight Patients | CNSnews.com

~ Pharmer

Remember the obstetricians revolting against the crazy malpractice lawsuits and refusing to treat lawyers or their spouses?

Remember when the wrongful life lawsuits drove obstetricians in  France to refuse prenatal ultrasonography?

Report: Doctors Refusing to Treat Overweight Patients | CNSnews.com.

This new trend has a different basis, but  is completely EXPECTED.   The Obstetricians are now turning away overweight patients, citing a lack of equipment to take care of the very huge, and the high risks involved in the care, particularly in managing child birth.

Expect  MORE of the larger ladies  to be denied  prenatal care, and come into the emergency room, with neglected diabetes and other complications, ready to deliver.

On the Pill? Your Partner Might Not be Smelling the Real You

~ Pharmer

The Tricky Chemistry of Attraction – WSJ.com.

WSJ presents a body of research suggesting that the use of hormonal birth control has affected mate selection in both directions.  Two main factors are possibly  altered.  The natural propensity to select (by smell) more genetically and immunologically different partners is  attenuated by the pill.   Animal studies indicate that signals of female genetic health are possibly attenuated  (and not picked up by males)  in those taking long term progestin birth control.

Females on the pill tend to select more metrosexual men as partners, then tend to feel attractions to OTHER men when they go off the pill and ovulate.    Those not on the pill tend to choose more masculine men as partners, and are less inclined to show an attraction to other men while ovulating.

Bottom line………from data thus far, the use of hormonal contraception  is possibly wussifying humanity, and producing a sort of devolution to a species less genetically diverse and immunologically resilient, by altering the natural chemical bases of attraction.

 

Your Tax Dollars At Waste, Stinging Amish Farmer

~ Pharmer ~ 2 Comments

Feds sting Amish farmer selling raw milk locally – Washington Times.

One thing this article is missing is the taxpayer cost of the FDA sting on Dan Allgyer, an Amish farmer who sold unpasteurized milk to customers specifically wanting that product.

The FDA is convinced that raw milk has no benefits, that can’t be obtained from the pasteurized products but customers  believe otherwise.

It’s obvious that drinking unpasteurized milk with its collection of native flora is a different deal than drinking the commercial product the bacteria of  which have been killed.   People also eat yogurt to obtain benefits from the microbial growth within.

Some people don’t mind playing a bit of roulette with their pro-biotics, and the FDA, which obviously doesn’t know ‘bugs’, needs to find something more useful to do.

Retraction Watch: Eminent Surgeon Censored and Punished for Editorializing on the Salutary Effects of Semen

~ Pharmer

Forget chocolate on Valentine’s Day, try semen, says Surgery News editor. Retraction, resignation follow « Retraction Watch.

You might want to  link to Retraction watch itself, if you have an interest in freedom of speech, scientific progress, and the issue of political correctness.

Dr. Lazar Greenfield, an eminent surgeon and inventor has been drummed out of his position as Editor in Chief of the ACS (American College of Surgeons)  for having too much fun while writing an editorial.

He noted a study concluding that women who use condoms, and abstinent women suffer more depression than women who do not use condoms during sex, and related it to the salutary components found in semen, and the efficiency of the vaginal mucosa as an avenue of drug delivery.

His offense was to ruffle the feathers of the feminazis by stating that semen may confer myriad chemical benefits, and to  imply that this is one reason that women really need men.

The ACS, afflicted by overdoses of estrogen, and without a sense of the hormone’s  utility,  has ‘temporarily’  removed the entire issue containing Greenfield’s editorial from its website.

Pharmer pasted her own comment to the news article at Retraction Watch:

Both sex and abstinence are very good, in their respective ‘seasons’.  It’s likely that depression during abstinence is  more frequently  from a loss of hope in finding a worthwhile partner, and exacerbated by a lack of  good memories to fall back on.

Theories that the offended censors are dwelling in a prolonged stage of hopelessness are not without basis.

Greenfield’s take on the evidence for physiological bases of sex attraction is hilarious, and should not have been removed, nor should he have been otherwise punished.

The humorless lefties who hate the existence of  sexual dimorphism  should not be permitted to rule over the rest of us, who appreciate it.

Pharmer would have been expecting  comparative clinical trials  of chocolate by oral delivery vs. vaginal instillation of semen  (normal  sex)  for antidepressant efficacy,  had the PC police not clamped down with their suppression of scientific inquiry.

Recycling Gone Wild – Flu vaccine syringes!

~ Pharmer

Children told to be tested for HIV after flu vaccines reused | 9news.com.

People have caught the ‘green bug’ — an infection with  enthusiasm for recycling.  This has extended into health care environments where some inappropriate recycling can be observed.

For example certain plastics and containers are recycled, or inappropriately transferred from patient  rooms to be reused in other patient rooms.   This is a danger for the spread of infection, and the rampant spread of  staph and clostridium infections may be resulting from this and other bad practices. Some health care employees cannot be dissuaded from these practices.

Above linked is a news story about a pediatric clinic in Colorado, (Med Peds Clinic of Fort Collins) where some enterprising employee decided to recycle half used   syringe doses of flu vaccine.

Those syringes (to a normal health care worker) are single use items.  Even if it had been appropriate to use half of the dose, the remainder should have been tossed out  in the biohazardous waste.

Instead the  medical assistant changed the needles on the syringe and recycled.

So…….  a lot of kids have apparently received half flu doses, and may have been exposed to infection from other patients.   There is a practice  of pulling back a bit  on the syringe, when injecting a vaccine, to make sure it’s not being shot directly into a blood vessel.

Dr Mark S. Simmons of the clinic stated :  “we are a little dismayed that one of our former medical assistants did not follow procedures when handling this” Recommendations from the clinic are that patients who received the vaccines be tested for  HIV, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C, (etc.)   There is not a mention of who would cover this expense.

Some things shouldn’t be recycled.

Odd News – Useless Self Damage

~ Pharmer

German News in English: did they have to translate this?

This is stupid enough to be an urban legend, but after reading  the E-Medicine review of foreign bodies found in the lowest end of the GI tract,  you’ll  know that people are crazy enough to try anything.

The top linked story relates a supposed practice of attempting to become drunk using vodka soaked tampons.
Given that even the super plus size does not hold very much liquid, the possibility of achieving even a micro-buzz from such a practice seems remote, even if pure grain alcohol were used. That would be very painful and even more damaging than using vodka.

This idea  falls  under the heading of self abuse, and the risk to tender mucous membranes most certainly outweighs the supposed “benefit”.

More Maggot Medical News From Ohio

~ Pharmer

Morbidly obese man found fused to chair he sat in for two years dies in hospital | Mail Online.

This one is from Bellaire, Ohio…. where a morbidly obese man had become fused to his chair, in a matrix of his skin, feces, urine and maggots.

His girlfriend had undertaken to feed him by hand since he had become too big to leave the chair.   The man apparently refused to accept medical help for an arthritic condition in his knees which had made it impossible for him to ambulate.

The individual, yet to be named was finally found unconscious by his girlfriend and was transported to a hospital in Wheeling, West Virginia where he later died.

See a   similar story from the Cincinnati Ohio area.