It is great to see that the whole world is discussing case reports! Led by the World Health Organisation we are constantly being kept up to date with a growing case series of swine influenza. http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/en/index.html The BBC news this morning reported that they are awaiting the outcome of tests on relatives and friends of […]
Category: Cases in the news
Case series: Alzheimers treatment with CPHPC
A case series of 5 people with Alzheimers disease given CPHPC for 3 months which led to depletion of Serum Amyloid P component (SAP) in the blood and brain1 is reported widely in the news. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090413180706.htm It is good that CPHPC, a small molecule developed in conjunction with Roche and now owned by Pentraxin, is […]
Fundoplication: cases vs. RCT
The Health Technology Assessment Programme published its findings on laparoscopic fundoplication for chronic gastroeaophageal reflux disease in September 20081. “The results showed that surgical treatment was more effective than long-term drug therapy, especially in patients with the most troublesome symptoms, certainly up to one year after the procedure. A surgical policy is, however, more costly […]
Dental anxiety and eating disorder
An upsetting case of a young girl from Cornwall who died of dehydration and starvation due to an eating disorder has been reported in the news. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/7893485.stm She developed symptoms after her ‘milk teeth’ became loose. They were removed under general anaesthesia but she then refused to eat. The coroner has returned a ‘narrative verdict’ […]
Unnatural selection
The first UK baby selected as an embryo to be free of the breast cancer 1, early onset (BRCA1) gene, has been born at University College London. Although this has made the BBC news it is not a new therapy just a medical first for this condition in this country. Embryo selection for single gene […]
Dangerous sandwiches identified by The Lancet
Some conditions seem to be recurring themes for case reports. To stop the danger of sandwiches being missed perhaps we should change how we teach medical students to take the history of someone who complains of fainting. Even though swallow syncope is mentioned in many textbooks and has a wealth of case reports and reviews, […]
Doctors revive patient using powerful magnet
Transcranial magnetic stimulation is a non-invasive method for stimulating the brain and, in particular, the cerebral cortex. It uses a powerful electromagnet to generate a strong magnetic field that induces electrical current in the brain in much the same as direct stimulation with electricity. First described in 1985,1 it is being investigated for many conditions […]
Report of successful forequarter amputation
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) surgeon David Nott provided a very public case report of successful forequarter amputation this week. http://www.msf.org.uk/surgery_by_text_message_20081203.news What made this extraordinary was that he and the patient were in Congo, he had never performed the procedure before and he received instructions on how to do it from a surgical colleague in the […]
Haemorrhagic transformation of a recent silent cerebral infarct during thrombolytic stroke treatment
This case report highlights the challenge of radiology interpretation in acute cases especially where effective treatment is time critical. Often an investigation will have an obvious abnormality that accounts for the presenting symptoms but elsewhere, in an unrelated part of the scan, another abnormality may be present. Even in experienced teams such other findings may […]