Friday: Today I got to give another presentation about the science behind smoking and lung cancer at a local school for a club that I'm involved in at our school. Compared to the very upscale middle school at which we had previously presented, this was a much rougher school in a poorer neighborhood, but I think I had even more fun and had a better chance of making an impact.
FridayIL: Though they can cause sedation, benzodiazepines cannot cause full blown anesthesia or coma.
MondayIL: Subarachnoid hemorrhage is most often caused by "berry" aneurysms. These are little berry-like bubbles that sometimes form around the junctions between the blood vessels of arteries in the circle of Willis in the brain. They weaken the vessel walls, much like if you poked into a balloon with your finger, causing a thinner, finger-shaped bubble to protrude from the otherwise normal balloon. If the balloon were ever going to pop, it'd pop in that thin bubble.
Tuesday: Snow day!
WednesdayIL: Bupropion (Wellbutrin) is an antidepressant that is also used to aid in smoking cessation. Patients were so upset by seeing that they were being prescribed an antidepressant, even if it was for a different indication, that the company started producing the same drug under a second name (Zyban) so that people would take the prescription without worrying about the stigma of being on antidepressant medication. What does this say about our society's feelings on mental illness?
TIL: If a brain lesion causes a gaze preference (someone's eyes skew to one side at rest), you can usually differentiate from symptoms caused by ischemia (loss of blood flow) or seizures. If ischemia is the cause, then the patient will look toward the side of the head that the lesion is on, whereas seizures cause the patient to look away.
Hemorrhagic stroke often causes headache and lethargy, whereas an ischemic stroke does not.
Seizures can confusingly cause the symptoms of a stroke, like muscle weakness, in the hours and days post seizure.
For carotid stenosis (hardening of the arteries supplying the brain due to athlerosclerotic plaque formation) the original treatment was to cut open the neck and carotid artery to physically scrape out the plaque on the artery walls - this is called a carotid endarterectomy. Once stents were invented everyone hoped that it would be a great, less invasive alternative to the major surgery that is the endarterectomy. But they quickly realized that the act of placing the stent increased the risk of breaking off a part of the plaque and causing a stroke - exactly what we were trying to prevent in the first place. So now, surgery is the first line treatment again and stents are only used if surgery is contraindicated.
Oculus uterque means "both eyes."
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