Eyespy
Eyespy brings you
the latest quirky medical stories from around the world
The personality profiles of a sample of 313 UK doctors seem to differ significantly from those of the normal UK adult population, particularly on how people like to take in information and learn about things. This mismatch highlights the potential problem with communication between doctors and their patients, and one training point may be to enable doctors to adjust their consultation style when it might be appropriate to do so (Medical Education 2004;38:177-86).Is oral sex really sex? Not according to 164 university students who took part in a study published in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality (2003;12:87-96). The students also felt that when sex was manual, online, or via the phone it did not count as sex. Some students felt that the same applied to intercourse without orgasm. But the research subjects said that online sex amounted to being unfaithful. Researchers at the University of Brunswick said that the message of safe sex was muddled owing to different definitions. They concluded that to make progress, sex education programmes will have to refer to specific sexual acts, and not just to "having sex."
Eyespy was glancing at the Portugese website www.correiomanha.pt and saw that surgeons at the Levante Rehabilitation Centre in Valencia, Spain, have managed, for the first time ever, to implant a forearm in a patient's lower limb. The procedure was done to keep the arm viable after the patient's left forearm was severed in a car crash. However, the patient developed an infection after the operation, so the forearm remained connected to the lower limb for nine days before it was possible to reattach it.
A man swimming offshore near Sydney was bitten by a two foot long Wobbegong shark. When the shark refused to let go, he swam to shore, walked to his car, and drove to the local surf club with the shark still attached. On seeing the spectacle, a lifeguard said, "There's nothing in our procedure manual for that type of thing." The swimmer had only puncture wounds and did not need stitches but was given
prophylactic antibiotics (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/
3478747.stm).
Chinese doctors have removed three sewing needles which have been embedded in a man's brain for nearly 29 years. Doctors think they were likely to have stuck in the patient's brain through a membranous space in the skull when he was a baby. The successful two and a half hour operation took place at the 999 Hospital for Brain Diseases in southern Guangdong province. Two needles measured 4 cm and the other 3 cm in length (
http://iafrica.com/news/quirky/307758.htm).
Is a widely available low cost digital camera all you need for detecting the x ray features of common respiratory diseases, such as tuberculosis, in developing countries? Three radiologists and a respiratory physician independently read two types of digital (JPEG and JPEG2000) and original film images of 91 chest x ray images. The readers indicated their confidence in the presence of eight features known to be radiological indicators of tuberculosis, and there was no statistical difference in the overall performance between the readings from both images (
International Journal of Medical Informatics 2004;73:65-73).
How potent is your sperm? Now you can find out with the help of researchers from Glasgow and Sheffield universities... and a wind tunnel. Researchers have patented a machine that measures fertility, which is based on techniques used to measure airflow. Called spermodynamics, this technique will outdate the current method that is used for fertility testing, which is seen as subjective. The Computer Aided Sperm Analyser (Casa) works by flashing laser pulses through a sperm sample, as the movement of each sperm is measured, giving a result in minutes (
www.guardian.co.uk/
medicine/story/0,11381,1163915,00.html).
MEHAU KULYK/SPL
Wa-hey...
Personal digital assistants (PDAs) seem popular in US residency programmes. Both an online survey and follow up interviews found that residents used personal organisers (featuring calendars, address books, and to do lists) to keep track of meetings and daily professional tasks, and to stay in touch with patients. Professional use included commercial medical references to answer immediate medical questions and to save current clinical data, particularly laboratory results and daily discharge summaries of patients (International Journal of Medical Informatics 2004;73:25-34).A new book called The Strange Case of the Walking Corpse by Nancy Butcher has hit the shelves and chronicles the most bizarre and disturbing cases detailing what can go wrong in the human body. Diseases explained include Alice in wonderland syndrome, wandering spleen, and, Eyespy's favourite, Jumping Frenchmen of Maine, where one of the main characteristics is being extremely startled by an unexpected noise or sight. I think we've all suffered a little with that one (www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/02/20/strange.cases).A study has found women judge the attractiveness of other women more harshly when at their most fertile. The 57 female students tested, along with male controls, were asked to look at colour photos of 35 female and 30 male faces.
Women with high oestrogen levels, in days 12 to 21 of their menstrual cycle, rated other women's attractiveness significantly lower than women in a less fertile, low oestrogen period of their cycle. David Perrett, an expert on facial perception at St Andrew's University, says: "It's a very interesting finding. This is the first study I know of to find attitudes to female faces changing [with the menstrual cycle]" (www.newscientist.com/news/news.
jsp?id=ns99994691).
The family of late country and western singer Johnny Cash has stopped advertisers using his hit song "Ring of Fire" to promote haemorrhoid relief products. Merle Kilgore, who cowrote the song with Cash's wife, June Carter, had given the advertisement the go ahead until Cash's daughter, Roseanne, put a stop to it. Kilgore said that he had not intended to upset the family but thought the idea was funny. In fact, Kilgore said he had often joked about haemorrhoids before introducing the song (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/3498749.stm).
studentBMJ 2004;12:133-176 April ISSN 0966-6494
