Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog
Emergency Medicine education blog
References Gates, P. The rule of 4 of the brainstem: a simplified method for understanding brainstem anatomy and brainstem vascular syndromes for the non-neurologist. Internal Medicine Journal 2005; 35: 263-266 [pubmed] Goldberg, S. Clinical Neuroanatomy Made Ridiculously Simple. MedMaster Series, 2000 Edition. [betterworldbooks] ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ links The ultimate Brainstem Rule diagram Brainstem [...]
aka Neurological Mind-boggler 003 As promised here are some scenarios to try out Gates’ Brainstem Rules of 4 (helpful figures here): Scenario 1 You are examining a patient with sudden onset left-sided weakness. These are your clinical examination findings: weakness of the left upper and lower limbs, with sparing of the face. tongue deviation to [...]
Hands up who enjoyed learning the anatomy of the brainstem in medical school?
Hmm, thought so.
Why wouldn’t you want to be an emergency medicine doc? That week just gone saw the first ‘case’ of ‘swine flu’ in Australia, with the ED continuing to see steady streams of suspected ‘swine flu’ victims, with many of the scenarios nearly as ridiculous as a patient coughing after shaking hands with his sister’s new [...]
A 62 year old, previously well woman is referred to your ED with a letter from her doctor …
An 83 year old woman presents with a three day history of malaise and polyuria. She has a past history of Type 1 Diabetes and Hypertension. Describe and interpret her investigations
I read a book called ‘The Coming Plague‘ when I was in medical school. It was fascinating. It formed a picture of the world in my mind as a bubbling soup of seething micro-organisms waiting for the right circumstances to break out, to come forth and multiply – at our expense. It also introduced me [...]
