… It is no wonder that getting hold of a psychiatrist can be tricky. Fortunately, there is the Mental Health Hotline to fall back on…
HIV, pneumonia and bronchoscopy
December 22, 2009 By Leave a Comment
A 17 year old female with a background history of HIV presents with a 3 day history of fevers, chills and rigors. Her admission chest X-rays are shown below:
Lung metastasis from the hip
December 21, 2009 By 2 Comments
Consider a 16 year old who presents with a 3 week history of severe hip pain followed by increasing breathlessness and left sided chest pain. His admission chest X-ray is shown below:
The Empress’ New Clothes
December 20, 2009 By Leave a Comment
What (wo)men and gods are these?…. What mad pursuit?… What pipes and timbrels?… (with apologies to John Keats 1795-1821) Once upon a time there lived in the Shire of Perthe-Betweene-River-and-Sea in the storied Kingdom of W’astralia a notoriously vain Empress of Royal Physicians whose only concern in life was to lavishly adorn herself in the [...]
When is a blog not a blog?
December 20, 2009 By 13 Comments
I first started blogging to collate and share an array of educational resources within the medical community and beyond. My first blog (as sandnsurf with the medbrains.net domain) ranked well on search engines which allowed relevant articles to be found easily on the first page of Google. However, last week all the blog articles and even the Life in the Fast Lane website vanished from the face of Google and Technorati…I was no longer classified as a blog and no longer found on Google searches. All Wordpress trackbacks disappeared as Google Blog Search became blinded to this blogs existence…
Waxing and Waning Weakness
December 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment
A 50 year old Chinese female presents with severe weakness. She has a history of previous similar episodes that self-resolved.
Fascinella #004
December 16, 2009 By 1 Comment
There are around 22 species in the genus Acanthamoeba; a group of free-living protozoa that are widely dispersed in the environment. The Neff strain of Acanthamoeba castellani (recovered from Golden Gate Park in the 1960s) has been a significant contributor to the development of eukaryotic cell biology, since it has similarities to mammalian cells and can be grown easily in the laboratory.
Trauma Tribulation 004
December 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment
A 21 year old female presents with acute onset of unrelenting abdominal pain and vomiting four years after a major motor vehicle accident. A chest X-ray is performed:
