Sunday, March 1, 2009

farmdoc's blog post number 315

Though today’s the first day of Autumn, I’m not writing of falling golden sycamore leaves, or stuff like that. I’m just not in the mood. Instead, here’s a compendium of recent interesting medical snippets. Interesting to me, anyway.

Women victims of intimate partner violence often turn on their young children.

It doesn’t matter if cortisone treatment of shoulder rotator cuff injury/disease is injected into the shoulder or taken as tablets.

Hospital patients who are discharged with written information about their diagnosis and medications, and whose GPs receive prompt discharge summaries, use fewer resources later.

Routine x-rays and/or scans in the evaluation of acute low-back pain does not change the outcome. But imaging is indicated if the clinical presentation suggests serious underlying pathology.

Regular cocoa powder is healthier than dutch-processed cocoa because the latter’s treated with alkali which, whilst it reduces bitterness and increases smoothness and mellowness, destroys a lot of the heart-healthy flavanols.

Severely sprained ankles respond better to immobilisation – at least in the short term – than to treatments encouraging quick return to previous activity levels.

CPR protocols which use more chest compression and less ventilation, improve cardiac and cerebral perfusion.

Being overweight as a teenager curbs life expectancy as much as smoking 10 cigarettes a day.

Diets containing varying proportions of fat, protein, or carbohydrate all confer the same degree of weight loss over a 2-year period – not much.

That’s all for now, folks. I’m off to pick up leaves.

1 comment:

Meg said...

What interesting facts!