Shout Outs

Updated 3/2017 -- photos and all links (except to my own posts) removed as many no longer active. and it was easier than checking each one.

Medicine and Technology is this week's host of Grand Rounds.   You can read this week’s edition here.

Welcome to Grand Rounds Vol 6 No 25. Grand Rounds is a weekly summary of the best health blog posts on the Internet. I wish to also extend a special thanks to those medical bloggers who are participating in Grand Rounds for the first time. This week, we had many submissions, so let's get started.

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St. Baldrick's is a fundraising foundation dedicated to raising funds for pediatric cancer research.  Shadowfax went Going Bald Once More.  Here are some photos of the shaving.  Yesterday he tweeted

Heading down for the shaving. Zippy didn't make it, alas. Pics to follow soon. Donations total $10,500 as of this moment. Yay!

Also, taking a moment to remember Nathan Gentry and Henry Scheck, the reasons we go through with this whole affair.

Had a very productive day. Fixed the kitchen faucet AND shaved my head for kids' cancer! http://bit.ly/bWfyGi Guess which one was harder...

The razor left about 1/8-1/4 inch of stubble behind. Gotta go shave clean now. Wouldn't be giving my donors their money's worth otherwise.

It's not too late to donate.

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Shadowfax does the above to try to decrease the number of grieving parents.  Christian Sinclair re-tweeted this from @GrievingDads:   Please don't forget often overlooked dads mourning loss of children www.GrievingDads.com 

Grieving Dads website was started by Kelly Farley

As a bereaved father of two children, my mission is to leave a legacy in honor of my daughter Katie and my son Noah who left this world all to soon.

Based on my own realization and first hand knowledge of the lack of support services and information available to fathers suffering the loss of a child, I have chosen to reach out to all men that are traveling this lonely and what appears to be a never ending road known as unspeakable loss.  

The goal of this site is to ultimately create a social documentary focused on a cross-section of bereaved fathers and tragic circumstances related to child loss.  Men of all ages, locations, ethnicity, socio economic status and religious beliefs are welcomed at this site, regardless of the circumstances of your loss…..

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H/T to @JoshuaSchwimmer for his tweet directing me to this New York Times article by on malignant hypertension by Lisa Sanders, MD:   High Altitude

The middle-aged woman lay in the intensive-care unit, observing the tumult around her. …….

In the afternoon she had taken her teenage daughter shopping. As her daughter disappeared down an aisle, the woman struggled to keep up. Her breath was rapid and ragged. She could hear her blood pounding with each heartbeat. Suddenly the whole right side of the world seemed to go out of focus, color and shapes blending together. She didn’t want to frighten her daughter, so she said nothing. “Please just let me get home,” she prayed silently. She drove with her bad eye shut, and when she got home she promptly lay down. ……

When the patient arrived at the emergency room, her blood pressure was 225/115 — terrifyingly high…….

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Via a tweet from @ePatientDave comes the recommendation of a new blogger into the med-blogger community.  Welcome!

A new patient blog, VERY good writer: Gastrically Changed. (Gastric bypass pt, labor & delivery RN) http://is.gd/a9T3e

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KevinMD notes Mammogram screening divides doctors and patients.

Mammogram screening for breast cancer continues to simmer in the news.

The recent USPSTF guidelines, no longer recommending a routine mammogram for women between the ages of 40 and 49, continue to stir controversy between physicians and their patients.

In a recent survey from the Annals of Internal Medicine, it looks like the debate between doctors and patients will continue for the foreseeable future…….

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Allergy Notes has a nice post Teamwork helps fire ants - National Geographic video

Since South American fire ants arrived in Mobile, Alabama, in the 1940s, they have spread to become one of the most reviled pests in the Sunbelt. There have been several failed, and heavily politically influenced, eradication campaigns. The fire ants (red or black) are very aggressive and build nests in mounds of fresh soil.

You may also wish to check out my 2007 post on Fire Ant Bites.

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Interesting story on NPR’s All Things Considered:   Picking The Poison: The Story Of Forensic Medicine (photo credit)

Say you live in jazz-age New York and want to get rid of someone — but you don't want to get caught. What would be your poison of choice?

Author Deborah Blum recommends arsenic — otherwise known as "inheritance powder" — which was pretty much untraceable until the 1920s.

"Arsenic, as it turns out, is fairly tasteless, and if you give it at just the right dose ... you can actually make it mimic a gastrointestinal illness," Blum tells NPR's Guy Raz. …….

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Great story on NPR by Susan Stamberg:  Female WWII Pilots: The Original Fly Girls (photo credit)

In 1942, the United States was faced with a severe shortage of pilots, and leaders gambled on an experimental program to help fill the void: Train women to fly military aircraft so male pilots could be released for combat duty overseas.

The group of female pilots was called the Women Airforce Service Pilots — WASP for short. In 1944, during the graduation ceremony for the last WASP training class, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Air Forces, Henry "Hap" Arnold, said that when the program started, he wasn't sure "whether a slip of a girl could fight the controls of a B-17 in heavy weather."

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Dr Anonymous’ guests this week will be Dr. Lucy Hornstein from Musings Of A Dinosaur.  Come join us.

Upcoming Dr. A Shows (9pm ET)

3/25 : Gerry Tolbert