COVID-19 a 3-step approach to intubation
Pragmatic Recommendations for Intubating Critically Ill Patients with Suspected COVID-19. Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians Open.
Category Infectious Disease
COVID-19 – We are all in this together
Our need to bring our best selves to work has become more important in the face of this COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the globe. Many intensive care clinicians are presently overwhelmed by escalating numbers of critically ill COVID-19 patients whilst many…
Oslerus osleri
Sir William Osler was a man of not inconsiderable talent. A pathologist and clinician. A professor successively at McGill University, the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University and Oxford University. Historian and bibliographer of medicine. A naturalist, microscopist, proponent of…
Antimicrobial Resistance: Where to from Here?
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) will claim 250 million lives world-wide by 2050, displacing cancer as a cause of death. Newer tools may hold the key...
Furuncular myiasis
Today we explore the evolving 'furuncle' or boil. A simple enough beast to deal with under normal circumstances - but in the returning traveler...myriad possibilities raise their ugly heads
Melioidosis – Lab without walls
Melioidosis is a fascinating disease, with a distinct geography, a wide range of clinical presentations and a complex pathogenesis.
Melioidosis a disease of surprises
Melioidosis Burkholderia pseudomallei is a fascinating disease, with a distinct geography, a wide range of clinical presentations and a complex pathogenesis.
Ebola, the Perfect Political Pathogen
If we want to control ebola, we must act rationally and follow the advice of experts and not cynical reactionaries.
Antibiotics: Preserve the miracle?
The placebo effect is well-known in modern medicine. Unfortunately, the most effective medicines we’ve ever discovered are more often used as placebos rather than cures. What are these medicines? Antibiotics. They’ve added 20 years to the average human life expectancy,…
Rosenbach disease
Description What is the actual eponymous medical sign/syndrome/repair/classification… History 1873 – Tilbury Fox (1836-1879) first to describe what is now generally designated as erysipeloid. In 1873 Fox briefly described two instances of an eruption clinically conforming with that disease. 1873…
Losing the War on Resistant Gram Negatives
Extended spectrum beta-lactamases (ESBLs) have been a challenge to antimicrobial therapy since the 1980s and still continue to be...
The Bordetella pertussis epidemic
The current Bordetella pertussis epidemic began in 2008. The peak of the outbreak was reached in 2009 with 35,000 cases (156 per 100,000 population) with the most affected age group being the 5-9 year old cohort. Though immunisation is above 90%…