Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 129
Just when you thought your brain could unwind on a Friday, you realise that it would rather be challenged with some good old fashioned medical trivia FFFF, introducing the Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 129
Question 1
A young male presents to the ED with recurrent urethritis. What common causative organism should be considered in addition to chlamydia and gonorrhea?
Reveal the funtabulous answer
Mycoplasma genitalium
A recognized cause of male urethritis, is, in most settings, more common than N. gonorrhoeae. It is responsible for approximately 30% of persistent or recurrent urethritis.
Studies have demonstrated that a 5-day course of azithromycin has a superior cure rate than a single dose. Based on these findings, UK and Swedish doctors are moving to a 5-day azithromycin regimen.
Question 2
What is nintendinitis?
Reveal the funtabulous answer
Nintendo related problems in the thumb, hand, and wrist are referred to as “nintendinitis” or “nintendonitis.”
Most commonly as a result of tendinitis of the extensor pollicis longus.
Nintendo related problems has ranged from children losing bowel and bladder control as they are so engrossed in the game, necrosis to the thinner eminence in one case from over use of the thumb controller to a number of Wii related fractures requiring “SurgWii“
Question 3
What percentage of the time are we (healthcare practitioners) more oligouric than our patients?
Reveal the funtabulous answer
18% of the time
according to a study done in London on a 17 bed ICU.
Volunteer doctors were compared to the patients they admitted and it was found it was easier to maintain a urine output on their ICU patients than themselves.
Surprisingly no doctors died of acute renal failure during this study
- Solomon AW wt al. Urine output on an intensive care unit: case-control study. BMJ. 2010 Dec 14;341:c6761.
Question 4
What animal can be used in Africa if you have a laceration that needs sutures but you forgot your kit?
Reveal the funtabulous answer
Driver Ants.
The Driver Ants have large and extremely powerful jaws that can be used, in a pinch, as emergency sutures by forcing the ant to bite the wound and then snapping its body off.
This leaves the jaw and head to hold the wound closed, an arrangement which will hold for several days at a time.
Question 5
What was the first effective treatment for syphilis?
Reveal the funtabulous answer
Pyrotherapy
Before 1917, syphilis was a terminal disease: there was no treatment and the effect on your brain was essentially a descent into madness.
All of that changed when Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1857-1940), an Austrian physician, tested his theories about pyrotherapy (the use of high fevers to incite immunological responses in individuals and cure them of illnesses unrelated to the cause of the fever).
He infected patients with malaria in order to induce a high fever.
Although a malaria infection is no walk in the park, there were cures available where as syphilis was incurable. The gamble paid off and the intense fevers that accompanied the malarial infections prompted the patients’ bodies to attack the syphilis infection too.
Wagner-Jauregg received the The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1927 for his discovery.
A Nazi sympathizer and President of the Austrian League for Racial Regeneration and Heredity, which advocated sterilization for those of inferior genetics; though his application for NSDAP membership had been refused “…on grounds of race”, as his first wife was Jewish
- Wagner-Jauregg J. Ueber die Einwirkung der Malaria auf die progressive Paralyse. Psychiatrisch-neurologische Wochenschrift. 1919; 20(39/40): 251–255
- Karamanou M et al. Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1857-1940): Introducing fever therapy in the treatment of neurosyphilis. Psychiatriki. 2013 Jul-Sep;24(3):208-12.
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Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five
Dr Neil Long BMBS FACEM FRCEM FRCPC. Emergency Physician at Kelowna hospital, British Columbia. Loves the misery of alpine climbing and working in austere environments (namely tertiary trauma centres). Supporter of FOAMed, lifelong education and trying to find that elusive peak performance.