Detective Work

Howdy all,

It's finally Friday. Been a long week. I was able to use my EMS Field Guide though, which was pretty cool. The guy could only remember a few of the things he had so I looked up all of his medications in the book and was able to find out what else he had missed. For example I found a drug which was for arrhythmias. I asked him if he had had any arrhythmia and he couldn't remember. I then checked his pulse (for myself, it had already been checked earlier) and noticed that it was irregular. So that's a check for positive history of arrhythmias. Probably nothing more than a sinus arrhythmia if he had been hooked up to an EKG though, which would look something like this:

Sinus Arrythmia

It's a pretty common rhythm. It was just more pronounced in this patient. To an extent, almost everyone has some kind of sinus arrythmia. Their pulse increases when they inhale, and slows when they exhale, but very rarely is it ever noticable.

Yes, I've finally sold out, I added the ads to the side of blog. I know. The shame. But I'm putting together a medical kit and hopefully that'll help somewhat. I made sure that they were in as an unobtrusive place as possible and they don't really add to load-time.

I came across this today, while visiting another blog. It's a life expectancy calculator which can be found at http://gosset.wharton.upenn.edu/~foster/mortality/perl/CalcForm.html
I've never put too much stock in these things though. It's still something fun to try out.

On the same site I came across an Acute Coronary Syndrome Calculator.

Medical News:

U.N.: Cholera ripping through west Africa

"DAKAR, Senegal (AP) -- A cholera epidemic spreading across west Africa has sickened tens of thousands of people this year and killed nearly 500 amid a long-term deterioration in health services in one of the world's poorest regions, the United Nations said.
Cholera has stricken 31,259 people in nine west African countries since June and 488 are reported dead in what the U.N. said was an "unusually high incidence" of the disease. Statistics from a year ago were not provided."

Vale! Stay safe.