The medical rule I've heard is that you're not supposed to pick at zits or skin growths, because you'll only make them worse — or cause an infection. But apparently this rule doesn't apply to seborrheic keratoses. According to Dr. George Lundberg, Editor in Chief of MedGenMed, go ahead and pick 'em. Or rather, use "fingernail surgery" to remove 'em. That's what he does!
However, Lundberg's advice hasn't met with universal approval from the medical community. Among the resonses to his editorial on MedGenMed is this one:
To the Editor:
I find your piece embarrassing and unworthy of your Internet service.
If you had bothered to do some research, even just reading eMedicine, you would find that curettage, not excision, is the recommended treatment -- a far more sterile version of a fingernail surgery. The curettage procedure is usually nonscarring though rarely some mild hypopigmentation may result.
The use of fingernail surgery is to be condemned as it is a bacterially contaminated area.
Picking at one's own skin with the fingernails is a bad habit and in its extreme form can become obsessive and result in scarring -- a disorder known as neurotic excoriation.
Many elderly gentlemen will pick at solar keratoses on their scalp, leaving it in a persistent state of bleeding and infection; I sincerely hope that you are not headed in this direction.
If your medical colleagues excise your seb warts or cause significant scars, or if you suspect that they choose their therapies on the basis of cost benefit to themselves, I suggest you take the matter up with your State Medical Board rather than indulging in self-injury.
If there is any doubt about the diagnosis, the curetted specimen can be sent for pathology.
Cheers,
Philip Bekhor
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Back in March, patty reported here on a Chinese man who – after being born without one – received a surgically constructed artificial anus. Now scientists have gone one better and actually grown a working anal sphincter in the laboratory. The team, who hail from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, grew the artificial orifices from cultured human muscle and nerve cells in about six weeks. Then, to test if they worked, the sphincters where implanted in laboratory mice. Ultimately, the scientists hope a patient’s own muscle and nerves could be used to create ‘personalized’ replacements, avoiding any immune response. In the near future, the “test tube” anus could be a boon for both the faecally incontinent and former porn stars alike (CBS News).
But an artificial exit may be just the start, as scientists are now one step closer to understanding the development of the entire intestine, in this case, why it coils the way it does. A rare collaboration between Harvard’s Medial and Engineering schools finally untangled the problem of why the intestine coils so predictably during the growth of the foetus while essentially unconstrained. Previously it had been thought that growth of the gut might be being restricted by the abdomen, but that didn’t explain why nearly everyone’s intestines fold into exactly the same shape. Then a chance conversation led Harvard Professor of Applied Mathematics, L. Mahadevan, to suggest a simpler hypothesis, the gut and its connective tissue, called the mesentry, grow at proportionally different rates. Now two teams, led by engineer Thierry Savin and biologists Natasza Kurpios and Amy Shyer, have confirmed that insight with a combination of computer and physical models and experiments, finally unravelling what makes our insides so loopy (Science Daily).
And speaking of loopy, what would you prescribe to someone with chronically inflamed bowels? Well for a growing number of people, the best medicine is a healthy(?) dose of parasites. The parasites in question are whipworms, also known as helminths, hence the name of the process, helminthic therapy. It has been known for over a century that some parasite infestations seem to reduce the symptoms of other diseases, but it is only fairly recently that any serious study has been made into why this is so. The current hypothesis is that the worms, which live in the human intestine, partially suppress the host’s immune response to protect themselves, and in doing so prevent the aggressive autoimmunity behind conditions such as Crohne’s disease and IBS, and so far the results have been startlingly good. However the success of the treatment is causing its own problems as some sufferers are refusing to wait on the medical establishment and are treating themselves by deliberately swallowing doses of the parasites’ eggs obtained over the internet. The worry for some is that the parasites, which are naturally infectious, might spread to very young or otherwise vulnerable people where they might have more serious effects (University of Massachusetts (PDF)).
Yet as one weird treatment rises, another shall fall. Colonic irrigation, the practice of repeatedly flushing out your lower intestines with water or various herbal infusions, has no medicinal benefit according to a study by doctors from the Georgetown University School of Medicine. Moreover, it can actually be harmful, carrying not just a risk if perforation of the bowel, but a list of side effects that range from intestinal cramps and nausea to renal failure. The team, lead by Dr. Ranit Mishori, looked at over 20 studies carried out in the past 10 years and found little to no evidence of any health improvements associated with the treatment, but a litany of problems, including cases of anaemia and increased liver toxicity. She also highlighted the dangers from poorly trained and regulated operators performing the procedure, and from “do-it-youself” detoxing kits that often combine a less invasive form of the therapy with strong laxatives (The Independent).
This campy spectacular was long unavailable in the USA. I watched it last night and can report that it is full of prime-grade weirdness. If you have ever wanted to see Caesar Romero transplant a woman's brain into the body of a winged lion, now is your chance!
All the blogs have been posting the x-rays of the Chinese man who swallowed a pair of scissors. He was using them to clean his teeth. But here at Weird Universe we don't like doing what everyone else is doing. So instead, I present you with a similar case, from 1919, of an Irish woman who swallowed a fork, reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine:
This Irish girl, a domestic servant, aged 25, had been in England only a week when this happened, last Christmas Day. She had recently lost most of her upper teeth, and had not yet had a plate put in, so her powers of mastication were very poor. After eating a portion of giblets she was seized with a violent feeling of indigestion and she vomited, and the undigested portion came up and stuck in her throat, leading to some dyspnoea. She therefore hastily seized the nearest object, which was this fork, and, holding it by the prongs, she pushed the handle behind her tongue and down her throat. She succeeded in moving the piece of meat and withdrew the fork, but as she felt it was still sticking in her gullet, she proceeded to try the same moneouvre a second time, and this time she got the fork, according to her own description, a long way down. Then, to her surprise, the handle of the fork was seized by an "unseen power" -- probably the constrictor muscles -- and having only a slimy hold on the fork, she lost grip of it and it went down. She went to the hospital on Christmas afternoon, where her story was received with diffidence.
Unfortunately, the X-ray department was not working on that day, and it was two days before a plate could be got to prove that she had swallowed a fork. The plate shows the fork in the stomach, with the handle resting near the pylorus, and the prongs towards the cardia. I operated upon her fifty-four hours after she swallowed the fork, making a small incisiion in the epigastric region to the right of the mid-line, and making a ¾ in. incision in the anterior wall of the stomach, near the pylorus, I seized the prongs of the fork and extracted it. The stomach had made an attempt to pass it on: the handle was in the duodenum, and the hilt of the fork in the pylorus, the prongs in the stomach. Suture was done in the ordinary way, and she made a very successful recovery, going out in a fortnight. Later she said she felt no ill-effects and had no indigestion.
A 2003 article in the Annals of The Royal College of Surgeons of England examines what to do if you're operating on someone's penis, and suddenly it starts to get bigger. The authors note: "Elongation and increased rigidity of the urethra and penis render the procedure difficult or even practically impossible." Apparently this occurs in between 1% and 2.5% of endo-urological surgeries. Here's what to do:
'Anaesthetic erection' during transurethral surgery is dangerous and should be reversed before proceeding. Adequate anaesthesia should be ensured. Compression of the shaft penis and cooling with application of ice-cold swabs or ethyl chloride spray, should be tried in the first instance. If these measures fail, we propose intra-cavernosal injection of sympathomimetics as the first-line pharmacological treatment. Inform your anaesthetist. Use which ever drug you are most familiar with, or otherwise we recommend phenylephrine 0.2 mg. The administration of sympathomimetics can be supplemented with aspiration of 75 ml of cavernosal blood. A second dose of phenylephrine at 0.2 mg may be given with close monitoring for recurrent erection. If sympathomimetics fail, try penile block with plain lignocaine (10–20 ml of 1% solution). 'Anaesthetic erection' may be refractory to all pharmacological means. Intravenous glycopyrrolate deserves consideration in cardiovascularly high-risk patients or when the above treatments fail. Other novel invasive pharmacological treatments lack experience and should be resisted. Unresponsive erection is a very good reason for postponing endoscopic procedures.
All the blogs have been posting the x-rays of the Chinese man who swallowed a pair of scissors. He was using them to clean his teeth. But here at Weird Universe we don't like doing what everyone else is doing. So instead, I present you with a similar case, from 1919, of an Irish woman who swallowed a fork, reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine:
Category: Health, Medicine, Surgery, Skin and Skin Conditions