The Martlet; a newsletter where Surgery, Culture, Innovation, Finance and Informatics cohabitate
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From ESPN, to Mozambican National TV in just 1 week
One week we're working the Vargas vs. Zepeda fight in MSG, and the next we're in Mozambique inaugurating a new road safety project and speaking on national TV about road traffic injury prevention....in Portuguese!
Once again InterTrauma is at the intersection of all kinds of interesting things.
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Do you have decorative buttons on your suit cuffs? Why? |
In the US most men's suits have decorative cuff buttons. Historically, men's "jackets", as it related to suits and blazers, never needed cuff buttons. In the 1880s, when Surgery moved from the barber shop to the hospitals, it required a little more class. So these surgeons wore jackets. These suit jackets required sleeves that could be rolled up. It became the fashion, but non-surgeons started having decorative buttons to save costs and appear hip. Now, if you want "real" buttons on your suit, you need to ask for Functional Buttons, or Surgeon Cuffs.
That is still the standard for bespoke suits. The most distal button is often left unbuttoned to show off that they are Surgeon Cuffs, and ready for the wearer to roll up their sleeves and get working. If you're going to do Surgery in your suit or blazer, might we suggest you wear dark colors.
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Antigen Tests and Omicron: A negative test provides no reassurance
In our work on television productions we started to notice something surprising. We would send a formal lab based PCR test while also doing a point-of-care antigen test. The antigens were almost uniformly negative, but the PCRs returned with low cycle threshold virus (this means there's a lot of virus). We thought we might be doing something wrong, or stumbling across a worrisome finding. The false negative rate on the antigen tests was ridiculously high.
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Very Judgmental Children Can Help Stop Road Traffic Crashes
This pilot project was rolled out in Mozambique last week. It is called the Tribunal Infantil, and takes 8 elementary school children and turns them into judge and jury in a road traffic court.
When there's a minor traffic infarction near the school, the police gently "escort" the accused to this kids' court where the children grill the accused. This past trip, we witnessed the children asking questions such as what makes you think the rules don't apply to you and how would you feel if you hit one of us while texting and driving?. The punishment is finalized by having the accused write a statement stating that they have learned their lesson, and then taking a photo with the court while holding their statement. Does it work? We are starting the first study on it to measure if it prevents repeat infractions compared to simple fining. But for now what is clear is that the children and the guilty drivers both get a sense for how important road traffic safety is. Fresh approaches to these hard to solve problems are exactly what is needed when facing such a ubiquitous problem.
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The Role of The Classics in Our Lives
Part 1: Abbreviations and Acronyms
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We use acronyms and symbols every day, perhaps a bit more so when we had paper charts and prescription pads. Do you know what they all mean?
Here are the most common ones and where they come from:
NPO: Nil Per Os, literally nothing by mouth in Latin
Q (I'm on call Q3 this month): Q comes from Quaque, which is Latin for "every".
QD: Quaque Die, which means for "every day"
There are at least 3 popular symbols in the Macron category. These are Latin letters with a bar over them. Macron comes from the Greek word Makron, which means long.
C̄: Used to connote "with". From the Latin work cum, which means with.
S̄: Used to connote "without". From the Latin word sine, which means without.
P̄: Used to connote "after". From the Latin word post, which means after.
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You never need this tool for a Lap Chole, until you do, then you can't live without it |
When the gallbladder is either so swollen, or so full of stones that you can't grasp it with your lateral port, there's not too many options. Most 5mm graspers don't open wide enough to get a good bite, and if they can they can't get a good purchase and the fundus keeps falling down.
This disposable device goes through a 5mm port, is similar in length to a endokittner and has this corkscrew at the end. This is used to screw into the fundus and retract the gallbladder anteriorly and superiorly so you can get to Chalot's triangle to get your critical view. Next time you have one of those nightmare cases, think about this little device and how it can make your dissection easier.
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