Introduction: Aortic dissections and dissections of cervical, cerebral, and coronary arteries have been previously reported in scuba divers. These incidents may be the consequence of a variety of physiological effects. We review the reported cases of arterial dissection in scuba divers and discuss potential contributing factors related to immersion and diving.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe clinical outcome after thermal injury depends significantly on bystander action at the scene of the initial burn. Bystander action may save life, by rescue or by extinguishing flames; or by reducing medical complications which lead to death from respiratory injury or from secondary infection. Best-practice first aid may reduce the need for skin grafting; and can modify the rate and quality of healing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF(1) Background: Increased respiratory rates (RRs) are described in several medical conditions, including pneumonia, bronchiolitis and asthma. There is variable methodology on how centiles for RR are derived in healthy children. Available age percentiles for RR have been generated using methods that have the potential themselves to alter the rate.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn 1912, the Guy's Hospital Assistant Physician, Dr Herbert French FRCP, published a magnum opus, An Index of Differential Diagnosis of Main Symptoms by Various Authors. This pioneering work was to formalise the paradigm of a six-chain sequence which underpins best-practice clinical medicine today. That chain comprises: taking a history, examination, compiling a differential diagnosis, tests and investigations, and formulating a diagnosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIssue Addressed: There is a scarcity of research into portable pool drowning and its prevention. This total population study examines fatal drowning among children under five in portable pools in Australia.
Methods: All child drowning deaths in portable pools for the period 1 July 2002 to 30 June 2018 were identified.
Background: Dopamine is a key modulator of striatal function and learning and might improve motor recovery after stroke. Previous small trials of dopamine agonists after stroke provide equivocal evidence of effectiveness on improving motor recovery. We aimed to assess the safety and efficacy of co-careldopa plus routine occupational and physical therapy during early rehabilitation after stroke.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Paediatr Child Health
February 2018
Aim: To establish the prevalence of unintentional fatal drowning in baths involving children <18 years in Australia and to identify causal factors to underpin prevention.
Methods: We report a total population study of all childhood (0-17 years) unintentional drowning fatalities in baths (bathtubs, spa baths and showers) in Australia between 1 July 2002 and 30 June 2014. Demographic, forensic and aetiological data (including co-bathing, use of bath aids, supervision and enactment of cardiopulmonary resuscitation) were documented for each victim.
Arch Dis Child
October 2017
Objectives: This study is an analysis of the contribution of pre-existing medical conditions to unintentional fatal child (0-14 years) drowning and a of critique prevention stratagems, with an exploration of issues of equity in recreation.
Design: This study is a total population, cross-sectional audit of all demographic, forensic and on-site situational details surrounding unintentional fatal drowning of children 0-14 years in Australia for the period of 1 July 2002 to 30 June 2012. Data were sourced from the National (Australia) Coronial Information System.
The most enduring archive of medical biography is that composed of coins and medals. More than 20,000 commemorative and tribute medals comprise the domain of medical numismatics. Several thousand of these portray individual doctors whose lives and work are thus recorded in gold, silver, bronze and the alloys of medallic art.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProf. Peter Beighton has given a professional lifetime to helping patients and their families who have been afflicted by inherited disease. His clinical skills have brought certainty, confidence and support to those confronted with some of the most difficult decisions in life's progress.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMed Leg J
September 2016
The history of our current law dates from Palaeolithic times. The first written laws were codified by the rulers of Mesopotamian kingdoms, from the beginning of the second millennium B.C.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Paediatr Child Health
May 2015
The emergence of paediatrics as a specialty in Australian medicine dates from the last two decades of the 19th century. Among the pioneers of pre-Federation paediatrics, we include Dr Henry Edward Brown (1858-1931), an Irish-born physician and surgeon who became the first paediatrician to practise in the northern half of the Australian continent. In 1885, he was appointed as the medical superintendent of the Rockhampton Children's Hospital, itself a pioneer institution in the care of sick and injured children.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration spanned the period from 1895 to 1922. Medical men who took part in the expeditions of that period made significant contributions to the expeditions in medical treatment of expedition members, geographical discovery and science and, as a result of such contributions, many had geographical features named after them. A recent paper listed five doctors from the Heroic Age who were so honoured.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Paediatr Child Health
October 2014
Professor Tyndale John Rendle-Short (1919-2010), a British and Australian paediatrician, lived a professional life of considerable influence in two domains - academic paediatrics and fundamentalist theology. A Cambridge medical graduate (1943) and doctor-soldier, he was appointed as the Foundation Professor of Child Health at the University of Queensland (1961). In Australia, he was a pioneer in three paediatric developments ('rooming-in' for mothers in hospitals, autism research and cystic fibrosis).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAround 150,000 people experience a stroke every year in the UK. Nearly one million people in England are living with the effects of a stroke; one third of whom are moderately to severely disabled. A quarter of stroke survivors are under the age of 65 meaning that many are in work and/or have responsibility for caring for children or elderly parents.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Montpellier physician Bernard de Gordon flourished in the late Middle Ages in the era when university education first evolved in the training of European physicians. Fragmentary details of his life and medical influence are known from seven books, particularly his extensive (163 chapters) text Lilium Medicine and from Chaucer's reference to him in the Canterbury Tales. Chaucer lists Bernard de Gordon as one whose writings were part of the core curriculum of the best-trained European doctors of medieval Europe.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Med Biogr
February 2013
Biographies of medieval English doctors are uncommon and fragmentary. The two best-known English medieval physicians were Gilbertus Anglicus and John of Gaddesden. This paper brings together the known details of their lives, compiled from extant biographies and from internal references in their texts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBotanical taxonomy is a repository of medical biographical information. Such botanical memorials include the names of some indigenous orchids of Australia. By searching reference texts and journals relating to Australian botany and Australian orchidology, as well as Australian and international medical and botanical biographical texts, I identified 30 orchids indigenous to Australia whose names commemorate doctors and other medical professionals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAm J Dermatopathol
February 2013
Brooke-Spiegler syndrome (BSS) is a rare, inherited, autosomal dominant disorder characterized by development of multiple adnexal cutaneous neoplasms including spiradenoma, cylindroma, spiradenocylindroma, and trichoepithelioma. The syndrome of multiple familial trichoepitheliomas (MFT) is considered a phenotypic variant of BSS in which patients present with trichoepitheliomas only. We studied germline and somatic mutations of the CYLD gene by direct sequencing in patients with BSS (n = 49) and MFT (n = 18) using peripheral blood and 90 samples of frozen or formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tumor tissue selected from 379 available histology specimens.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe heritage of medicine is written in many forms. One repository is to be found in the history of orchids, the world's largest family of flowering plants. Orchids were so named by Theophrastus (c.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn Antarctica an astonishing more than 300 'medical' place-names record the lives of surgeons and physicians who have served as leaders, clinicians and scientists in the field of polar medicine and other doctors memorialized for their service to medicine. These enduring medical memorials are to be found in the names of glaciers, mountains, capes and islands of the vast frozen Southern Continent. This Antarctic Medical Gazetteer features, inter alii, doctor-expedition leaders, including Jean-Baptiste Charcot (1867-1936) of France and Desmond Lugg (b.
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