superglue for your brain

A few interesting tidbits. Apparently in Emergency, there are patients known as "camels." These individuals behave poorly and consistently spit on health care workers. As a result, a safety mesh is up over their head - basically a thin, loose burlap sack to prevent the individual from contaminating health care workers with possibly diseased bodily fluids.

I heard another story about a patient today who went to the MR for a scan. Scans kept getting this gigantic artifact across the screen, so one of the techs figured there must have been metal on the person. They went to check for metal electrode leads, such as those in a pacemaker, but couldn't find anything. They ran the scan again and the artifact was still there, so the tech removed the armboards and the headrest, thinking there might be some metal in it. The artifact still remained. Thinking it might be something on the scanner, they removed the patient and ran a quick test scan, but there was no artifact! The tech asked the patient who was both groggy and old, who stated he once had a barium milkshake. The tech thus concluded the barium was the source of the artifact, that the metal must have been interfering with the scan.

It turned out the patient's barium milkshake had been over two years ago, and so the techs were left puzzled. Days later, patient visited the OR, where it was discovered that he neglected to mention that he had been eating coins. The metal from the coin bezoar (remember bezoars???) was causing the artifact, and surprisingly hadn't been pulled out of his body and caused massive internal bleeding from the field.

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I learned a new word today: Nidus. It basically is the medical term for anything resembling a nest. Remember arteriovenous malformations (AVM)? A 10 year old patient was in our clinic the other day with a crazy AVM, and they use this product called the EV3 Onyx Liquid Embolic System to treat it. Basically they send a catheter into the AVM, inject this compound made of ethylene vinyl alcohol, and let it travel throughout the nidus of the AVM. It ends up plugging blood flow and the AVM becomes harmless, degenerating with time; basically a superglue for your brain.