The Cheerful Oncologist posts a nice piece about When Is No Treatment the Right Treatment? It’s a difficult question that surgical oncologists have to face as well. His example is a man with lung cancer who has recently rapidly deteriorated with little hope for long-term survival. Should he get chemotherapy? Are the risks (immunosuppression, etc.) […]
Category: Surgery
Although I’ve mentioned before that I am a surgical oncologist, but I recently noticed that, in nearly five months of blogging, I’ve yet to explain exactly what that is or what it means. I’ve written about all sorts of things, ranging from alternative medicine, to the evolution-creationism conflict, to the Holocaust, to even trying my […]
Here’s something I’ve been meaning to post for a while that somehow got buried in my list of cool, weird, or interesting links. One of the things they teach surgeons and emergency medicine doctors about is how to use common materials at hand to do, MacGyver-like, a cricothyroidotomy to save the life of someone who […]
Grand Rounds vol. 3, no. 2 has been posted at RDoctor Medical.
When “minor” cases go bad
“It’s just minor surgery.” How many times have surgeons said that to patients? How many times have you, as a patient heard that? How many times have I said that to patients? It’s supposed to be reassuring, and most of the time it is. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as “minor” surgery if it’s you […]