Visits

People do come a lot to this blog to know about self-inflicted diseases. I wonder what some people expect to find. Leave me a comment if you want to know something specific.
Sorry for the lack of updates recently but I'm very caught up in exams for my third year residency, trying to go for a cardiology posting.

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Please leave comments! They won't go unanswered. And perhaps they generate ideas for new posts...

Re-election day

This weekend the second round of brazilian elections is going to take place to decide who will be president for the next four years. In Brazil that decides candidates for executive branch in two rounds, unless a candidate achieves more than 50% of votes in the first round.
Lula failed by less than 1% to reach that tally.
Now electoral campaigns put him at over 20% margin over his opponent Alckmin.
I fail to see how can people sympathize with him. It's true, I did vote for him the last time. But that was before the sheer number of scandals that have taken place during his four year term. Practically all the members of his high echelon have resigned or stepped down (José Dirceu, Palocci, Genoíno, Gushiken, Berzoini, and the list goes on and on...)
And Lula's support only grows!
Imagine if he openly assaulted a bank, people would still applaud him!

That doesn't mean I'd be very happy voting for Alckmin either. Fernando Henrique 2 terms before Lula had me very unhappy.

Which is why I've decide the vote null.

Not because it will nullify the elections. I know that null votes are counted as if you made a mistake. But it's still the only way to show some discontent at the prospect of brazilian politics.

Different perspecitve

This little blue dot through seen through saturn´s rings, this insignificant blue dot, it´s earth.
Credit:Ciclops

Random Country

I´m gonna choose some random country to compare that probably has a lousy health system... uhm... how about Brazil

I don´t know what kind of information Matthew Holt has on Brazil´s health system, but it is definitely untrue. Despite disparities between the states with the state of São Paulo where I live offering perhaps the best public health system in the country, there are some positive points overall. For example we offer all AIDS patients antiretroviral drugs for free, (of course they are seen, admitted , and have CD4 checks performed as needed)!
I work at the public hospital in my city and we have practically the state of the art. When a patient becomes too costly for the private hospitals they will usually send them to us. I think Matthew Holt should use another random example other than Brazil if he doesn´t really know the facts. Or even better, not use any random example at all.
http://www.hcrp.fmrp.usp.br/gxpsites/hgxpp001

Money and winners

Nothing else to be said.

Defining death take 2

As a physician, one of the actions we have to take is to pronounce someone's death. Now this is not as straight-forward as it seems to be. You could maybe attempt to check the patient's vital signs mainly respiratory movements, pulse. But when these stop, as in a respiratory arrest or cardiac arrest, not only this doesn't mean death in most cases, but on the contrary it means that emergency measures may be indicated to revert the condition and trying to keep the person alive, and with a quality of life. So what I'm saying is that at the moment of the arrest his neurons, myocites are still alive and have potential to stay alive.
These emergency measures are an attempt to get new oxygen into your blood and to get your blood flowing in your body taking that oxygen to your organs.
So that doesn't count as death. Patients can also be kept alive through mechanical ventilation, through drugs that keep their blood pressure at a minimum to oxygenate their organs, in hopes that the condition that led them to need these measures will be reversible and the patient will be able to maintain his blood pressure without drugs and be able to breath well without help from a respirator.
Sometimes this condition is not reversible, such as a damage so severe to the brain that there is no hope. In this kind of patient, for example young people who suffer from car accidents, their hearts have no disease and could be kept alive indefinitely with mechanical aid. But sometimes, this patient may brain dead. So maybe this is the best definition of death. How to define this is not easy as well. Because of organ donation, rigid protocols have been estabilished. They usually involve the observation of the absence of primitive reflexes and more elaborate exams such as an electroencephalogram or as my previous post a functional MRI attested by more than one physician.