Love House MD, and Medical Mysteries?
In the manner of House MD, the diagnosis column of the New York Times (http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/news/health/columns/diagnosis/) offers a collection of medical mysteries where patients present symptoms that don’t always follow a conventional pattern. This is a great resource for aspiring medical students as well as anyone with a general interest in medicine (and, of course, the hypochondriacs amongst us!).
The articles are fascinating as much from a general standpoint as medical interest, and facilitate reader involvement. They can help in understanding and developing history taking, eliciting information, as well as forming clear and effective thinking.
The following is the introduction from one of the of the case studies:
DIAGNOSIS; A Serious Case of Hiccups
The Patient's Story
A 46-year-old man came to the Metropolitan Hospital on Manhattan's Upper East Side early one afternoon. He had a case of the hiccups that wouldn't go away. The problem started two days earlier. In the midst of what seemed a perfectly ordinary day, he started to hiccup and wasn't able to stop. He tried all the usual treatments. He held his breath. He drank glass after glass of cold water. He thought scary thoughts. But no matter what he did, every 20 to 30 seconds, his chest would jump, and then his throat would close, cutting short the involuntary intake of air. After two days of nonstop hiccupping he went to the hospital.
Intrigued? The final diagnosis was that he had a Pulmonary Embolism, and you can follow the process to diagnosis using the website link above. There are many other fascinating cases to browse through and learn from.
Another excellent source of up-to-date information and news in the medical world is Medpage Today (www.medpagetoday.com). In our busy lives it is useful to be able to access up to date info from a central point and see what is new in medicine, research etc.