okeedokee
The Bastion of Belmont
IF you're unlucky enough to be stricken with a rare medical condition, you'd better hope your doctor watches the right television show.
That was the lesson for one German man with severe heart failure and a puzzling mix of symptoms including fever, blindness, deafness and enlarged lymph nodes, which stumped doctors for months.
The 55-year-old man was diagnosed only when he was referred to Dr Juergen Schaefer, a fan of the US television medical drama, House.
"After five minutes, I knew what was wrong,'' said Schaefer, who works at the Centre for Undiagnosed Diseases in Marburg, north of Frankfurt.
He said the man's symptoms matched up almost perfectly with a patient on an episode in which the fictional Dr Gregory House, played by British actor Hugh Laurie, identified cobalt poisoning as the cause.
The series ended in 2012 after an eight-year run.
Schaefer regularly uses the television series to teach medical students.
When he saw the patient with heart failure in May 2012, he had recently prepared a lecture on the show's cobalt poisoning case, where House's future mother-in-law falls ill after receiving a faulty metal hip.
Schaefer said some small fragments of the ceramic hip remained and were grinding into the metal replacement, which leaked cobalt and chromium into the patient's bloodstream.
Read the rest here:
http://www.geelongadvertiser.com.au...ical-drama-house/story-fnjbobec-1226820694814
That was the lesson for one German man with severe heart failure and a puzzling mix of symptoms including fever, blindness, deafness and enlarged lymph nodes, which stumped doctors for months.
The 55-year-old man was diagnosed only when he was referred to Dr Juergen Schaefer, a fan of the US television medical drama, House.
"After five minutes, I knew what was wrong,'' said Schaefer, who works at the Centre for Undiagnosed Diseases in Marburg, north of Frankfurt.
He said the man's symptoms matched up almost perfectly with a patient on an episode in which the fictional Dr Gregory House, played by British actor Hugh Laurie, identified cobalt poisoning as the cause.
The series ended in 2012 after an eight-year run.
Schaefer regularly uses the television series to teach medical students.
When he saw the patient with heart failure in May 2012, he had recently prepared a lecture on the show's cobalt poisoning case, where House's future mother-in-law falls ill after receiving a faulty metal hip.
Schaefer said some small fragments of the ceramic hip remained and were grinding into the metal replacement, which leaked cobalt and chromium into the patient's bloodstream.
Read the rest here:
http://www.geelongadvertiser.com.au...ical-drama-house/story-fnjbobec-1226820694814
I really didn't see that before.
