Volume 192 - Issue 2
In Other Journals
Author: Ann Gregory
Med J Aust 2010; 192 (2): 106. || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2010.tb03431.x
Published online: 18 January 2010
Published online: 18 January 2010
What a world: 2009 in review
Did you know that the Maldives Government learned how to scuba dive and held a cabinet meeting underwater to draw attention to the planet’s rising sea levels? So says The Lancet, in an editorial that nominates climate change as the main subject in medicine at the close of the year 2009. The beginning of the year was marked by the election of a new US president set on health care reform in that country. Several honourable mentions were made of several advances in medicine, including a cure for a form of severe combined immunodeficiency, courtesy of gene therapy. However, the year’s biggest health story was the emergence of the pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza in April. What will 2010 bring to the world of medicine?
Lancet 2009; 374: 2027
Legend of Antarctica
“It seems that I have appendicitis. I am keeping quiet about it, even smiling. Why frighten my friends? Who could be of help? A polar explorer’s only encounter with medicine is likely to have been in a dentist’s chair”, wrote Russian surgeon Leonid Ivanovich Rogozov in his diary. It was April 1961 and Rogozov was in the Antarctic, with 11 others. He was the only doctor, and contact with the outside world was not possible at that time.
Rogozov’s condition deteriorated (as did the weather), and his colleagues became aware of his predicament. Under his instructions, they turned Rogozov’s room into an improvised operating theatre and then assisted him in conducting his own appendectomy. He chose a semi-reclining position and was aided somewhat by a mirror: “The mirror helps, but it also hinders — after all, it shows things backwards. I work mainly by touch”, he later wrote.
Rogozov recovered and returned to Russia in 1962 but never to Antarctica, according to a recent report of the event co-authored by Rogozov’s son, an anaesthetist.
BMJ 2009; 339: b4965
Pandemic ’flu at sea
The recent influenza pandemic has prompted much review of the 1918–1919 Spanish influenza pandemic. New Zealand researchers report that the case of a soldier stated in at least one official record as “missing at sea” on 4 September 1918 could, in fact, be considered as an influenza-related fatality. A different archival report was identified which noted that, during an outbreak of pandemic influenza on the troop ship Tahiti, a soldier with influenza became delirious, “jumped overboard”, and was lost at sea (presumed drowned) — and on the same date.
At the time, the Tahiti was off the coast of West Africa en route from Wellington to Plymouth, England. The researchers said the ship had stopped in Freetown, Sierra Leone, to take on coal and meet other ships to form a convoy. Officials from the various ships in the convoy met on another ship, including some from the Mantua — the ship which probably brought the pandemic influenza to Freetown from England.
In all, 77 deaths resulted from the outbreak of pandemic influenza on the Tahiti. Freetown was one of three major distribution points for the more virulent second wave of the 1918 influenza pandemic.
NZMJ Digest 2009; 122: 9-20
Flower arrangements
We wrap up your holiday reading with some flowers for thought. UK authors say some hospitals have prohibited flowers on their wards, citing various reasons — many of which don’t necessarily hold water; for example, that the flowers themselves carry a risk of infection.1,2 Day and Carter’s good flower guide to increasing the chances that flowers will be accepted at hospitals suggests giving bouquets that aren’t too big and unwieldy, aren’t too heavily scented and are composed of flowers that do not shed pollen.1 In a linked editorial, Cohn said that the flower ban reflects a more general shift in current definitions of care, where technical efficiency coupled with greater bureaucracy and accountability have “elbowed” flowers out of the way.2 He said gift giving is important to patients and their visitors and called for a broader version of care within the everyday practices of hospitals that preserves such rituals.
1 BMJ 2009; 339: b5257
2 BMJ 2009; 339: b5406
Dr Ann Gregory, MJA