Bioterrorism

Dr. Somy Thottathil did an awesome lecture on bioterrorism this past week. And although it is hopefully something we never have to see, as one of the major hospitals designated as a bioterrorism site in Chicago, it is something that we should be prepared to recognize and treat. It’s also good review for all the med school knowledge we haven’t needed (thankfully) for some time now. The main topics we’ll focus on are the Category A agents:  Botulism, Plague, Anthrax, Smallpox, and Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers (which includes Ebola, Marburg, Lassa Fever, and Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever). We are only going to discuss Ebola as current outbreaks are still occurring.

Scuba Pathology

I have to say that scuba injuries are not my strong suit. However, in doing this blog post, I have to say it’s not the worst thing to read about. For instance, you get a lot of random information like for some reason depth is measured in fathoms (which is just 2 yards, and seems completely unnecessary to have this). Also since a lot of these disorders were discovered in the 1800s, they have awesome nicknames like the bends, rapture of the deep, the chokes, and all the squeezes including face squeeze and ear squeeze.

For this blog post, I wanted to keep it simple and have it be a quick rundown of the things we need to know when looking at diving injuries as well as when our friends inevitably ask about if it’s okay for them to go diving. And as always, end on some fun history.