MUDGE’s Musings
Encountered this at lunch last week; it became a formidable challenge to finish (the story / the lunch: pick one!). Consider yourself warned, faithful reader, should you be snacking on some luscious sweet or casserole while perusing this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere©.
And remember, this comes not from some fringe or undocumented source, and also remember, April Fool’s day was some time ago.
Surgery Without the Slicing
Going in through existing orifices is good for patients and device makers, less so for doctors and hospitals
by Catherine Arnst | Business Week Sci Tech April 3, 2008, 5:00PM EST
On Mar. 11 Jeff Scholz, a 42-year-old former U.S. Marine, developed severe abdominal pain. It wasn’t as bad as the gunshot wound to the leg he suffered while in the service, but it kept him doubled over for most of the night. At the insistence of his fiancée, he went to the emergency room at the University of California at San Diego med center the next morning, where he learned his appendix was inflamed and had to come out. That’s how Scholz, the owner of a wholesale clothing company, ended up making medical history. He’s the first patient in the U.S. to have his appendix removed through his mouth.
Perhaps yr (justifiably) humble svt is more sensitive to this topic, as surgery is possible/probable sometime within the next few months for that pesky partially torn, incompletely healed Achilles tendon which he has been favoring via the awkward, weather exposing “fracture walker” mentioned occasionally in this space.
But, removing organic bits through one’s mouth, or perhaps, gender permitting, through one’s vagina sounds just wrong. And as BW points out, surgeons and their hospitals aren’t thrilled either, since saving patients healing and recovery time and minimizing scars is quite low on their priority lists.
[Please click the link below for the complete article — but then please come on back!]
The health insurance providers of the nation will have the final say on this of course. It will be an interesting tug of war: surgery that might take double the time at the surgeon’s, anesthesiologist’s, surgical nurses’s aggregated hourly rates of half-a-$zillion/hour, versus hospital stays that are half or less the time at their rates of three-quarters of a $zillion/day, or even eliminating overnight stays altogether as scarless surgery procedures are performed on outpatients.
But, while we watch the game we have two observations.
Thankfully, there will be no vagina involved, nor will my mouth be a suitable access orifice, for Achilles tendon surgery.
And, ewwwwwww!
It’s it for now. Thanks,
–MUDGE
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Left-handed Complement 
[…] mm346: All together now: Ewwwww […]