Florida, Cradle of Brazilian Butt-Lift Deaths

A tragic interplay of beauty and death led two medical professionals to write this alert for their peers: “Brazilian Butt Lift-Associated Mortality: The South Florida Experience,” Pat Pazmiño [pictured here] and Onelio Garcia, Jr., Aesthetic Surgery Journal, vol. 43, no. 2, February 2023, pp. 162–178. The authors report: Although BBL-related morbidity is generally associated with […]

The Adventure of Winston Churchill’s Hernia

“Winston Churchill: Inguinal Hernia Repair on 11 June 1947,” by J. Allister Vale and John W. Scadding,” is one of the research studies featured in the article “Medical Research: Sarsaparilla, Nose, Churchill’s Hernia“, in the special Formulas & Recipes issue of the magazine (Annals of Improbable Research). Read the article online. And if you like, […]

Six Cups of Coffee Goes to Your Head, for Surgical Guidance [research study]

A special hat filled with six cups’ worth of ground coffee may make it easier for surgeons to succeed at some kinds of nose and throat surgery. This study presents the news: “Coffee: the key to safer image-guided surgery—a granular jamming cap for non-invasive, rigid fixation of fiducial markers to the patient,” Patrick S. Wellborn […]

Textilomas, Gossypibomas, Gauzomas, or Muslinomas are Not Tumors

Woven fabrics occasionally turn up inside human bodies, where they can be mistaken for tumors. This study looks for and at some of them, and gives them colorful names: “Textiloma (Gossypiboma) Mimicking Recurrent Intracranial Tumor,” Teresa Ribalta, Ian E. McCutcheon, Antonio G. Neto, Deepali Gupta, A. J. Kumar, David A. Biddle, Lauren A. Langford, Janet […]

Report of the scientific investigation: Can farts be lit on fire by a laser?

There was indeed a scientific investigation after the (widely reported) fire that ignited during a patient’s cervical conization procedure at the University of Tokyo Hospital, causing “a wide range of burns [to the] thighs [and] rear” to the patient. That scientific report is lavishly illustrated with photographs. To determine whether the accident could have been caused by an […]

The Effect of Music on the Efficiency of Surgical Closures

“Time” as they say “is money.” Especially relevant perhaps, in a plastic surgery operating theatre, in which running costs can reach $66 a minute. And where, for example, “A 10% reduction in operative time per hour equals savings of $396 per hour.” What might help to speed-up surgeons’ performance (without of course compromising accuracy and […]

Surgical pathology and bird-watching – compare and contrast

Chhanda Bewtra, M.D., M.B., B.S. who is Associate Professor of Pathology at Creighton University School of Medicine and Creighton University Medical Center, is also a birdwatcher. “I have been a diagnostic surgical pathologist for almost a quarter of a century. Recently, I took up bird-watching (or birding for short) as a hobby. Right away I […]

Cock-Eyed Optimism: Using a Foreskin to Repair Eyelids

This study documents a case of cock-eyed optimism in a German surgical team, and the presumably happy result for the patient: “Cicatricial ectropion in ichthyosis: a novel approach to treatment,” Detlef Uthoff [pictured here], M. Gorney and C. Teichmann, Ophthalmic Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, June 1994, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 92-5. The authors, at […]

Brain transplants : the implications [5 of n]

Professor Rebeka Rice of the Philosophy Department at Seattle Pacific University, US, examines the paradoxical implications of brain transplants. [see previous article in this series] The 2012 Winifred E. Weter Faculty Award Lecture for Meritorious Scholarship presents an entity called ‘Bob’ (pictured) Bob is a human being, albeit a hypothetical one. “Perhaps a better way […]

Brain transplants : the implications [4 of n]

Amongst the formidable complexities that would be involved in transplanting someone’s brain, lurks an enigmatic question – if it were yours, would ‘you’ go with your brain? Such questions have been examined by professor Fredrik Svenaeus, of Södertörn University, Huddinge, Sweden. The professor has a chapter in ‘The Body as Gift, Resource, and Commodity’, ( […]