StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I found an interesting website, perhaps the modern (since everything are blogs now) medical science version of stardestroyer.net:

http://www.politedissent.com/archives/category/medicine

Never knew so many medical terms were miss-used.

moved to proper forum

Henry is a 35 year old who is admitted to House’s service after he is discovered crying blood. The team’s initial thoughts are lymphocytosis (a high white blood cell count — which is more of a symptom than a diagnosis) or a cavernous sinus thrombosis. Further blood work up is done and is normal, and a CT shows no evidence of a sinus thrombosis.

Strictly speaking a high white blood cell count is leucocytosis. There are several types of white cells, of which lymphocytes is one of them. Lymphocytosis therefore refers to a high lymphocyte count only, and not the more generic high white blood cell count, and if they read their own wikipedia link, it would have told them that.

I am not one to support House as "medically accurate" but I couldn't help myself when the OP described "so many medical terms were miss-used" and the article itself misused one in the opening paragraph.

Any way, it would never occur to me to think of amebic parasite infection when someone comes in "crying blood." I would have thought the more obvious thing to check for is a coagulopathy of some sort.

There is just something about 'crying blood' that captivates producers. It happens very frequently in tv and movies. Minus a nail or something in the orbital socket, you're just not going to see it often.

Knife wrote:There is just something about 'crying blood' that captivates producers. It happens very frequently in tv and movies. Minus a nail or something in the orbital socket, you're just not going to see it often.

On the Australian medical documentary show RPA aka Royal Prince Alfred (Hospital) there was a case of a woman crying blood from too high dose of warfarin. I remember this one because me and my colleague saw that episode while we were on our road trip a few years back.

If they want to note how medically inaccurate House is, why don't we start with how all his "underlings" seem to be specialists in their own right (in which case why would you want to work for an egotistical maniac like House). Its like a Michelin star chef wanting to work for Gordon Ramsay only to be humiliated. And just for the record I love watching Ramsay at work too.

Also lets go on with how his team are multitalented to ridiculous proportions. They do their own laboratory work looking under the microscope, Chase can do his own gastroscopy (why doesn't he just do that for a living and earn big bucks because its a procedure), and House even did some basic surgery (in the abdomen), Foreman can break into houses to get microbiological samples etc. At least they couldn't do neuro surgery.

Oh there was also a medical episode where they suspected phaeochromocytoma in a patient who was in jail for violent crimes. The phaeochromocytoma apparently made him aggressive because of the high adrenalin. Which is why phaeochromocytoma classically presents as the five P's (get it) - pallor, pounding headache, paroxysmal hypertension, perspiration and palpitations.

Now I find House entertaining, but they stretch the medicine almost as much as Star Trek Voyager butchered physics.

Season 3, Episode 2, "Cane and Able," the team performs brain surgery to treat child chimerism due to IVF complications.