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Leopold Auenbrugger: Using percussion to aid diagnosis

05/19/2023
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Happy birthday to Dr. Leopold Auenbrugger! 

In the mid-1700s, in a hospital in Vienna, Austria, Auenbrugger found that by placing his ear to his patient's chest and lightly tapping, he could tell the density of organs within the body. By sensing if an organ or region feels hollow or dense, a doctor can detect blood clots, air pockets, masses, and other irregular conditions within the body. 

It wasn't until Dr. Rene Laennec developed the stethoscope in 1812 that other doctors used percussion to detect ailments in the body. 

Learn more about the medical applications of percussion in the video and links below! 

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Ethically Challenged: Private Equity Storms US Health Care
02/28/2024
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Title: Ethically Challenged: Private Equity Storms US Health Care.

Author: Laura Katz Olson.

Publication info: Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2022. 

Location: Academic eBook Collection. 

Description: Revealing the dark truth about the impact of predatory private equity firms on American health care.Won Gold from the Axiom Book Award in the Category of Business Ethics, the Benjamin Franklin Awards by the Independent Book Publishers Association and the North American Book Award in the Catergory of Business Finance, Finalist of the American Book Fest Best Book Social Change and Current Events by the American Book FestPrivate equity (PE) firms pervade all aspects of our modern lives. Unlike other corporations, which generally manufacture products or provide services, they leverage considerable debt and other people's money to buy and sell businesses with the sole aim of earning supersized profits in the shortest time possible. With a voracious appetite and trillions of dollars at its disposal, the private equity industry is now buying everything from your opioid treatment center to that helicopter that helps swoop you up from a car crash site. It may even control how and when you can get your kidney dialysis. In Ethically Challenged, Laura Katz Olson describes how PE firms are gobbling up physician and dental practices; home care and hospice agencies; substance abuse, eating disorder, and autism services; urgent care facilities; and emergency medical transportation. With a sharp eye on cost and quality of care, Olson investigates the PE industry's impact on these essential services. She explains how PE firms pile up massive debt on their investment targets and how they bleed these enterprises with assorted fees and dividends for themselves. Throughout, she argues that public pension funds, which provide the preponderance of equity for PE buyouts, tend to ignore the pesky fact that their money may be undermining the very health care system their workers and retirees rely on.Weaving together insights from interviews with business owners and experts, newspaper articles, purchased data sets, and industry publications, Olson offers a unique perspective and appreciation of the significance of PE investments in health care. The first book to comprehensively address private equity and health care, Ethically Challenged raises the curtain on an industry notorious for its secrecy, exposing the nefarious side of its maneuvers.

Pharmacy, Medicine, Health sciences, Dentistry, Philosophy, History, Politics & law
Traumatic Brain Injury : A Roadmap for Accelerating Progress
02/14/2024
Unknown Author
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Title: Traumatic Brain Injury: A Roadmap for Accelerating Progress. 

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Health and Medicine Division; Board on Health Care Services; Board on Health Sciences Policy; Committee on Accelerating Progress in Traumatic Brain Injury Research and Care; Chanel Matney; Katherine Bowman; Donald Berwick

Publication info: Washington, DC : National Academies Press. 2022. 

Available: Academic eBook Collection. 

Description: Every community is affected by traumatic brain injury (TBI). Causes as diverse as falls, sports injuries, vehicle collisions, domestic violence, and military incidents can result in injuries across a spectrum of severity and age groups. Just as the many causes of TBI and the people who experience it are diverse, so too are the physiological, cognitive, and behavioral changes that can occur following injury. The overall TBI ecosystem is not limited to healthcare and research, but includes the related systems that administer and finance healthcare, accredit care facilities, and provide regulatory approval and oversight of products and therapies. TBI also intersects with the wide range of community organizations and institutions in which people return to learning, work, and play, including the education system, work environments, professional and amateur sports associations, the criminal justice system, and others. Traumatic Brain Injury: A Roadmap for Accelerating Progress examines the current landscape of basic, translational, and clinical TBI research and identifies gaps and opportunities to accelerate research progress and improve care with a focus on the biological, psychological, sociological, and ecological impacts. This report calls not merely for improvement, but for a transformation of attitudes, understanding, investments, and care systems for TBI.

Medicine, Literature
The Babinski Sign
11/17/2022
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Today is neurologist Joseph Babinski's birthday! It's a good day to talk about the "Babinski sign," which he first described in 1899. Babinski studied neurology in the 19th century under Jean-Martin Charcot, who is often considered the "founder of modern neurology." This test was one which Babinski developed over time by observing patients with various neurological issues (nervous system damage, epilepsy, and mental health issues) that were difficult to distinguish at the time. 

The Babinski sign is still used today: it tests the reflexes in a person's foot in order to determine if they have damage to or a disease involving their nervous system, spinal cord, or brain. The test is done by rubbing the sole of a person's foot with a blunt object, and analyzing the reflexes of their toes. View the image below to see that pointing the toes downward indicates normal nerve activity, while pointing the toes upward indicates nerve damage or disease. 

 Diagram of the Babinski sign.               Access Medicine search results for "the Babinski Sign."

Left image: This diagram is from the Wikipedia article on the Babinski sign. 

Right image: Search results for "the Babinski Sign" on Access Medicine, one of our library databases. The diagrams in this results list demonstrate how this test can be applied to different patient situations (assessing the spinal cord, paralysis, rehabilitation, etc.). 

Further reading:

  • In this article from the National Library of Medicine, you can read a more detailed overview of the Babinski reflex test (synonymous with Babinski sign, Babinski reflex). 
  • In this article (available publicly) in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Dr. Francois Sellal and professor Laurent Tatu discuss the recurring presence of the Babinski sign in Renaissance paintings. 
  • In this article called "Babinski the Great," you can read more about his achievements in neurology.
  • On Wikipedia, there are a number of additional "Babinski-like responses" that you can browse through. 
Medicine