Minerva

BMJ 2005; 331 doi: 10.1136/bmj.331.7515.524 (Published 1 September 2005)
Cite this as: BMJ 2005;331:524

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Eleven Kashmiri children underwent ligation of a patent ductus arteriosis under general anaesthetic in a hospital in Ladakh, India (3500 metres above sea level). Cardiac surgery had not been attempted at this hospital before, but all children tolerated the stress of thoracotomy and the closure of a left to right shunt well—they were already acclimatised to the high altitudes of the Himalayas and were therefore adapted to hypoxaemic conditions (National Medical Journal of India 2005;18: 137-8).

Is Munchausen's syndrome by proxy an example of medical misogyny? A writer in Medical Hypotheses (2005;65: 440-7) thinks so. She says that late stage Lyme disease is so little understood or recognised by doctors, that there's a tendency to accuse mothers of fabricating their children's symptoms and labelling it Munchausen's syndrome by proxy. “Modern medicine's tendency to trivialise women's ‘offbeat’ concerns” and “spirochaetally naïve” doctors who are not aware that advanced borreliosis seronegativity is often the rule frequently “results in the misogyny of mother-devaluation.”

Long distance cyclists are prone to “cyclist palsy” due to prolonged gripping of the handlebars. Nerve conduction studies performed on 28 adults after a 420 mile cycle event confirmed that motor latencies of the deep branch of the ulnar nerve …

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