T6, Wk5, Day 357, Thursday - Lovin the 'Net!

I *really* love having the internet in class. I've got folders for each class to save my websites in that have to do with various things mentioned in class.

Here are six things I looked up while in Neurology today.

1. Meralgia Paresthetica - a condition characterized by tingling, numbness and burning pain in the outer part of your thigh. The cause of meralgia paresthetica is compression of the nerve that supplies sensation to the skin surface of your upper leg.
2. Shimizu Reflex - a muscle stretch reflex (MSR) discovered in 1993 while researching MSR’s innervated by the higher cervical cord. It was known prior to this research that precise information regarding C0-C4 spinal cord segments represented a blind spot in exam procedures.

3. Hilton's Law - expoused by John Hilton in a series of medical lectures given in 1860-1862, is the observation that in the study of anatomy, one often finds that a nerve that innervates a joint also tends to innervate the muscles that move the joint and the skin that covers the distal attachments of those muscles^[1].

4. Porphyrias - a group of rare disorders passed down through families, in which an important part of hemoglobin, called heme, is not made properly. Heme is also found in myoglobin, a protein found in certain muscles.

5. Paraneoplastic Diseases (or syndrome) - this is kind of a tough one to nail down but, here is what I got from Wikipedia... - A paraneoplastic syndrome is a disease or symptom that is the consequence of the presence of cancer in the body, but is not due to the local presence of cancer cells.

6. Rhabdomyolysis - Rhabdomyolysis is the breakdown of muscle fibers resulting in the release of muscle fiber contents (myoglobin) into the bloodstream. Some of these are harmful to the kidney and frequently result in kidney damage.

From EENT, I got three new look-ups

1. Coryza – the interesting thing with this word was how much Dr. DeGeer knows about the origins of so many words and this word was no exception. It comes from the Greek word “koryza” which means “head” + “to boil”. and refers to a head cold.

2. Dangerous Triangle – this is an area of the face that runs from the upper bridge of the nose down to the corners of the mouth. there is a cavernous sinus behind the face in that area that can become infected and cause much malaise with the brain. What’s really cool is that I was able to look up Dangerous Triangle on Google and I came across a site with a picture in it that Dr. DeGeer had also used in his power point presentation just a few slides later! But, I already had the scoop. I’ll use the picture as today pic of the day. The picture is of a patient who had an abscess of an upper front tooth which is in the area of the Dangerous Triangle. The patient ended up getting Cavernous Sinus Thrombosis.

3. The third lookup was a software download from http://www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/ProductDetailsReader.asp

that link and the software I got from it enabled me to download the entire text to a book called Family Medicine: Ambulatory Care & Prevention, Fifth Edition which, is a book we use for our EENT class. It's really a great little book. Well, close to a thousand pages little but, it is paperback and fits nicely in my bag. Of course ...now that it's on my laptop I don't *have* to bring it with and if I forget it, I've still got it online :)