NOPE. APPARENTLY THIS IS REAL.

British Media and News Reporting may actually not be related.

The shock findings of the Michael Jackson autopsy | The Sun |News
8st 1oz, no food just pills in his stomach, bald, bruised, his ribs broken by CPR, 4 needle wounds near his heart…

I don’t know if this is real or not, but it sounds … like I have some questions …(1 stone is 14 pounds)

There’s this:

SUFFERED several broken ribs as frantic rescuers pumped his chest after he collapsed in cardiac arrest.

That’s unfortunately normal.  No problems there.

And the (Emergency Medical) weirdness:

Four injection sites were found above or near to Jacko’s heart.

All appeared to result from attempts to pump adrenaline directly into the organ in a failed bit to restart it.

Three of the injections had penetrated the heart wall — causing damage — but a fourth missed and hit one of the 50-year-old star’s ribs.

What?  Intracardiac injections of epinephrine?  I thought that went out in the very early 80’s.  As for ‘causing damage’, needles do that, but the major problems with intracardiac epi are coronary artery lacerations (bad, but not the end of the earth, as the recipient was dead to start with and getting a return of circulation allows time to fix them) and intracardiac muscle injection, which causes intractable ventricular fibrillation, which is Bad.  Capital B Bad.  Usually Unrecoverable Bad.

Where does one even get epi with and intracardiac needle? I’ve been in the business for a good while and haven’t seen one since Paramedic school (82-83) and was then taught it was out of favor.

Nowadays if you don’t have an IV line during a code (it happens) you can squirt it down the endotracheal tube, or, failing that, an intraosseous IV line (shorter needle, not in the heart, works very well) through which all the resuscitation meds can be given.

Interesting.  Nothing to make of it now, but, who’s a) been watching too many Tarantino movies and b) did this?

(I doubt an emergency pericardiocentesis was the reason for the described wounds, as those if done without sonographic guidance are done from the top of the abdomen up, and with sono guidance would be through the chest wall, but with sono guidance you’d know if they needed it or not, and if there was a big pericardial effusion it’d have been in the report).

RT @Doctor_V RT @bobfinn: CDC’s Cox: “What’s the diff btwn bird & swine flu? 4 bird flu U need tweetment, 4 swineflu U need oinkment.” [Ugh]

Hahaha.  Here’s hoping I can deliver both!

If it is doc-assisted, please relieve society of this doc’s license.

Anna Nicole Smith, anyone?  Elvis?  A string in between?  This doc-assisted destruction has to stop.

(All of this presumes the most likely, a doc involved; if not, Mea Culpa).  Oh, and Matt wants me to say: no actual individual doc, living or dead, is implied in this post.

Second: somewhere in Beverly Hills there’s a Plastic Surgery group applying for TARP funds.

Better Health » Some of My Best Friends Are Doctors

Dr. Val does a nice Fisk!  Yes, docs make a decently good living.  No, it’s not why the health care system is in trouble.

Adventures in Medicine

Blogborygmi (this one hurts, and I suspect he’ll be back soon, but dead is dead) decided he wants to live!

Canadianmedicine, now Canadian Medicine News (a push)

Docsboard

Dr. Wannabe

Fat Doctor (again)

Fingers and Tubes in Every Orifice (again)

Glorfindel of Gondolin

nzou.com

Paging Dr Jess

Physicians, et al.

Pulmonary Roundtable (restarted at Facebook as a group.  Hmm.)

Pure Pedantry

Richard[Winters]MD (again)

Suburban Emergency

symtym (though planned) moved to quanta vie

Tales from the Emergency Room

The Doctor Blogger

The Physician Executive

Travel Nurse Aim

Tundra Medicine Dreams

Wait Time and Delayed Care

Wandering Visitor

What, Me Worry?

24 added to the Dead Blogs.  The circle (well, cliff) of blog-life continues.

If you’d like to be added to the ‘medical’ sidebar overe there, please drop me an email (not a comment here, an email, use the “Contact” page above).

I am sorry for your loss.

A Happy Hospitalist: You Are Living In The Medicare Tomato
You want to know what the process is like for a physician to make a living as a physician.
Look only toward the Medicare Tomato. Imagine for the moment that you have been taken out of reality and into the alternate bizarro world of the Medicare Tomato. In this analogy, the Medicare Tomato represents a day in the life of a practicing physician.

An easy to understand (and mouthwatering) analogy of how we’ve gotten into the Medicare payment morass, and where it’s quite possibly headed.  We’re much nearer then end than the beginning.

Good writing.

Surprise: it’s not about access for patients.

Where have I heard that before….?

Good news? It arrived mostly prefilled. Over 100 pages.

They’re all good, and all presuppose that the system can be fixed without fundamentally changing the way people (patients) buy their healthcare.

Let patients see the menu, with the prices.  Let hospitals, doctors, and vendors compete, out in the open.  Lift the veil of secrecy about what company x pays vs y, and let’s let the rational consumer decide what they want to spend.  I would trust the wisdom of purchasers over those of government rule-makers every day.