Body Health Care

BOOSTER SHOTS: Oddities, musings and news from the health world

Using a test to measure troponin may improve heart-attack diagnosis. (Stephen Sedam / Los Angeles Times)

Heart attacks can be difficult to diagnose. Moreover, doctors often can’t tell a cardiac patient whether he or she is likely to suffer another heart attack. A new test to detect a particular substance in the blood may help with that problem but, if adopted for widespread use, it could also dramatically raise the number of heart attack diagnoses.

In the study, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., researchers reported success using a more sensitive test to identify troponin, a cardiac muscle protein. Find more info…

• Doctors dismissed teenager’s condition as flu and accused her of attention-seeking

A teenager who was left paralysed and on a life support machine after she was stricken with an immune disorder, has made an amazing recovery.

Rachel Attridge, 17, was unable to move, speak or eat for four months, after she was struck with Guillain-Barre Syndrome – a rare disease where the body’s immune system attacks the nervous system by mistake.

Recovery: Rachel says she is improving every day and is simply glad she is no longer trapped in her body

The teenager first realised something was wrong when she began vomiting and suffered severe aches and pains throughout her body.

She rapidly tired and started to lose control of her muscles.

After dashing to Scarborough Hospital, doctors dismissed her symptoms as the flu and told her to go home, get some rest and take painkillers.

But on her way out Rachel fainted from the pain brought on by the damaged nerve endings – which occur when the immune system mistakenly attacks the nervous system.

Astonishingly, despite her worsening condition, two more doctors dismissed her pleas for help – with one even suggesting it was down to her being pregnant.

Rachel said another doctor suggested that she might simply have been attention seeking.

The terrified youngster ended up paralysed from the waist down and her mother Lynn resorted to driving her 80 miles from their Bridlington home to Hull Royal Infirmary.

She was immediately diagnosed with a rare variant of the syndrome, which is characterised by abnormal muscle coordination and paralysis.

Unable to walk: The rare syndrome damages nerve endings, which impairs movement

Her condition had been left untreated for so long she was hooked straight up to a life support machine by Neurology consultants.

She remained there unable to move for four months.

While keeping a constant vigil at her daughter’s bedside, Lynn watched as Rachel slowly began to lose the will to live.

The teenager, who shed three-and-a-half stone during the ordeal, said: ‘At my lowest point I decided I wanted the machine switched off.

‘I just thought, ‘This is it, I am not going to get any better’.

‘When I was on life support, I knew everything that was happening around me but I couldn’t move or shout – I couldn’t even speak.

‘I simply wanted to die.’  

Lynn, 46, added: ‘They resuscitated her a couple of times.

‘She was on morphine and so many drugs.

Find more info…

Newly-released documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) reveal that the US Depart of Homeland Security has been working on plans to roll out a new wave of mobile surveillance technologies at train stations, stadiums and streets. Find more info…