If you like watching ER you’ll love reading The Surgeon’s Blog. It’s fast paced, intense, dramatic, thoughtful, on the edge of gut-wrenching, funny… I’m running out of adjectives.

For sheer speed, you cut between the ribs and then, at the end near the sternum, where cartilage takes the place of bone, you turn the knife northward and chunk through a few of those soft ends. It makes an ugly, L-shaped scar, but it’s quick, and you can reach in as if through a trapdoor. It eliminates the need for finding, opening, inserting, and cranking a rib-spreader, breaking a couple of ribs in the process.

[snip]

…to get blood circulating you hold that heart and work it, even as it’s still beating. And you can feel the engorgement, the ventricles filling more of your hand, the more powerful squirt in response to your grasp as the blood volume is restored. Carefully, with hope, you can begin to relax your grip, keeping your hand near, sensing the more effective beats; and finally, extract your hand from the chest, while realizing for the first time how awkwardly it’s been bent, reaching in from the side of the patient, through a small, tight, and bony hole. As circulation returns to the patient (at least his upper body!), so it does to your hand.

[snip]

It’s not over. Even with the aorta clamped, opening the belly releases the bled blood, and it gushes out under pressure as the belly deflates.

Like I said, this one will keep you on the edge of your seat. Very entertaining. Often funny. You’re going to like Dr. Sid Schwab’s writing style.

He’s definitely one of my new favorites.

While you’re there, be sure to leave a comment to let Dr. Schwab know you stopped by.

- Dean

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The Skeptic’s Circle is being hosted by Steve Novella of Neurologica Blog. Steve did a terrific job of portraying the 65th edition as A Tour Through the Museum of Skepticism. Be sure to check it out and try to keep an open (yet skeptical) mind.

- Dean

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Grand Rounds is up at Vitum Medicinus and as usual there are some very interesting posts for medblog enthusiasts including one from yours truly. Yes, this is my first submission to the medblog carnival and I consider it quite a privilege to have my post listed alongside such an illustrious collection of talented bloggers.

Be sure to check it out… just don’t tell ‘em I’m not a doctor.
(They let you in?)
(Yeah… go figure.)

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