CPR

According to some studies of the outcomes of patients in need of resuscitation who have had CPR performed on them (as opposed to a defibrillator or whatever), approximately 3 percent had what I would call a "favorable" outcome, living at least another month.  Another 3 percent also lived, but in what is commonly referred to as a vegetative state, and a couple percent further had an outcome somewhere in between, not quite as bad as the second group but not really in good shape.  The other 92 percent just died.  Other studies are slightly more optimistic, but only slightly.

This is in sharp contrast to the way that CPR is promoted, and even more so compared to the way that it is portrayed in the media, where it has a roughly 75% chance of completely saving a person's life with no major ill effects.

On the plus side, some of the things they're doing with automated defibrillators (the ones that you see in public buildings) are pretty amazing.  So hopefully, CPR will slowly become a less and less necessary skill.

Primary source: http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2013/jan/15/bitter-end/Secondary sources:  http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199606133342406    for study on media protrayalshttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2751179?dopt=Abstract   for one study on survivability

Dog Paws

This morning I learned that if a dog breaks a bone in their paw, even one of the minor ones, they will typically refuse to put any weight on it.  Contrariwise, if a dog is limping but using the foot, then it's almost certainly not a break, just a sprain or similar.

This is useful diagnostic medical information, and the source of at least a little relief, if not great joy.

This post has nothing to do with Sandy

Last weekend (9 days ago) I had a small accident, wherein I needed to stop our dog very quickly from chasing a squirrel into the street.  Sadly, all I had with which to attempt this task was my voice (only moderately effective at this point), the rope to which he was attached, and my bare hands.

So now I have minor rope burns that are finally starting to heal.  But over the course of the last week, I have learned that in 2009, Johnson & Johnson (not an S. C. Johnson company) discontinued the sale of their immensely popular First Aid Cream, which irks me no end.  When I go into a drug-type store now, all I see are antibiotic creams (unnecessary and possibly harmful in the long run due to overuse of antibiotics), "burn sprays" (overkill, and hard to apply to the webbing between my fingers anyway), and various aloe-type gels, which I'm not sure are safe to apply to broken skin.  This is annoying-- all I want is something I can rub onto a wound that will moisturize, soothe, and seal it/protect it a bit from the environment.  And there really isn't anything on the shelves that matches that.

After surfing Amazon's product reviews, I was informed of two things: to wit, 1) that a popular replacement is manufactured by Ambix Laboratories, a company that does not seem to have a web presence and about which I can find only limited information, and 2) that the old first aid cream apparently had a beeswax base, which may in part explain its disappearance since the price of beeswax has apparently skyrocketed (possibly due in turn to colony collapse disorder).

Penguins

Apparently, handling penguins (the flightless waterfowl, specifically the Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae), not the caffeinated peppermints) can give you salmonella.

So go wash those penguin-y hands!

NB: do you have any idea how hard it is to spell caffeine without having any first?  Sigh.