Medical Review of Pure Genius, episode 2: “It’s Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider Silk Surgery”

Back to the utopic ultra-technological hospital Bunker Hill, run by tech genius James Bell (trying too hard to pull off Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor) and “seventh best surgeon in the world” (apparently there’s a list) Dr. Walter Wallace. The first patient is Amelia, who has vanishing bile duct syndrome — a particularly nasty type of drug-induced liver injury, for which transplant is the ultimate treatment. In this case, the story blames Amelia starting and stopping her antidepressants repeatedly as the cause for her liver damage (speaking of blame, notice how the episode more than once makes sure that we know Amelia is to blame for her own injury because she stopped and started her medications repeatedly — not cool, Pure Genius, blaming the patient, especially when it was more than likely it was just bad luck). Using one of Jamie Bell’s latest experimental gizmos, an electronic nose, the team discovers that Amelia’s liver is on worse shape than they originally thought, and she will need a transplant ASAP — only she can’t be moved up on the transplant list because the tests weren’t done with conventional labs (i.e ones with reliable and reproducible data), and it will apparently take months to test her thus. The team throws around some medicine du jour terms like stem cells and synthetic liver, but ultimately decide to use a living donor — her estranged father (in a living donor situation, only part of the l...
Source: Polite Dissent - Category: Primary Care Authors: Tags: newtag Source Type: blogs