“Nobody is textbook anatomy”
I know you’re exaggerating for poetic effect but this might actually be true in some parts of the human anatomy.
For example the description of the anatomy of vessels and anastomoses around the knee…I have had a professor tell me that the standard anatomical descriptions for this might all essentially be fiction. Basically the variation in some of these vessels over there is so high that the standard anatomical textbook description might be wrong.
That being said maybe the professor was wrong. I don’t know. But it was an interesting thing to think about.
Think of it like those blended-face photos. Anatomy books describe that.
IIRC, ultrasound is top of that payscale..?
For the axillary approach to brachial plexus blocks, we tried to elicit paresthesias from actual needle impaction on nerves and then pulled back a tad and injected a bolus of anesthetic.
We did that repeatedly, aiming to deposit anesthetic near each branch of the plexus.
Failing that, hitting the brachial artery with the needle and then continuing to advance the needle until no blood could be aspirated, injecting half the intended volume of anesthetic (2% lidocaine with epinephrine 1:1000) behind the vessel, then withdrawing the needle until no blood could be aspirated and then depositing the remainder of the anesthetic on the front side of the artery was the technique of choice.
Diff'rent strokes.
We have a lot of down time during the day, just in very short increments. Thus the stereotype that we’re all crossword/Sudoku nerds. HN is something you can pick up and put down in a moment.
Also, I have always thought of the job as a sort of human engineering, or a big physiology lab. Programmers have REPL; we have vital sign monitors for instant feedback. Thankfully it is difficult to crash a human accidentally.
People think doctors bought computers early because they were rich. They could, but it’s worth remembering that if you were a science-and-math kid in the post-WW2 era, medicine and engineering would be the fields you would be pushed toward. That is not as prominent now as tech has started paying better and medicine less, but it’s still not terrible reasoning. I would have to screw up a lot to be unemployable, even if it did take me a lot of school to get to that point. Doctors bought computers because they looked fun.
Only one of my partners has an engineering degree (MechE). I majored in chemistry. Two pharmacists, one accountant. Don’t know about the rest.
I like this. I used to tell med students doing a month-long rotation that the specialty could be described as a combination of applied physiology/applied chemistry/applied anatomy with the great thing being you get to find out if you were right in the moment/that day, rather than having to wait days/weeks/months/forever to learn if you had done the right things.
P.S. I majored in political science
P.P.S. ChatGPT-4o just told me that "The use of nerve stimulators for brachial plexus blocks became more widespread in the late 1970s and 1980s."
I never used a nerve stimulator — or US — for brachial plexus blocks during my career (I retired in 2015). I guess I was just so used to doing it the way I learned back in the Dark Ages that as long as I got good results, I kept on keeping on.
Also, if you're doing a locum in some backwoods hospital in a small town in Virginia, you're unlikely to find a working nerve stimulator, much less a portable ultrasound.
I suppose this is why they have a mandatory retirement age for airline pilots.
I might reach out to you with a few tidbits you might enjoy out of HN - while this nickname isn’t sterile, I don’t want to doxx myself too easily.
Did femorals and popliteals by stim, it was quicker than ultrasound. Now that we have ultrasound everywhere, there’s no reason not to use it.
Residency 06-09.
One facility I worked at had a family medicine guy who was in the National Guard who asked me about field treatment. I mentioned Valium rather than Versed for reducing dislocations and fractures, and said that he really should find someone to teach him interscalenes by stim, I would teach him popliteals. Just to get those ankle fractures and dislocated shoulders comfortable until they could be evacuated (this is training, not combat, so plenty of troops don’t get moved until next day at least). Unfortunately this was as U/S was really becoming standard of care so it would be hard to justify teaching stim for a brachial plexus block - but he can’t fit that u/s in a field kit.
I am sure for some problems it will amaze and for some it will not.
-United States Air Force
What this thread is talking about is things like extra fingers, missing or extra nerves and muscles, and varying structural differences.
I recently started learning a lot about the muscular and nervous system in the hip area. Even on Wikipedia you routinely read things like „this muscles is missing in x% of population”. It blew my mind that there is so much difference to our internal structure.
I had an ingrown toenail fixed. There is a nerve that comes in and branches in two in the bug toe. In my toe it branches into three!
Another example is that of sciatia, which is much more prevalent when your sciatic nerve takes one particular path to get through the glutes. Other routed methods and sciatia is much less likely to be debilitating.
A form of biometric authentication, perhaps? Assume one has a spare CT scanner or some such thing, and doesn't mind discriminating against roughly half of the population.
So that's the reason behind the dick pics. I thought it was just to show off, but it's for identification. Makes total sense now.
> Even identical males twins don't have the same penis structure/routing. Thanks for sharing your own personal example (I am the twin, in mine).
https://www.unthsc.edu/center-for-anatomical-sciences/willed...
I had a blast.
Not as good as doing your own dissection, but a million times better than an anatomy book is visiting a plastination exhibit:
Models of circulatory systems with plastesizers and then all other flesh removed — incredible and complex and unique-to-each-human.
2008/9 I did anatomy prosections and had an absolute blast, but ultimately did not become licensed.
Don’t know what to do with the information I have discovered in the end but a good reminder to pause and reflect occasionally with the hope that we may not enable whatever the next “great idea, damn the costs” is.
The chest opener is one of the scarier physical tools within surgery... "ca-RACK-k-k-k-KK"
As for "chance of being hacked apart," anybody can donate their cadaver to science — most facilities require prior enrollment and will recover the corpse, nationwide.
You might end up sold into scientific experimentation... if you're morbidly obese (e.g.) you won't be used for student anatomy (if you care).
Not my cup of tea, personally, but my ultimate point is you might get used in something you disagree with. Look into the history of cell lines used in medicine for some of the controversy and perpetual pain for surviving family members, as an example.
This 2022 LessWrong post mentions a $60 5-hour option at the Sf Bay Area's Merritt College (in Oakland):
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5PBWgHiCiiJHjPRSn/what-it-s-...
You are correct, Vagus is TENTH Cranial Nerve.
It and several of the nerves preceding it, which originally innervated the branchial arches, remain different in nature from the following nerves (spinal nerves + cranial nerves XI and XII), whose original main purpose was to innervate the somatic muscles. This difference is more important than whether the nerves happen to exit the central nervous systems between adjacent vertebrae or by holes through the cranium (which are the result of the first vertebrae becoming fused to the occipital bone).
The nervus vagus and its associated ganglia of the vertebrates has a correspondent in the nervous system of most animals, including the arthropods, as a vegetative nervous system of the gastro-intestinal tract, which is connected to the central nervous system from the head, e.g. with the tritocerebrum of the arthropods.
Here by the grace of god(s)...
The brain is but just one part of an incredibly complex machination.
And I think with "most of the cells in your body are not you" and gut biomes and more...
I think everyone is their own ecosystem too.
One of the most incredible exhibits I've seen are the anatomical tables on display in the Royal College of Physicians museum in London. When I walked into the room there were these 3-4 "doors" with what looked like shadows of people on them. The more I looked, and the more I understood what I was looking at, the more amazed I became.
The museum, and building I think, was closed for a few years but understand it's back open again.
https://history.rcplondon.ac.uk/collections/art-and-objects/...
The tables are visually spectacular. They show the recognisable form of the human body laid out flat, as if illustrating a book. The nerves, veins and arteries on display were dissected at the University of Padua’s famous anatomy theatre in the 17th century, and skilfully arranged on varnished wooden panels.
Human anatomy, at first glance, often seems wrongly-engineered. After you've worked inside dozens of people, you begin to realize that everybody is unique — and nobody is "textbook" anatomy. Who knows what all this goop even does?!
If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend this humbling human experience. My hope is that my own cadaver is ripped apart by somebody as crazy/appreciative as me =D