Chapter 586: Chapter 250: Symbiotic Phenomena, Medical Achievement Maxed Out
Having such a long parasite nestled in a person’s brain, it’s simply unimaginable.
An adult’s head circumference is only about 54cm, yet the body of this larva could wrap around the head entirely.
It’s unimaginable, burrowing here and there inside the patient’s brain for all these years, yet merely causing the patient to vomit. This is indeed a stroke of luck amidst misfortune.
“I’ve been wondering, with such a long parasite growing in his brain, how come he only came to the hospital when his condition became this severe?”
Wu Baihe looked at the larva in the dish, yet his face was calm.
As one of the most formidable chief physicians in Neurosurgery, he had performed countless surgeries. Brain surgery to remove parasites was certainly not new to him.
With so much experience, naturally, he remains unruffled.
“It’s not that he didn’t seek treatment, but that no issues were found after consulting several hospitals. It was Zhou Can who found the problem. Later on, he ordered a dynamic observation brain CT, and after a long examination, the parasite was discovered. Sometimes in diagnosing patients, we can’t be too reliant on CT images. Otherwise, it’s easy to fall into a fixed mindset and eventually a diagnostic blind spot.”
Director Shang said this with a touch of emotion.
“Here, this is a brain CT previously taken at another hospital, from which you can’t see any anomalies.”
Wu Baihe took the CT film and meticulously studied it.
“Hey, indeed there are no obvious issues. Only this portion of the imaging is a bit abnormal. But it’s easy to overlook.”
Speaking of this, Wu Baihe opened up.
“Don’t just talk about not being overly reliant on CT scans, MRI also can’t be completely trusted. I have made several mistakes because of placing too much faith in MRI. Later, I felt color ultrasound scans sometimes carry more diagnostic value than MRI. So now, when I see patients, I often ask them to take a color ultrasound. Family members and patients sometimes find it hard to understand. They would say to me, ‘We have already done an MRI, do we still need a color ultrasound?'”
The more experienced the doctor, the more they prefer the simplest examination methods.
Ultrasound and X-ray had always been the mainstream medical examinations.
Later MRI was developed and led the medical trend, plus during that period, Chinese people lacked confidence; many hospitals spared no expense in introducing MRI equipment to boost their reputation.
Due to the expensive nature of this equipment, hospitals encouraged doctors to conduct as many of these tests as possible to quickly recoup the investment.
Especially for patients suspected of having tumors or whose cause of illness was undiagnosable, none were spared.
Once you enter a large hospital, an MRI becomes a mandatory test.
The cheapest MRI costs several hundreds, and the highest-definition ones could even run into two or three thousand yuan per scan.
The diagnostic value is definitely present, yet there are many patients whose conditions remain undiagnosed even after an MRI.
“Director Wu’s points, I share deeply. Were it not for the tremendous interests involved, I would have liked to impose a limit on examinations within the department. We shouldn’t hastily assign MRI tests to patients; money doesn’t grow on trees. As for the advantages of MRI, I believe there are two; one is the high resolution, enabling the detection of deep lesions. The other is the absence of radiation, which poses no radiation harm to the operating doctors and the patients being examined.”
MRI is different from radiographic examinations; it uses an externally applied magnetic field to scan the human body and is a relatively safe method of examination.
For certain special groups, MRI has indeed brought good news.
For instance, the radiation from CT and X-ray is quite substantial.
Director Shang’s medical ethics are unassailable.
His everyday behavior towards patients reveals as much.
patient with a parasite in the brain, who actually did not meet the requirements for hospital admittance. Unable to withstand the pleas of his family, Director Shang personally arranged with the inpatient department to add a temporary bed.
Also, to ensure the patient’s surgery was scheduled as early as possible, even after getting a bellyful of anger from the Neurosurgery nurses, the next day he called and coordinated with other Neurosurgery doctors regarding the surgery.
All these actions demonstrate that he truly considers the patients wholeheartedly.
The heart of a doctor is a parent’s heart, and it’s not as simple as just talking about it.
When actually put into practice, there are many difficulties involved. For instance, having to swallow one’s pride, or potentially facing thanklessness, and even punishment from the hospital, and so on.
“We haven’t thrown the baby out with the bathwater, we just need to tell the doctors in our department not to over-treat,” Wu Baihe expressed his own views.
The two chief physicians, because of this common topic, unexpectedly became much closer.
One might consider it a pleasant surprise!
After Zhou Can extracted the larva, he’s been cleaning the wound, stopping the bleeding, and checking for other parasites.
“Directors, the detected larva has been removed, but it is not yet clear if there are any more eggs or young larvae within the patient. What do you think we should do next, suture the wound or something else?”
The scientific name for the larva is Man’s Digeon Tapeworm.
Its adult form parasitizes in the intestines of cats and dogs, and occasionally in human intestines.
After the eggs are excreted with feces into the water, they hatch into larvae, which are then eaten by the sword water flea and continue to develop into a procercoid larva.
The procercoid parasite lives inside wild animals such as frogs and snakes.
From here, it can be seen that it needs the intermediate host, the sword water flea, to consume its larvae in order to develop into a procercoid larva.