The University of Health Sciences Antigua establishes an agreement with Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
Patient Presents with a “Fishy” Eye
Nothing ruins a day at the beach quite like getting a fish bone stuck in your eyeball. Unfortunately, that’s what happened to a beachgoer visiting the Red Sea in 2015.
The 52- year-old tourist was swimming in the Red Sea when he collided with a school of fish. Not long after the incident, the man developed a swollen and droopy eyelid that wouldn’t heal. A doctor’s visit revealed he had an area of inflammation called a granuloma on his eyelid, and the patient underwent surgery to correct the issue. But a granuloma wasn’t the only thing that doctors removed from the erstwhile swimmer’s eyeball during the surgery. Two tubular structures were also removed from the man’s eyelid, according to a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine in September 2015.
A biologist was called in to examine these strange specimens, which turned out to be the jawbones of a halfbeak, a fish that dwells in shallow coastal waters. The fish bones had immobilized the muscles controlling the man’s eyelid, causing it to droop. Luckily, the droopy-eyed swimmer recovered shortly after his surgery.
UHSA Students: If you can identify the muscle surrounding the eye of the patient that was immobilized, email Dr Mangum for extra credit on an upcoming examination.
Too Much of a Good Thing: Sudoku Seizures Plague Patient
You know that expression “too much of a good thing?” Well, that applies to this next case. A young man in Germany completed so many Sudoku puzzles that he began having seizures. Of course, that’s only part of the story.
The man had been an avid Sudoku solver for some time before experiencing such seizures, but that changed after he was trapped in an avalanche during a ski trip. He was eventually rescued, but while buried under the snow, the man experienced a condition known as hypoxia, in which the body tissues and brain don’t receive enough oxygen. This condition caused the man to develop sudden muscle twitches around his mouth when he talked and in the muscles of his legs when he walked. He also experienced spontaneous seizures in his left arm. Doctors prescribed anti-epileptic medications and thought they had these seizures under control. However, a few weeks after he was discharged from the hospital, the man began having seizures in his left arm again – but only when he did Sudoku puzzles.
Eventually, doctors got to the root of the problem: The man had a very intense three-dimensional imagination that was activated whenever he did these brain-stimulating puzzles. The part of his brain that he used when thinking about things in 3D happened to be the part of his brain that was most affected by his 15 minutes of oxygen deprivation un- der the snow. Over activating this damaged part of his brain was what caused the man’s seizures. Unfortunately, he had to give up Sudoku in order to make a full recovery.
UHSA Students: If you can identify the area of the brain that is used when thinking about 3D structures, email Dr Mangum for extra credit on an upcoming examination.
Dreaming of Being a Doctor? UHSA Can Help!
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We would love to have you join the UHSA family. We are the second oldest private medical university in the Caribbean. We know what it takes to make great doctors. Contact our Admissions Team today!
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