There’s Hello Kitty restaurants, hotels, hospitals, and more, so why not a dentist office? For those that just can’t stand the sterile environment of the standard dentist clinic, the Hello Kitty dentist office is a welcome alternative…even if it means having to travel to Japan just for a teeth cleaning.

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While you’re enjoying the holidays with family and friends, remember the many people who have to work straight through because it’s necessary. ZDoggMD and Dr. Harry made a video about what Christmas is like for medical folks, to the tune of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” Link -Thanks, Doc!

Minnesotastan found this painting from 1617 and was intrigued by the swaddling clothes and by the difference in color of the two children. A little research turned up the theory that these twins suffered from Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTTS). From Wikipedia:

As a result of sharing a single placenta, the blood supplies of monochorionic twin fetuses can become connected, so that they share blood circulation: although each fetus uses its own portion of the placenta, the connecting blood vessels within the placenta allow blood to pass from one twin to the other. Depending on the number, type and direction of the interconnecting blood vessels (anastomoses), blood can be transferred disproportionately from one twin (the “donor”) to the other (the “recipient”). The transfusion causes the donor twin to have decreased blood volume, retarding the donor’s development and growth, and also decreased urinary output, leading to a lower than normal level of amniotic fluid (becoming oligohydramnios). The blood volume of the recipient twin is increased, which can strain the fetus’s heart and eventually lead to heart failure, and also higher than normal urinary output, which can lead to excess amniotic fluid (becoming polyhydramnios).

Whether such twins survive usually depends on how early in the pregnancy the syndrome is diagnosed. Minnesotastan also found out who the children in the painting were. Link

If you want to show the world what you’re REALLY made of, guts and all, then your wait is almost over. Thanks to Japanese researchers from RIKEN, biological tissue can be turned transparent via chemical reagent, so you can look like a superhero without the need to have powers or a cool alien back story. Unfortunately, this reagent doesn’t work on living tissue, so you’ll have to wait a while longer for your clear skin makeover. Until then, read on at PopSci and imagine all the creepy possibilities!

Link -image via RIKEN

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Walter Freeman was one of the biggest proponents of the “ice pick” lobotomy, performing more than 3,000 during his lifetime. He’s one of the ten most dangerous doctors to have ever lived and you can read more about him and the rest of these men in this great Ty.rannosaur.us article.

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“Like a bomb went off. ” That’s the only way that I can describe what we saw next. Patients were coming into the ED in droves. It was absolute, utter chaos. They were limping, bleeding, crying, terrified, with debris and glass sticking out of them, just thankful to be alive. The floor was covered with about 3 inches of water, there was no power, not even backup generators, rendering it completely dark and eerie in the ED. The frightening aroma of methane gas leaking from the broken gas lines permeated the air; we knew, but did not dare mention aloud, what that meant. I redoubled my pace.

We had to use flashlights to direct ourselves to the crying and wounded. Where did all the flashlights come from? I’ll never know, but immediately, and thankfully, my years of training in emergency procedures kicked in. There was no power, but our mental generators were up and running, and on high test adrenaline. We had no cell phone service in the first hour, so we were not even able to call for help and backup in the ED.

Dr. Kitka goes on to describe individual patients and their injuries, as well as the response from medical and emergency workers and others who pitched in to help. Link -via Monkeyfilter

(Image credit: Flickr user Mercy Health)

Steven McCormack was standing on his truck’s foot plate Saturday when he slipped and fell, breaking a compressed air hose off an air reservoir that powered the truck’s brakes.

He fell hard onto the brass fitting, which pierced his left buttock and started pumping air into his body.

“I felt the air rush into my body and I felt like it was going to explode from my foot,” he told local media from his hospital bed in the town of Whakatane, on North Island’s east coast.

“I was blowing up like a football,” he said. “I had no choice but just to lay there, blowing up like a balloon.”

Co-workers released a valve to stop the air pressure, and he was taken to a hospital. Doctors say the air inflated McCormack’s body under his skin as it separated fat from muscle. He is expected to recover. Link -via J-Walk Blog

Toft captured the imagination of England when she “gave birth” to several rabbits and parts of other animals in the presence of numerous physicians and skeptics. The charade went on for months, perpetuated by daily newspapers, which were still a novelty. And back then, every newspaper resembled the Weekly World News, in which Bigfoot attacks are every bit as newsworthy as local politics.

It’s true that physicians confirmed the story, although they were under political pressure to do so. Read this story and more at Cracked. Link

Most pregnancies last for about 9 months and doctors are likely to induce labor if pregnancy goes on too long. That being said, it is possible to be pregnant for a whole year. The world’s longest pregnancy lasted 375 days, strangely, the baby was only a little under seven pounds.

It certainly puts a whole new perspective on being a few weeks late, doesn’t it?

If you are pregnant, ask your doctor before you start to worry about these weird things you just found out. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user ChepeNicoli)

Dr. Chevalier Jackson was a laryngologist who spent a good deal of his career retrieving objects that his patients swallowed or inhaled. And he kept them all. He retired with a collection of over 2,000 bizarre items that had once been inside his patients.

Jackson retrieved these objects from people’s upper torsos, generally with little or no anesthesia. He was so intent on assembling his collection that he once refused to return a swallowed quarter, even when its owner threatened his life.

“He was a fetishist, no question,” said Mary Cappello, the author of “Swallow” (New Press), a new book about Jackson and his bizarre collection. “But his obsession had the effect of saving lives. That’s kind of amazing, and lucky for us that his madness made possible forms of rescue.”

The collection is set to go on display at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia on February 18th. Link -via Bioephemera

The successful surgery kept Herrick’s brother alive for eight years and was the first successful organ transplant, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. Lead surgeon Dr Joseph Murray went on to win the Nobel prize.

The operation proved that transplants were possible and led to thousands of other successful kidney transplants, and later the transplant of other organs.

Doctors around the world had tried a few transplants before the breakthrough operation, without success, said Murray, who went on to perform another 18 transplants between identical twins.

Despite arguments at the time about the ethics of taking an organ from a healthy body, Herrick insisted on donating to save his brother’s life. Link -via Not Exactly Rocket Science

(Image credit: Joel Page/AP)

Dr Hou Jianxi, spokesman for the hospital in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, said the hand had now been transplanted back on to her arm.

“When she came in, her left hand was completely severed from her body. It was very scary,” he told the Zhoukou Evening Post.

“But Ming Li can now move her wrist again and her left hand is a healthy pink colour proving that the blood is circulating well.”

With therapy and additional surgery, doctors believe she will be able to use the hand for most normal activities. Link -via Breakfast Links

“The bottles are identical and I am not young anymore, but I am not senile,” says Holm.

She tried washing the adhesive out, but the quick-drying glue did its job and sealed her eye shut. Paramedics and hospital staff had to get it open and wash out her eye before major damage was done.

“They had to cut off the glue substance and it was all hard and in the eye, and I couldn’t even see.”

Her case is not as rare as one would hope.

The Food  and Drug Administration will interview Holm later this week, and she hopes her case and the others will put pressure on glue makers to change their bottles’ shape and size.

Link -via Breakfast Links

We’ve been trying to preserve, repair, or remove our teeth for thousands of years. From the manual bow drill to modern veneers, this post shows how far we have come in the quest for good, or at least functional, teeth. There are no drill sounds, but some pictures may make someone with dental sensitivity uncomfortable. In other words, they may set your teeth on edge. Link -via mental_floss

Newsweek presents a pictorial history of birth control methods. We’ve come a long way since the Greek philosopher Aristotle recommended olive oil as a spermicide! Link -Thanks, Steadyburn!

Think your health care plan is bad? Consider yourself lucky that you don’t live back in the middle ages when "advanced" surgeries were done using these 20 seriously scary surgical tools. Yikes.

This one to the left is the Arrow Remover:

Arrow Remover – Not much is known about this tool, but it is hypothesized that it was inserted into the wound in a contracted position, with the central shaft used to grasp the arrow. The blades, which appear to have their sharp edges facing outward, were then expanded using the scissor-like handles…

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by yugosakimi.

It was not a pleasant time to be a patient, but if you valued your life, there was no choice. To relieve the pain, you submitted to more pain, and with any luck, you might get better. Surgeons in the early part of the Middle Ages were often monks because they had access to the best medical literature – often written by Arab scholars. But in 1215, the Pope said monks had to stop practicing surgery, so they instructed peasants to perform various forms of surgery. Farmers, who had little experience other than castrating animals, came into demand to perform anything from removing painful tooth abscesses to performing eye cataract surgery.

Some of the medieval medical graphics may be NSFW. Link -via Gorilla Mask

Foreign accent syndrome, exploding head syndrome, werewolf syndrome, alien hand syndrome … walking corpse syndrome? Have you heard of any of these baffling (but completely real) medical conditions?

Werewolf Syndrome: Hypertrichosis, or werewolf syndrome, is a medical condition that causes the excessive growth of body hair — typically on the upper body, including the face. There are only 50 or so documented cases, and sufferers generally acquire it through genetic inheritance.

Link Link redirected for some people to a spammy page, which ain’t cool. Too bad, because it was an interesting article.

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by yugosakimi.

It became incredibly popular, over 50,000 were performed, with Freeman performing over 3,000 himself in his lobotomobile. Freeman believed in lobotomies even after being discredited. He spent his final years visiting his victims, trying to prove they had benefited from his work.

Read about Freeman and nine other dangerous doctors. Link -Thanks, Sami!

One Saturday in May, Ryan Finley tried to wake up his wife Jill but she wouldn’t wake up. The 31-year-old woman had gone into cardiac arrest in her sleep and fell into a coma. After she was rushed to the hospital, doctors said she had very little chance of recovery because Jill’s brain showed little activity.

Ryan was suddenly faced with a tough decision — whether to take Jill off life support. He prepared to say goodbye to his young wife, but he wasn’t prepared for what happened after the plug was pulled.

Source: ABC News
Video: LiveLeak

Doctors in China admit they are baffled after a man began to perspire green sweat.

Cheng Shunguo, 52, of Wuhan city, says his sweat turned green in the middle of November. “I noticed that my underwear and bed sheets were all green, and even the water in the shower,” he said.

Cheng says he feels no discomfort, but went to hospital because he was worried about his condition. Doctors thoroughly cleaned his armpits but it took only 10 minutes for his sweat to turn a piece of white gauze green again. They have carried out blood tests on Cheng, but found everything to be normal.

“We can’t find the cause,” admitted a spokesman for the hospital which reported the case to the media in the hope of finding a solution

Source: Ananova