Medical Student Editor and in-Training Staff Member
Albany Medical College
Steven attends Albany Medical College as a student of the Class of 2017. Raised in Queens, New York, he earned a BA in English with a minor in Biology from Binghamton University in May 2013. Some of his interests include poetry, martial arts, traveling, and continental philosophy. He is currently aspiring to become a radiologist.
A common complaint among emergency room physicians surrounds the solicitation of pain medications. Nearly half a million ER visits in 2009 were due to the misuse or abuse of prescription painkillers. Several years ago I worked closely with a family physician in Binghamton who warned a [bout patients who feigned illness to acquire narcotics (…)
After a nearly 40-year moratorium, a controlled study of the therapeutic use of LSD in humans has been published in The Journal of Neural and Mental Disease after the pioneering work of Swiss psychiatrist Peter Gasser. Sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) and approved by the BAG (the Swiss Drug Enforcement Agency), the study has completed treatment of all subjects after having enrolled its first patient in April of 2008. Many hallucinogens, such as psilocybin and MDMA, are being investigated today for their clinical benefits as a result of a gradual effort to reexamine the pharmacologic and psychiatric interests in hallucinogens.
One of the most contentious issues in the debate on medical cannabis concerns the effect of medical cannabis on the brain. Understanding the harms of medical cannabis in relation to the harms produced by conditions which may be ameliorated by its use is vital to understanding its viability as a treatment. For example, the side effect of mild short term memory loss may be vastly outweighed by the boon of its anti-emetic and anti-nausea properties for a cancer patient. …
The incidence of autoimmune diseases has tripled in the past few decades, and they cost the United States more than $100 billion each year. Additionally, an autoimmune disease typically lasts for the person’s lifetime, and there are no known cures, which further put a major financial burden on the health care system. Current estimates show that 5-8% of people have autoimmune diseases worldwide, and it is estimated that over 23 million Americans suffer from them. …
Introduction to mechanical thrombectomy The progress of clinical medicine lies within the purview of translational research, for if change is constant through time, then normalcy is backwardness. Dr. Y. Pierre Gobin of Weill Cornell Medical College understood this axiom in 1995 when he began developing the first mechanical thrombectomy device, now FDA-approved, for treatment of acute stroke. The model for stroke treatment remains at the mercy of time. Acute stroke is a heart attack of …
Believe it or not, but cyclic vomiting syndrome (CVS) is a real diagnosis. I will describe a patient I encountered who fits the classic description. The patient is a male in his 50s who presented to the emergency department with one week of intermittent vomiting and epigastric pain. He has a few of these episodes every year and was diagnosed with CVS during his previous hospitalization, but was unaware of his diagnosis. The current episode …
A 28-year-old woman with acute joint pains attends a clinic in Switzerland after returning from Mauritius. A 66-year-old man develops severe myalgias in Hong Kong after returning from Africa. These clinical cases summarize one disease: Chikungunya. Chikungunya–linked neither to chickens nor to the deadly avian flu–means in the Tanzanian dialect Makonde ‘that which bends up,’ referring to the stooped posture of afflicted patients. This nonfatal viral illness transmitted by the Aedes mosquito, which started as an urban phenomenon, …
What is the role of research in medicine? While it is impossible to quantify, it is important to analyze if we are to continue expending countless hours and money into the medical sciences. Some have argued that the two should not and cannot mix in the first place. Paul De Kruif spends chapters in Our Medicine Men trying prove that the entities of science and that of medicine should be left separate, and that the …
When describing a case of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), one needs look no further than Sue Jackson. Diagnosed in 2002, her symptoms (muscle pain, exhaustion, sleeplessness) are not unusual and her description of life with CFS could be straight out of medical literature. However, Sue also has the unique position of being the mother of two children with chronic fatigue syndrome. In her award-winning CFS blog, Sue chronicles her family’s battles with CFS, Lyme disease, school boards, and physicians alongside their collective triumphs.
Contributing Writer Emeritus
Boston University School of Medicine
Jacob Walker is a member of Boston University School of Medicine's class of 2016. Jacob's passions can be hard to pin down but lie somewhere in the intersections of geriatrics, infectious disease, public health, and game design.
