Humpin Hampton

Every now and then you see something that you remember from Med School (learned between naps and pounding coffee. This was actually one of those times I pursued a workup from a gut feeling and luckily so. The patient here was moderately ill, but not so much that I might not just have treated the "pneumonia", which she did have, as an outpatient. Temp 99.9, oxygen sat 96% and white count 12. Something about her pleuritic pain, which you can get with pneumonia, triggered me to get a CT, in that it seemed to radiate to her shoulder. The xray on the right shows what could easily be called a right lower lobe pneumonia-end of story,home on Levaquin and albuterol. But the consolidation at the lower lung border is a sign called Hampton's Hump, a pleural based consolidation caused by a clot. The CT on the left confirmed a large pulmonary embolus. She also had pneumonia on top of it all.



And by the way, the Congressional Budget Office (non partisan) says this great Self-Stimulation package pushed by FDO (Franklin Delano Obama) will actually decrease the GDP in the long run. So I say let's make the American people scared and get this thing passed in a hurry. My kids are already saving to pay their share of the increased tax burden. (Just had to throw this in )