Are the tourniquet’s days over?

Does a tournique leave a sour aftertaste? The image is CC by Capsicina.

Do tourniquets leave a sour aftertaste? The image is CC by Capsicina.

Total knee arthroplasties are common procedures, about 12-13 000 primary procedures are performed each year in Sweden (population 9 million). Since over 90 % of Swedish surgeons operate in a bloodless field (applying a tourniquet to the leg prior to incision), it is interesting to see research questioning our use. Could 2013 be the beginning of the end for the tourniquet in knee arthroplasties? Continue reading

Chocolate and the Nobel Prize – a true story?

Chocolate - a close up picture

Few of us can resist chocolate, but the real question is: should we even try to resist it? The image is CC by Tasumi1968.

As a dark chocolate addict I was relieved to see Messerli’s ecological study on chocolate consumption and the relation to the Nobel prize. By scraping various on-line sources he made a robust case for that increased chocolate consumption correlates to the number of Nobel prizes. Combined with that it might have positive impact on blood pressure, the evidence is strong enough for me to avoid changing any habits, at least over Christmas 🙂

Tutorial: Scraping the chocolate data with R

Inspired by Messerli’s article I decided to look into how to repeat the analysis in R. Continue reading

Achilles tendon ruptures – to operate or not to operate

Squash is one of my favorite sports, although unfortunately plagued by frequent achilles tendon ruptures as all racket sports. The image is CC by penguincakes.

A recent meta-analysis comparing treatments for achilles tendon ruptures caught my eye. This is probably one of the most commonly debated injuries among young orthopaedic surgeons; “what would you do if you’re achilles ruptured?”. After a few beers we can keep at it for hours… Maybe we can finally move to more interesting topics after Soroceanu et al’s excellent article. Continue reading