Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] About a decade ago, a handful of terrific reviews and investigations about phenylephrine – an alpha1 agonist – were published [1-3]. While this vasoactive medication might be thought only to ‘increase afterload,’ phenylephrine’s hemodynamic effects are knotty and noteworthy. Therefore, this dedicated dispatch delineates the difficulties encountered when predicting the hemodynamics [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] “Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. They listen so much that they forget to be natural. This is a nice story.” -Gertrude Stein It was my great honour and pleasure to speak, virtually, at the Congresso Nacional de Medicina Intensiva hosted by the [… read more]
I’m excited to share the link to Open Critical Care, a new hub providing open access critical care learning tools, COVID-19 treatment guidelines, and loads of other high-quality resources. Funded by USAID and directed by physicians at UCSF, it’s an endeavor worth following. Although their offerings are directed especially toward health care workers in resource-variable [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] “Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn’t find anyone to talk to.” – Alain de Botton Introduction An important reason for treating both tuberculosis and HIV with multiple pharmacological agents is the ability of these infectious scourges to [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] “There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes.“ – August Strindberg. In the introduction to kambô, or what Esparmer and colleagues called a “fantastic chemical cocktail with potential medical applications, unequaled by any other amphibian,” a superficial overview was offered. This first part included a very basic [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] “All things are poisons, for there is nothing without poisonous qualities. It is only the dose which makes a thing poison.” -Paracelsus Background Per one account, many living in the village Kaxinauá were seriously-ill and the shaman could not help them with known herbal medicines. During a ritual involving ayahuasca, the [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] A recent review of Paul Wood’s consummate approach to pulmonary hypertension is well-worth a read [1]. In it, the basic physiology of the calculated pulmonary vascular resistance [cPVR] is presented, as it often is, as a linear function. Recall, maybe traumatically, the grade-school equation y = mx + b. With this [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] About a year ago, I explored blood pressure – underscoring mean arterial pressure [MAP] as a determinant, but not necessarily an indicator, of perfusion. The inspiration for that post were these excellent reviews [1, 2] by the legendary Dr. Magder. With the recent 65 Trial [3], a deeper exploration of tissue [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] “There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.” -Marie Curie In part 1 of Vaping-Associated Lung Injury, the very basics of electronic nicotine delivery systems [ENDS] were covered as well as highlights on clinical presentation, radiology and pathology. In this second part, flurries of [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] with illustration by Carla M. Canepa MD [@_carlemd_] “Inside the word ‘emergency’ is ‘emerge’; from an emergency, new things come forth.” -Rebecca Solnit Case A 32-year-old man is admitted with three days of fevers, chills, malaise, dyspnea and productive cough. He works in a stressful job in the heart of Manhattan [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] “I’m learnin’ to fly … but I ain’t got wings … comin’ down … is the hardest thing.” -Tom Petty Common Events Continued … Abdominal Pain Like chest pain, abdominal pain carries a wide differential diagnosis. Abdominal pain comprises 4% of all in-flight events and 10% of all diversions. An [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] “If I could only fly … if I could only fly … I’d bid this place goodbye … to come and be with you.” -Blaze Foley Case ‘If there is a physician on board, can you identify yourself to the cabin crew?’ You are nearly 4 hours into a trans-Atlantic [… read more]
Jon-Emile S Kenny MD [@heart_lung] “What is memory but a story about how we have lived?” -Mark Doty During the recent ‘Hospitalist and the Resuscitationist’ conference in Montreal, there were discussions around the hemodynamics of prone positioning as well as using venous Doppler as a hemodynamic metric. Much of this discussion was generated and driven [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] “The real process of education should be the process of learning to think through the application of real problems.” -John Dewey On April 18 & 19, 2018, I had the pleasure of participating in the inaugural conference “The Hospitalist and the Resuscitationist” in Montreal. The entirety of this meeting was [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” -Oscar Wilde In part 1, the crux of this ‘Great Lactate Debate’ was distilled into the unclear origin of the proton in the setting of ‘lactic acidosis.’ Is the [H+] secondary to biochemical work and ATP hydrolysis or is the proton from [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] With the birth of ‘fluid responsiveness’ physiology [1], there has been a slow and solemn drumbeat ushering the central venous pressure [CVP] up the squeaking planks of the hemodynamic gallows [2, 3]. Despite this, a few years ago I made a humble defense of the central venous pressure. Importantly, I was [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] In the last few weeks I have been contacted by curious clinical physiologists craving my conceptions of ‘venous excess’ [1]. These words will address this model, concisely and – I pray – clearly. The Myth of Venous Return The roots of venous excess took hold within the fertile soil of [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] with illustrations by Carla M. Canepa MD Pilots of high-performance, tactical fighter jets each have continuous positive airway pressure [i.e. CPAP] masks as a part of their flight suit. Strikingly, beyond the clinically-commonplace airway pressure of 5-15 cm of H2O, a fighter pilot may endure a mask-applied pressure of 90 [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] Three years ago I wanted to share my physiology website heart-lung.org; I needed a topic to stoke some interest, so I sent a brief essay to Matt here at pulmccm.org. In it, I briefly described inspiratory IVC collapse and its relationship to volume status and volume responsiveness. With this, the [… read more]
Jon-Emile S. Kenny MD [@heart_lung] “Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet …” -Kipling Last year, I began adding physiology modules to heart-lung.org as a part of a Master’s Degree I am undertaking at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. The goal of these modules has been to encourage [… read more]
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