Groin Anatomy and PBL

This is our last week before spring break--not that I'm counting or anything. ;-) Seriously, these last two blocks have been the hardest 11 weeks we've had since starting med school. The NMS block in particular was really rough. GI these past few weeks has been way better, but it's still hard to muster much enthusiasm for anything after being run over and left for dead by the NMS steamroller.

Our anatomy session today had a review station, radiology, and we also discussed different types of inguinal hernias. (A hernia occurs when there is an opening in your abdominal wall somewhere, and your guts can poke through the hole into places where they shouldn't be.) None of our cadavers had hernias, but we saw a lot of pictures of hernias, and we talked about where the hernias would be if the cadavers DID have hernias. It's really amazing when you see how little tissue we have holding in our intestines. It's a huge contrast to the chest, where you've got the ribs keeping everything in place. Basically there's just some fascia (connective tissue) and some muscle, and that's about it. We had two stations highlighting the differences in male and female abdominal anatomy. Starting after break, we'll be studying the groin, so this is kind of an intro I guess.

The new PBL case is a really good one. The theme this week is about the liver, and the patient in our case took an overdose of acetaminophen (Tylenol). So we already know that he totally trashed his liver. This case has a ton of social issues. We're getting a lot of exposure to the ethics of how patients are chosen to be placed on the CCF list for liver transplantation too. We'll be talking about the criteria for selection tomorrow in FCM and also Friday when we attend the Liver Transplant Selection Committee Meeting. My learning objective is about the pharmacology and toxicology of acetaminophen. Good stuff. Plus, my schedule is finally easing up a little. So all in all, I'm really looking forward to the rest of this week.