Investigating Medical Mysteries


765Have you ever wanted to be a detective and solve mysteries, conundrums, and enigmas? UCSF Medical Mysteries, explains how physicians at UCSF are like detectives using their knowledge, deductive reasoning, and data gathering skills to diagnose strange illnesses, rare diseases, new infections and unexpected poisonings. Climb inside the mind of these medical detectives and see how it works – how they obtain clues, synthesize data to formulate a hypothesis, and select and interpret their tests based on these hypotheses.

25800The discipline and practice of medicine has a very unique way of approaching problems. Doctors use a mix of experience, intuition, evidence, and even chance to inform their clinical conclusions and decisions. In the emergency room, these decisions are being made rapidly, often with tremendous amounts of uncertainty when a lot is on the line. In Inside the Mind of a Medical Detective, Dr. Jahan Fahimi explores the basis for those decisions, highlighting the sophisticated mechanisms that help doctors get it right, as well as the pitfalls and distractions that lead them astray.

25799The series kicks off with Genetic Mysteries: FOP – When Bodies Turn to Bone, which spotlights Dr. Joseph A. Kitterman, Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics at UCSF. Dr. Kitterman explores Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP), a rare horrific genetic condition with an incidence rate of 1 in 2 million. In FOP, skeletal muscle, tendons, and ligaments undergo endochondral ossification in episodes known as flare-ups that lead to progressive permanent loss of range motion in joints.

Most people with FOP are initially given erroneous diagnoses, often leading to inappropriate treatment with permanent complications. Currently, there is no effective treatment, but recent research suggests there will be a clinical trial of treatment in the relatively near future.

Look out for more medical mysteries here. >> UCSF Medical Mysteries

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