A medical assistant and five other medical personnel have been fired from their positions after inappropriately accessing records of patients — reportedly including Kim Kardashian — at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The reality TV starlet gave birth in the hospital on June 15 to a girl named North, her first child with rapper Kanye West. The alleged breach of her records took place sometime between June 18 and June 24. While the LA Times states that the hospital would not release the names of the patients affected, TMZ reports that Kardashian was notified that she was one of the victims.
The culprits have not been named, but one was a medical assistant employed by the hospital, four were employees of outside physicians whose patient records were housed in the hospital’s electronic records system and the other was an unpaid student research assistant working in the hospital. One of the perpetrators accessed 14 records inappropriately, but the others looked at only one — most likely Kardashian’s. That was enough, however, to cost them their jobs.
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The latest plastic surgery trend in Japan focuses on lines in the skin, but not in the location you’d think. Rather than adjusting the lines on someone’s face, this medical procedure places hands — and more specifically, palms — under the knife. And the reasoning isn’t what you’d expect either. It’s not about beauty, but rather something much deeper: destiny. In a society in which many people value palm reading as a method of fortunetelling, some Japanese think that medically altering their palm lines can change their futures.
Takaaki Matsuoka, one of the pioneers in the procedure in Japan (It has previously been offered in Korea.), began performing palm surgery in 2011and has since improved the fortunes of 20 patients. The clinic in which he works has performed another 17 such operations, even though it doesn’t advertise the option. Other plastic surgery facilities in the country have a similar low-key approach to the medical procedure, which is rarely promoted (perhaps due to the less-than-scientific reasoning behind it) but whose popularity has spread by word of mouth.
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Understandably, few people think of animal venom as anything other than a dangerous substance to be avoided at all costs. After all, at least 100,000 people die and more than 300,000 are permanently disabled every year from snake bites alone. However, a growing number of venoms are being found to have significant medical use.
In fact, there are several medicines currently on the market that are derived from animal venom — including diabetes drug Byetta (from Gila monster venom), high blood pressure drug Capoten (from Brazilian pit viper venom), painkiller Prialt (from cone snail venom), anti-blood clot drug Integrilin (from rattlesnake venom) and anti-platelet aggregation drug Aggrastat (from African saw-scaled viper venom).
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Rich Lee might not be the Six Million Dollar Man quite yet, but with a little medical tinkering, he could be well on his way. That’s because recently, he had a microphone surgically implanted in his ear. OK, technically, it’s not a headphone, but it acts like one. In truth, it’s a magnet that Lee uses in conjunction with a homemade necklace-like coil he wears that creates a magnetic field, causing the implant to vibrate and produce sound that funnels directly into the ear.
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Medical assisting isn’t exactly the profession you choose if you want to become famous, but against all odds, there have been several medical assistants throughout history and into the present who have achieved a certain level of notoriety at some point in their lives.
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