Angio agony

Your feature articles on health are quite informative and useful. Despite the rapid advancement of science and technology, our knowledge and understanding of human physiology is still limited. It is better to update ourselves on what the medical community and research foundations are doing on health care and how far the benefits can reach all segments of society at affordable costs.

The other day I read in The Jakarta Post that our nervous system contains about 28 billion nerve cells, each one of which is a tiny, self-contained computer capable of processing about one million bits of information. Would it be that God had programmed and created us, human beings, in the form of a hybrid computer?

Isn't it surprising that our intestine is about six times the length of the body? The working of the mind and the thinking process are even more shrouded in mystery. The age of violence that you mentioned in the editorial of Aug. 27 may be explained by the fact that the average man possesses 66 pounds of body muscle but only three pounds of brain.

Your article AWARE helps soothe agony of waking during surgery in the Post of Aug. 25 was interesting. If someone wakes up during surgery but can't communicate this awareness, it can be a terrifying experience. It is heartening to note that several firms are developing devices to assist the surgeons to know when the patient on the operating table is in wake mode, thus enabling them to adjust the anesthetic drug suitably.

This topic takes me to the field of angiography. During this process, the patient is administered local anesthesia in the groin region, and the doctor passes a tube through an artery in order to locate any coronary artery blockage. The patient is fully awake during the entire test, which may take up to one hour. On the overhead TV monitor, the patient, along with the doctor, can observe the path the tube takes through the artery.

I wonder whether it is possible to do this test with general anesthetic so that the patient is saved from the agony of watching the procedure. What is there for the patient to see on the screen when he is already in a stressed state? It is not a feature film to be enjoyed.

In fact, during the angiography, the patient was asked to be alert and answer any pertinent questions whenever the doctor injected more dye into the bloodstream. The room temperature is kept quite cool and the patient may feel very cold, bordering on shivering at times. It is really an ordeal for the tense patient to respond to doctor's queries. Obviously, the patient can't talk from the heart -- the subject matter that is being probed.

Given a choice, the patient may prefer to be put under a general anesthetic. Of course, after the angiography, the patient would be heartbroken if he had to bear the doctor's verdict that a coronary bypass surgery was inevitable. For an experienced surgeon, heart operations have become child's play. But for a patient, it is as good as being granted a new life, thanks to God's mercy. As they say, doctors care, but it is God that cures.

D. CHANDRAMOULI

Jakarta