So, the other day I was in CV case conference, and someone brought up the recent admission of an 18 YO female, brought into her local rural ER with dyspnea, hypertension, diaphoresis. The ER nurse looked at her, checked for femoral pulses, found none, and diagnosed COARCTATION OF THE AORTA!! The girl was transported to larger urban surgery center, surgery was performed to repair a sizable coarct of the descending aorta, and the patient is now recovering nicely. Patient had been to the doctor three times in her life, and not once since becoming a teen.

Turns out this ER nurse has diagnosed three of these cases in the last three years in the same way...is this the biggest zebra in the world? What else would you be thinking in an older teen with these symptoms?

Dear Idiopathic,

That nurse is not that unusually talented, I once diagnosed a complete Dips*** just by sitting next to him for a year! Hey, just to let you know I'm on now and I will let people know you have no real clue what your talking about. Later my friend!!!!

Keeping in mind this thread is at least nine months old...you kind of have a decent lag time if you are going to answer every one of my posts, eh? :D