Adding to a small but growing body of research, an English study found that the vast majority of children recover from COVID-19 within two months after testing positive. However, the number with persistent symptoms wasn't zero. Of roughly 1,700 pediatric patients surveyed, roughly 4% of children still felt symptoms after one month after infection and 2% after two months.

The most common lingering symptoms were fatigue, headache and loss of taste and smell.

Physician Burnout

Nearly two-thirds of doctors who responded to a new survey on physician mental health reported burnout, a 20% rise since 2018, reported STAT.

Most doctors said they were impacted by COVID-19. More than half said they felt inappropriately angry, tearful or anxious thinking about COVID-19. Nearly half had withdrawn or isolated themselves from others, while almost a third reported feeling hopeless.

Only 1 in 7 physicians said they had sought medical help for their mental health while 1 in 5 said they knew someone who had considered, attempted or died by suicide in the wake of the pandemic.

Body of Knowledge

There are only 10 human body parts that are three letters long: eye, hip, arm, leg, ear, toe, jaw, rib, lip and gum.

Mark Your Calendar

October is national awareness month for breast cancer, ADHD, Down syndrome, physical therapy, spina bifida, sudden infant death syndrome, eye safety, dental hygiene and health literacy. Go talk to a medical librarian; it's national awareness month for them, too.

Stories For the Waiting Room

The first artificial insemination didn't involve humans. Or more precisely, it wasn't a human inseminated. In 1784, an Italian biologist named Lazzaro Spallanzani artificially inseminated a dog who gave birth to three puppies two months later.

Doc Talk

Teratoma: An unusual cyst, tumor or other growth produced by the body. It's usually benign, but not always. The word literally means "grows out of your body."

Phobia of the Week

Apiphobia: fear of bees

Food For Thought

Bacteriophages are viruses that specifically target and destroy bacteria, usually one to one. They exist wherever bacteria exist. Phages are used at every stage of modern food production, including as a natural preservative to protect against bacterial pathogens such as Listeria, Campylobacter, Escherichia and Salmonella.

Best Medicine

Patient: "I'm a little nervous. This is my first operation."

Surgeon: "Me, too."

Observation

"I'm tired of all the nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?" — Irish American author and playwright Jean Kerr (1922-2003)

Medical History

This week in 1958, Ake Senning implanted the first internal heart pacemaker, which had been invented earlier that year. The hockey puck-sized pacemaker was designed to be implanted in a subcutaneous pouch. It sent electrical pulses to the cardiac muscle to establish normal and regular contractions. The prototype worked only three hours but the 42-year-old patient who received it, Arne Larsson, was the recipient of 25 subsequent pacemakers (each an improvement) over the years and lived to the ripe age of 86. He outlived Senning, who died in 2000 at age 84.

Ig Nobel Apprised

The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate achievements that make people laugh, then think. A look at real science that's hard to take seriously, and even harder to ignore.

In 2021, the Ig Nobel Prize in medicine went to a multinational team of researchers for demonstrating that sexual orgasms can be as effective as decongestant medicines at improving nasal breathing. The work was published in the Ear, Nose & Throat Journal.

Med School

Question: Can you match the generic names of these five popular drugs with their brand names?

1) Famotidine

2) Tretinoin

3) Alprazolam

4) Fluticasone

5) Zolpidem

a) Ambien

b) Flonase

c) Pepcid

d) Retin-A

e) Xanax

Answers: 1c. 2d. 3e. 4b. 4a.

Curtain Calls

The first recorded American hurricane occurred July 30, 1715, and lasted one day. A convoy of 12 Spanish galleons carrying gold, silver and cocoa from Cuba was caught in the hurricane off the Florida coast. Eleven of the 12 ships bound for Spain sank, killing 1,000 passengers, officers and crewmen.

To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: newtjitsu at Pixabay