The Enhanced Doctor

Chapter 1196: Chapter 1196: Patient with Back Pain

(Thanks to Yangzhong for the monthly ticket encouragement)

算 it as having handled a small problem, only the sense of accomplishment isn’t that strong.

Still because this patient’s situation is a bit special; this condition really can’t be treated.

"Teacher Liu, things aren’t busy right now. Tell me, what delicious stuff are we eating tomorrow night, so I can have something to look forward to." Xu Yino came over.

"You’re that fixated on food? There’s really not much around my place. The day after tomorrow we can have a meal of lamb spine hotpot." Liu Banxia said with a smile.

"If nothing changes, tomorrow night Chief Director Ning will definitely arrange a meal. Whatever he arranges, we just eat. We can’t be that picky, right?"

Xu Yino gave him a helpless look. "I just know they’ll definitely treat you like an honored guest, so they’ll definitely go for a nicer restaurant."

"I’ve been just saving money lately; there’s barely any oil and water left in my stomach. Luckily shimu gave me a lot of face masks, otherwise I wouldn’t even have money to buy masks."

"Is it really that bad?" Liu Banxia was even more helpless.

"With your income it’s just half a year of hardship. Once you’re an attending, paying the mortgage will be pretty easy. No need to squeeze yourself this hard."

"I’ve already got it all planned: when I’m at work I’ll scrounge meals everywhere, and when I go home I’ll scrounge meals off Qingqing." Xu Yino said with great ambition.

She even made Liu Banxia laugh; clearly the pressure of the mortgage is really big for her.

"Oh right, even though the patient for the surgery the day after tomorrow counts as my neighbor, the follow‑up data tracking afterwards still has to be done properly." Liu Banxia said.

Xu Yino nodded. "Is he coming to your city for follow‑up checks, or coming here to us?"

"We’ll talk about it after the surgery. There’s no telling when his pathology report will be out." Liu Banxia said.

"But his issue shouldn’t be too serious. As long as the pathology’s fine, routine checks should be about enough. How’s that patient database coming along?"

"It’s more or less done. But Teacher Liu, can we find some expert to write us a small program? We’re all using spreadsheets for statistics, and it’s a bit of a pain to screen through them."

Liu Banxia frowned slightly. "Then write down the basic setup, the version you’ve optimized, and I’ll find someone to help code it."

This was also a minor issue. Actually, having the hospital’s IT maintenance people write one would work too. After all, the hospital’s internal system is also a complex system; everything is computer‑controlled now, and there’s a dedicated department in charge of this.

He just hadn’t decided whether to have the hospital staff write it or ask someone else to do it, which involved an efficiency issue.

"Forget it, better ask Lin Chenglin to give us a hand. Our little program isn’t that complicated anyway, it’s just a matter of data retrieval and filtering." Liu Banxia said.

"Heh‑heh, then I’ll go get it now. We didn’t just enter it into the computer; we’ve also got a handwritten ledger. This is very valuable data." With that, Xu Yino ran upstairs to the office.

Liu Banxia took out his phone and directly called Lin Chenglin.

"Director Liu, don’t tell me you got off work early today and can come out for a meal together?" Once the call connected, Lin Chenglin cracked a joke.

"Forget getting off early, I’m on duty tonight." Liu Banxia said.

"Got to trouble you with something. I need a small program written here, the interface doesn’t need to look good, mainly for data filtering and retrieval."

"That’s very simple. Send it over to me in a bit. How come you’re still on duty at New Year’s Day? It’s the New Year at least." Lin Chenglin said.

"Even a fake leader is still a leader; I have to lead from the front and set an example. I’ll just send you photos of our handwritten table headers, that okay?" Liu Banxia asked.

"Mm, just send me the headers. Not that complicated, very simple." Lin Chenglin said with a laugh.

"Good, let’s leave it at that for now; I’ll send them to you in a bit. Next time I’m off, you come over to my place and we’ll have a proper meal." Liu Banxia said.

"Deal." Lin Chenglin was straightforward as well.

This really is nothing.

For people like Liu Banxia, this is just something they can’t complete. Treating patients and saving lives is no problem, but programming? That’s not just a "different field, different mountain" issue; it’s several mountains away.

But for a professional like Lin Chenglin, this really is nothing, just a very simple little program.

And he has a good relationship with Liu Banxia. Although after getting remarried he hasn’t been living at Linyu Villa that often lately, the relationship is still there.

Not to mention he was one of the people who personally called to congratulate Liu Banxia today; he’s got to do this little job well.

By the time Xu Yino came downstairs, Liu Banxia had already taken a photo of the table headers.

Because there were too many selectable items, the header looked a bit long; no wonder Xu Yino said it was tiring to read the tables.

But there was no helping it. You had to consider the patient’s situation comprehensively. Because whether it was age, gender, or other physical indicators, they could all affect prognosis.

They were doing this as data support for a paper. If the basic data weren’t comprehensive enough, you can imagine what the quality of the paper would be like.

"Teacher Liu, are you busy right now?" At this moment Huang Bo called out.

"I’m okay. Got a patient who needs a consult?" Liu Banxia asked.

Huang Bo nodded hard and quickly ran over.

"What’s the situation? Where’s the patient?" Liu Banxia asked.

"The patient went for a CT scan. Anyway, I’m kind of confused by all this right now," Huang Bo said with a wry smile.

"The patient is a 37-year-old male, admitted with right-sided low back pain. He had a thyroidectomy four years ago. On physical exam, percussion triggered a very strong pain response. I did an ultrasound and saw a kidney stone in the right kidney, but it’s not very large."

"In terms of medication history, he’s taken some Six Flavor Rehmanni pills and some male enhancement health supplements. I had him drink water and move around for a bit, jump up and down; his pain eased up somewhat. Then a new issue showed up: his left lower back also started to hurt a bit."

"But when I was doing the ultrasound, I didn’t see any stones in the left kidney. To be on the safe side, I ordered a CT to carefully look over the whole abdomen."

"During the ultrasound I didn’t find any problems with the gallbladder, appendix, pancreas, or liver, and the corresponding physical exam signs were all negative."

"So right now I just don’t get it—how is the pain switching sides? And his pain is very severe; just a light percussion and he’s in unbearable pain."

Liu Banxia frowned. This patient’s situation was getting interesting.

Ding! Task issued: The patient with low back pain

Open task: The patient received by resident physician Huang Bo has unexplained low back pain, which has aroused strong interest in the host during the consultation and requires further diagnosis. Task reward will be issued as the diagnostic result.

Looking at this task prompt, the corners of Liu Banxia’s mouth curled up; he almost burst out laughing.

The tasks nowadays are really down-to-earth, even saying "aroused strong interest in the host," already using adjectives.

"Teacher Liu, did I miss anything?" Huang Bo asked nervously.

Liu Banxia waved his hand. "No. I was thinking about something else. This guy really cares about boosting his kidneys, huh? Not bad."

"Your diagnostic process is fine. For this kind of pain of unknown cause, if a CT is needed, you do a CT. Especially given how severe his pain is, it could easily be referred pain; you never know which organ is actually at fault."

"Let’s wait for the CT results first. When they’re out, call me and I’ll come take a look with you. Any time there’s pain as a clinical manifestation, it means something is definitely wrong somewhere; being cautious never hurts."

Huang Bo felt much more at ease. From the look on Liu Banxia’s face just now, he really thought he’d made some rookie mistake.

After Huang Bo left, Liu Banxia also started mulling it over.

From Huang Bo’s findings, the indicators for kidney stones are indeed quite clear. But the left kidney is very clean, so why does it hurt?

In this situation, if it really is a renal issue, it might be that there’s an embolus in the renal vessels.

If that’s the case, they’d need to do angiography and then ask Director Wu to step in.

But right now the indications aren’t clear enough, so he can’t just invite Director Wu for a consult.

And there’s another possibility: he doesn’t know whether the health supplements the patient took for "strengthening the body" might have certain side effects.

That’s also a factor and needs to be considered.

The reason some illnesses are harder to diagnose nowadays is indeed related to many external factors.

Especially when it involves health products—the ingredients in them are really hard to pin down.

Among the patients they see, quite a few developed other conditions because of health products.

After waiting for more than half an hour, Huang Bo came running over and pulled up the patient’s CT images on the computer.

Liu Banxia frowned. "Negative, huh. That does make things a bit tricky. Where’s the patient?"

"He’s on his way back," Huang Bo said.

"Alright, I’ll go take a look too. This really does feel a bit complicated," Liu Banxia said.

"We can consider whether it might be a renal vascular embolism; that’s also possible. Another issue is the medications he took before, which might have had an effect."

"Teacher Liu, it really could be a vascular embolism?" Huang Bo said, somewhat excited.

"Is that the patient coming?" Liu Banxia asked.

Huang Bo took a glance, then nodded and stepped forward to introduce Liu Banxia’s identity.

"What kinds of health supplements have you taken?" Liu Banxia asked.

"Just some vitamins. This doctor already asked me—I don’t take meds at random. Hiss... Can you give me some painkillers? It really hurts right now," the patient said.

"Lie prone on the exam bed first. I’ll examine you again," Liu Banxia said.

The patient lay down and lifted his clothes.

As soon as Liu Banxia put his hand on him, the patient shuddered.

Liu Banxia frowned as well. "It hurts that much? The muscles on both sides of your lower back are very tense."

"Hurts, it really hurts. Just you touching me now hurts; please don’t percuss," the patient said hurriedly.

Liu Banxia hesitated inwardly, weighing whether to order a contrast-enhanced CT, since that’s an invasive test.

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