Kalen and I are spending the summer in Cape Town (or winter here) along with two other medical students, Rusty and Shannon. I am working on a medical research project evaluating the morbidity associated with the placement of a chest tube in trauma patients. Chest tubes are inserted into the chest and lung to help a person breath and reduce the risk of a collapsed lung, these are almost always inserted into a trauma patient (someone with a stabbing or gun shot wound) as the risk of a lung collapse then is very high. However the lead doctor (Dr Richards from Denver Health at home) hypothesizes that patients with TB and/or HIV are at a greater harm for complications, and possibly death, because of the chest tube. Basically the patients are either so sick that they are at a very high risk for deadly infection or their lungs are so gunked up from the TB that the lung probably wont' collapse and so putting a chest tube in them is harmful. I will be doing a retrospective chart review on chest tube patients and then statistically evaluating the data to test the hypothesis. I will be working out of GF Jooste Hospital.
Kalen and Rusty will be spending 50% of their time helping me on this chest tube research study and then 50% of their time helping the physicians treat patients in the local hospitals. They will be working from about 5 local hospitals.
Shannon will be doing data collection for a hospital capacity study looking at the hospitals capacity rates this summer and comparing them to next summer when the 2010 World Cup is here in South Africa.
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