Miracle healing of the elbow
Demigods in white, my arse. The work of us paediatricians is very unspectacular. We only briefly become heroes when it comes to "nanny's elbow".
Normally, our everyday treatment is as exciting as FC Bayern Munich's 156th German football championship: professional but predictable, boring but usually successful. However, there is one case in paediatrics where we briefly become heroes with a single "magic move": nanny's elbow.
The condition is relatively common and occurs in infants, usually between the ages of one and four. A sudden pull on the forearm (for example when playing "Engele, Engele flieg" or when the child defies and drops while being held by the hand) leads to a so-called subluxation, i.e. a partial dislocation of the forearm bone in the elbow joint.
The result: the arm hangs down more or less limply and the child can no longer move it and complains of pain. Normally, no further diagnostics are required, especially no X-rays, if the cause of the accident is clear. The child is placed on a parent's lap and the forearm is quickly put back in place. After a few minutes, the child can move the arm normally again and is pain-free.
And we doctors enjoy our heroic moment :-).
Further interesting tips
Package insert
It's a bit of a double-edged sword ... On the one hand, package leaflets are very important and helpful: for example, if you want to look up the dosage again or if there is anything you need to bear in mind, e.g. with regard to the time between meals.
Pseudo croup
An autumn classic in paediatrics: the pseudo-croup attack. This mainly occurs in the autumn/winter months and mainly affects small children.
Hand in mouth
When a baby puts its hand in its mouth, parents almost always have one reflex: there's definitely a tooth coming. If I wanted to live from hand to mouth (not in the original sense, of course), I would have realised my brilliant idea long ago - and invented the so-called dentiometer for the U4 examination.