House Predictions

December 6th, 2005

Filed under: Medicine, TV

No episode of House tonight; instead there’s some sort of awards show. To pass the time, I’m making a prediction of which diseases will be the culprit in future episodes of House (or at least contributing factors). You read it here first!

  • Porphyria. Blood diseases are nearly always interesting. Some “experts” believe that tpeople suffering from porphyria gave rise to the vampire legend.
  • Ventricular Parasystole. My first rotation during residency was Cardiology. The cardiologist I was supposed to be working with took a few weeks off to attend Boy Scout camp with his son. I was passed from cardiologist to cardiologist awaitinghis return. For a few days, I shadowed Dr. F-, a cardiologist who specialized in conduction abnormalities. He gave me a stack of EKGs to review one night. Were they EKGs of common abnormalities I might find useful to know as a Family Practitioner? No. They were EKGs of the rare and bizarre abnormalities he had obtained in twenty years as a specialist. At one point, he held an EKG in front of me, cackling in glee. “You know what this is?” he asked. I shook my head no. “It’s ventricular parasystole! You’ll never see that again!” he shouted. Umm, then why show it to me? Teach me something useful please.
  • Kuru. Every medical student has encountered this disease on a test or board exam at one point or another, but will never actually see it. It’s passed among the tribesmen of New Guinea by eating human brains. So, if we can’t have Kuru, maybe another prion based disease such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) or BSE (i.e. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or “Mad Cow Disease”).
  • Herpes Encephalitis. Nasty Stuff.
  • Kawasaki Disease. Not the motorcycle.
  • Delusional Parasitosis. I’ve mentioned this one before.
  • Tularemia. Zoonotic diseases are all the rage and bunnies are so cute…this is their revenge.
  • Post-pregnancy Eclampsia. “Toxemia of Pregnancy” just without the pregnancy part.
  • Dengue Fever. You just can never have enough “breakbone fever.”
  • Toxic Shock Syndrome. Deadly, and frighteningly fast.
  • Strep Throat (and its rare but serious sequelae). A common disease that can have some serious consequences if not treated in time.
  • HIV. There’s a lot more to said on this topic.
  • Orf. Just a cool name for a disease.
  • Anthrax. Speaking of sheep diseases.
  • Hanta. And now it’s time for the mice.
  • Oleander poisoning. Beautiful and deadly.

20 Responses to “ House Predictions ”

  1. Gareth Wilson
    December 6th, 2005 at 9:14 pm

    Apparently HIV can, very rarely, cause dementia by directly attacking the brain, without affecting the immune system or causing any other symptoms. This seems to be tailor-made for a “House” episode.

  2. Diane R
    December 6th, 2005 at 9:41 pm

    There was a great episode of “Emergency” where intrepid paramedics Johnny and DeSoto found a
    husband and wife in an isolated ranch doing some back-to-nature shepherding. The wife was carding wool, and
    the guys were called out for her severe respiratory distress. She also had these strange cutaneous lesions…
    I was a child at the time, but I still remember woolcarder’s disease was anthrax…

  3. Carl
    December 7th, 2005 at 6:34 am

    Mad Cow is in fact variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob, Disease, not vanilla CJD.

    Signed, nitpicking.com.

  4. Jon H
    December 7th, 2005 at 7:06 am

    What? No Guinea Worm?

  5. Andrew Burton
    December 7th, 2005 at 5:54 pm

    Didn’t they already do Anthrax, of a kind, in the “Cursed” episode?

  6. el Robbo
    December 7th, 2005 at 11:30 pm

    Since I learned about CJD, I’ve thought that a prion disease would be a great premise for a zombie movie. If only it could be spread by saliva and be as fast-acting as the afflictions in your standard zombie stories.

  7. Bardiac
    December 8th, 2005 at 11:02 am

    Yep, Andrew Burton’s right, Anthrax was one of the two things the kid in “Cursed” had, along with Leprosy?

    They’ve also had Porphyria, I think, with Stacy’s husband Mark? “Honeymoon” was the primary episode, but he’s a recurring character for now.

  8. Phyllis
    December 11th, 2005 at 7:16 am

    Mark was diagnosed with Porphyria, via the infamous ’syringe directly into the bladder during an attack’ method. I am entirely too obsessed with this show. Thanks for your thoughtful recaps that help explain the medicine.

  9. Laura
    December 14th, 2005 at 5:38 pm

    How about Huntington’s Disease from someone who was adopted? Movements – is it PD? dementia – is ut AD? but they’re only 45. It would also help the various charities as no one gives for research on this.

  10. Dustin
    May 3rd, 2006 at 11:17 am

    I always thought it would be an awesome curveball for one of the team to get a disease. In particular, it’d be awesome to see House try to diagnose himself. But they red my mind and tagged Foreman in their first 2-parter this week. W00t!

  11. Faiz
    June 5th, 2006 at 11:18 am

    Didn’t they use Anthrax in the episode, “Cursed” in Season 1?

  12. Kira
    December 9th, 2008 at 11:20 pm

    I would like them to do something on one of my conditions. Chiari malformation, syringomyelia, or ehlers danlos. It took me 8 yrs worth of doctors visits to get a diagnosis so it can be considered an interesting case. Also the very fact it gets mis diagnosed as ms and many other conditions and therefore not treated well. I love the fact when I go to the doctors they print out web pages to put in the file so everyone can actually know what the hell I have.

  13. Jordan
    December 10th, 2008 at 8:57 am

    I’d love to see them use Q Fever in a currently city-dwelling patient since you can get symptomatic years after exposure to the infected cows/goats.

  14. Bill
    December 15th, 2008 at 12:55 am

    Strep throat: if the streptococcus infection migrates to the bloodstream, watch out! My wife almost died from it. A colleague of hers at work did die from it. It first presents like a flu, but then gets rapidly worse. If you don’t catch it in time then organs start failing.

  15. Rob
    January 19th, 2009 at 3:47 am

    somebody’s mother seems to be unrelated to them, and it turns out she is a chimera.

  16. Rob
    February 23rd, 2009 at 12:55 pm

    OK – I’m gonna pat myself on the back now. I watched two episodes; found this site; predicted chimerism on 1/19/09; became a fan and have since watched about 25 episodes in one month courtesy of USA network; checked the listings for tonight’s new episode; Bingo!

    “The team treats a teen who doesn’t know he has genetic mosaicism”

    Not sure how it will present as a problem, but it won’t be a donor issue. I’m thinking parts of him will have some genetic disorder that isn’t revealed by a first test that turns out to have been from the alternate population of cells.

  17. Twitch
    March 19th, 2009 at 3:04 am

    How about Dissociative Identity Disorder? They like to have an interesting twist.

  18. Twitch
    March 31st, 2009 at 9:05 pm

    If they didn’t already have an episode about a dwarf, I would predict Psychosocial Dwarfism (aka psychogenic dwarfism). It’s just really rare and bizarre.

    By the way, I don’t think they’d do TSS as a major medical mystery; it’s just way too common and would be quick to recognize.

  19. SJH
    May 19th, 2009 at 11:06 pm

    It’s a very common disorder, but as a sufferer, I’d like to see a shout-out to Laryngopharyngeal Reflux.

  20. ethorn
    November 8th, 2009 at 4:34 am

    Wow, a lot of hits here.

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