Comments on: House – Episode 20 (Season 2): “Euphoria (part one)”

By: Gabriela

Gabriela — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 00:48:31 +0000

P.S.: They did correct this later into the episode but not when he was lying on the bed.

By: Gabriela

Gabriela — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 00:38:38 +0000

Hi
I’ve got no medical training but… didn’t they perform a brain biopsy on Foreman by drilling a hole in his head? Why then is his bald skull all nice and shiny with no hole, no bandages, no blood, no nothing?

By: Kenny Ruth

Kenny Ruth — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 07:19:02 +0000

The reason that he shot the morphine directly into the vein is that it will all go straight to the brain and give the patient a much stronger affect from the morphine. When you put it in the iv the morphine slowly goes into the blood stream at the rate that whatever liquids are going in at and it mixes with the saline/antibiotics/whatever else is in the iv. a straight shot of morphine directly into the bloodstream pushed in quickly will give the patient a “rush”. When an IV is set up when a patient first comes into a hospital before they start giving the patient liquids or antibiotics or whatever you can get the same affect by putting it in the iv. But once there is a bag hooked up to the IV, it goes in at a slower rate and the patient wouldn’t get the same “HIGH” that you get when shot straight in.

By: Alessandro Rosa

Alessandro Rosa — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 23:14:58 +0000

I don’t have any medical training, but am just thinking through the point about the Carotid Artery stick for the morphine. The cop was already on a IV Morphine pump which wasn’t helping. Would Foreman’s choice of the Carotid stick be because it would deliver the Morphine directly to the brain’s blood supply without filtering through the rest of the body first? I’m guessing that the difference would be negligible if at all, but could that have been the logic that the writers used for administering the morphine in that manner?

By: John

John — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 04:04:46 +0000

A late contribution to the discussion, but still.

The notion that an MRI-machine’s magnetic field is turned off between scans is a wrong one. So the bullet, if at all, won’t be dislodged a the push of the startbutton.

The coils of most MRI-machines are made of superconducting materials. The coils therefore have to be cooled with liquid helium. Keeping the coils at a stable low temperature is essential for proper functioning and is a lot more cost-effective than varying the temperature, which would have to be done in order to switch off the main magnetic field. The consequence of this is that the magnetic field is always there, because of the effects related to superconductivity.

If the magnetic field has to be switched off quickly during an emergency for instance (this is called quenching), a lot of energy would be released, resulting in a rise in temperature of the coolant medium. Because of this a large part of the very expensive helium coolant medium will turn from liquid to gassious state and will be lost. The helium is vented via specially designed ducts to protect the patient (the helium would force the oxygen out of the scanroom when no ducts are present, suffocating everyone in the scanroom (and you wouldn’t be taken serious crying for help in a silly high pitched voice ;), would you?)). After quenching it takes several days to get the machine back to proper operating temperature, which lays just above 0 Kelvin, absolute zero.

Pushing the startbutton to initiate the scan only activates some initialising signals, the gradients and the pulse-sequences. The latter two are used to determine where all the signals are coming from, slice thickness and to specify the region of interest (the gradients) and for creating the image information in such a way to optimally show the suspected pathology. These are for instance, to name a few: T1, T2, protondensity, FLIR, STIR, inversionrecovery and are produced by generating different pulse sequences.
Gradients and pulse sequences also produce magnetic fields, but they are very small compared to the main magnetic field and will play no part in an eventual accident with ferrometals unlike shown in this episode.

So if the bullet from the dead man’s would have come out of his skull, it would have been while positioning him prior to the scan and not at the start of it.

By: hipparchia

hipparchia — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 07:26:23 +0000

Good idea to check if anyone from the team found shooting a corpse funny.

Also a cute way to give the TV version of Mr. Holmes hitting corpses with a stick.

By: Jon

Jon — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 22:47:28 +0000

I think the sed rate makes sense, if they found something on that test, then they would look closer, but the general inflammation test seems fine as a way for dismissing exposure, not confirming it.

I also think House shot the corpse just to see if any of the team was infected. He could have tested the MRI any number of ways, but he was testing the team to see if they were horrified by what he did.

By: Lynda

Lynda — Sun, 07 May 2006 18:18:10 +0000

Greg – I not a doctor, but I would think the sed rate is so nonspecific – it tells you there is inflammation going on somewhere in the body – that’s it! It could be any number of things from rheumatoid arthritis to an abscessed tooth! I could be wrong about this, however!

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 05 May 2006 11:10:12 +0000

Just out of curiosity, why wouldn’t the sed rate be a good way of determining if any members of the team might be exposed? If you don’t know what you’re looking for, it makes sense to me that you’d want to look for some non-specific test.

By: Nick Hancock

Nick Hancock — Thu, 04 May 2006 22:42:24 +0000

Re: The bullet not shattering on kevlar

This is a moot point by now, but it looked to me like the bullet struck the cop’s badge, not his vest. What metal are those badges made of?