I’m a history buff, so bear with me. Actually, the past three days have been anniversaries of notable events that somehow related to health.

Today, in 1914, Jonas Salk was born. He is best known for creating the first successful polio vaccine.

Yesterday, October 27, in 1553, Michael Servetus was burned at the stake in Geneva. Okay, so who is Servetus? Not exactly a household name, except if you have any interest in the history of early physiologists who playd with blood. Servetus was a Spanish physician who first described that blood circulated through the lungs, but undoubtedly due to restrictions of the era, he couldn’t take his theory any further. His book was declared heresy and blasphemous, and like all other good heretics of the time period, he ended up being executed Joan of Arc style.

October 26, in 1984, doctors made “history,” if you want to be so kind as to call it that, by transplanting a baboon’s heart into an infant known only as Baby Fae. She was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, which is incompatible with life, and as human hearts for transplant are hard to come by, her brilliant physcians thought that a baboon heart would work just as well. It was a sad situation, because the waiting list for transplants is long, and Baby Fae probably would have died. That said, and I remember this case clearly, experts in the area of transplantation warned that an animal heart would not work in Baby Fae. Her body would reject it ASAP. Four adults had received animal hearts prior to this, and all of them died within a few days.

But wouldn’t you know it, some doctor wants to get his name in the news, and goes ahead and tortures this little girl–and her family–by doing the transplant. Within a month, Baby Fae is dead. As expected.

Docs Do It Better When They Get More Sleep

Not exactly a surprising revelation. Most people function better when they have sufficient sleep, and when a sleep deprived individual holds your life in his or her hands…

The tradition is our country is for residents to work as many hours as possible, sometimes 30 hours in a row without any sleep, in order to “train them and give them experience.” Never mind that not only are they fairly inexperienced, but that sleep deprivation may also be clouding their better judgment.

From my own experience, I can’t even begin to tell you how many medical errors I’ve caught, orders which were written by a doctor who belonged in bed sound asleep, and not doing patient care. It’s been a brutal battle to limit the hours of residents. Some of the conservative medical associations opposed limiting hours, saying that these new docs have to pay their dues. And hospitals certainly didn’t want to put limits on them–residents are about the cheapest labor you can get.

However, this new study, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggest (I love that word–it’s what researchers use all the time to cover their butt) that current guidelines that allow interns and residents to work long hours without a break are endangering patient safety.

No kidding.

Would anyone let an airline pilot fly for 30 hours without rest? Would you willingly get into a taxi if you knew the driver hadn’t slept for the past 24 hours? No, of course not. So then why do we think it’s okay for a doctor to practice medicine in that state? For those who think that sleep deprived physicians are a boon to medical care, let’s see what they think about having their gall bladder removed by one of these bleary eyed creatures, whose mind is far removed from the operating room and is thinking only about a warm bed.

In this particular study, the interns worked 19.5 fewer hours and slept 5.8 more hours each week, and they slept more in the 24 hours preceding each working hour.

Results? For starters, the interns found that they were more alert, and falling asleep about half as often while on duty. Yes, doctors do fall asleep while on duty. One famous case is of a surgical resident who passed out right on top of a patient, during surgery!

But now for the really hot news. When comparing medical errors between interns working the traditional minimal sleep schedule, with those who were getting more sleep, the researchers found that the more sleep-deprived interns made 35.9% more serious errors, including misdiagnosing patients, ordering the wrong medication or dose, interpreting test results incorrectly, or making a mistake during a procedure.

So the defense rests. I mean, just use common sense. The study adds power to the movement to restrict the hours of residents, but common sense and very basic knowledge of human physiology has long conflicted with this concept. People need sleep to function.

The Washington Post has a good article about this, but remember, it will be gone within the week.