Why This Web Site?

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What is it about lists of records that fascinates us?  The fastest animal, the longest field goal, the smallest bird, the highest paid CEO, the deepest mine; these are topics for discussion and wonderment.  It may be disbelief that such extremes exist, appreciation of extraordinary human achievement, or perhaps simply astonishment that anyone would take the time to document and collate such trivia.



Medical Extremes was begun because we found that such information was not readily available in the field of medicine.  There are individual case reports in the literature, occasional intriguing comments in textbooks, and no doubt many interesting case histories that physicians have put aside during their years in practice, but we could find no single authoritative source with which to compare our own experience or settle disputes on morning rounds.  This is our purpose.



Some of our colleagues have attempted to dissuade us from this endeavor, and with good reason.  They have expressed concern about a possible "carnival" or "side show" atmosphere that might be created or fostered.  We acknowledge the possibility that some readers and users of this website might mistake our intention, but we feel that cataloging the highest serum sodium or the lowest hematocrit, for example, is a legitimate activity of physicians, and if done in a non-sensationalist way, can be a valuable source of authenticated medical extremes.



The process that we used to obtain the material for Medical Extremes was as follows: requests for case material were published in medical journals, letters were sent to internal medicine residency training program directors, and notices were posted at a number of national medical meetings.  From the hundreds of responses that we obtained from around the world, we selected well-documented instances of medical extremes which we felt were in good taste and would be of interest to the professional medical community.



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