Co-amoxiclav + other things!

This week I had an incident at work where a client showed extremely challenging behaviour and ended up biting me badly on my shoulder. I went to the minor injuries and was prescribed anti-biotics for a week to help prevent any infections. Since I hadn't heard of "Co-amoxiclav", I decided to look it up and see what I could find:

It's an anti-biotic in the Pencillin group and is used to treat many infections, including infections in the abdomen, kidneys, urinary tract, sinuses and more. It is a combination of Amoxicillin Trihydrate and Potassium Clavulinate. Like many anti-biotics, it works by interfering with the cell walls of bacteria, and causes holes to appear in the bacteria, causing them to die because they can't control the substances moving in and out of the cell (such as the cytoplasm). Like most medicines, there are side effects of Co-amoxiclav, such as diarrhoea, vomiting, dizziness and jaundice. Thankfully I haven't experienced any of these, but they can occur after finishing the course of anti-biotics!


Another thing that interested me this week was in Biology, where my teacher ended up getting side-tracked onto talking about high tension pneumothorax. This can be caused by several things, but he focused on small punctures of the lung, rather than the other types that can happen in the elderly and smokers or due to large punctures, such as a broken rib, stab wound or gunshot wound. His example was how some people's lungs can have a pinprick puncture when taking off in an aeroplane, due to the changes in pressure (where the volume of air increases/decreases depending on whether you're ascending or descending). This tiny puncture means that air from inspiration can enter the pleural space (chest), but is stopped from getting back into the lung. Essentially, the space outside the lungs fills up with air and can cause difficulties for breathing and circulation. My teacher also said how the windpipe is forced to the other side of the body by the air. It can become life-threatening and needs intervention immediately. This is done by essentially letting out the air from the pleural space with a valve-like mechanism.


I've also started reading another book called "Bad Science" by Ben Goldacre. It's really interesting so far and exposes all the fakes and frauds in big pharmaceutical companies and really emphasises how we can be made to believe anything through statistics.