"PlayStation Palm" - the Latest Skin Disease
Run screaming from the pulpy hand mess!
Arsenic lesions on hand. Not caused by video games...
Medical people combined with tabloid newspaper and 'right-minded' folk. It's a combination guaranteed to bring forth screams of intellectual pain and scare stories. This week's comes from the beloved Daily Mail national newspaper of the 'sensible' classes.
"Doctors have identified a new health risk triggered by playing video games, dubbed 'PlayStation palms'", says the Mail.
"The latest problem is described by Swiss doctors in a report to be published next month in the British Journal of Dermatology (must credit)." The "(must credit)" is in the original story, indicating that just possibly the story might have been delivered nicely wrapped to the paper.
Apparently the condition ('PlayStation palmar hidradenitis') was isolated and named after years of peer-reviewed research and intense study. Or...
One 12-year old girl was identified.
Yup, "Dermatologists at the Geneva University Hospital, Switzerland, treated a 12-year-old girl with intensely painful lesions on the palms of her hands, which had developed four weeks earlier."
One girl with a whole new disease...
"On investigation, the researchers diagnosed ‘idiopathic eccrine hidradenitis’, a skin disorder that generally causes red, sore lumps on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet."
Nope, an old condition. But it's never appeared on the hands before, right?
"But for the disorder to affect the hands alone is very unusual, said the doctors."
Right. So, a recognised condition that affected one girl. So, not really a whole new and terrifying plague.
We love The Daily Mail, it makes for the best birdcage flooring.
"Doctors have identified a new health risk triggered by playing video games, dubbed 'PlayStation palms'", says the Mail.
"The latest problem is described by Swiss doctors in a report to be published next month in the British Journal of Dermatology (must credit)." The "(must credit)" is in the original story, indicating that just possibly the story might have been delivered nicely wrapped to the paper.
Apparently the condition ('PlayStation palmar hidradenitis') was isolated and named after years of peer-reviewed research and intense study. Or...
One 12-year old girl was identified.
Yup, "Dermatologists at the Geneva University Hospital, Switzerland, treated a 12-year-old girl with intensely painful lesions on the palms of her hands, which had developed four weeks earlier."
One girl with a whole new disease...
"On investigation, the researchers diagnosed ‘idiopathic eccrine hidradenitis’, a skin disorder that generally causes red, sore lumps on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet."
Nope, an old condition. But it's never appeared on the hands before, right?
"But for the disorder to affect the hands alone is very unusual, said the doctors."
Right. So, a recognised condition that affected one girl. So, not really a whole new and terrifying plague.
We love The Daily Mail, it makes for the best birdcage flooring.
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Comments
DoctorDee 24 Feb 2009 17:05
1/1
The Daily Mail. Its only similarity to a newspaper is the paper bit.