Buteyko

No it is not chinese but it is an alternative treatment to asthma believe it or not! One of my GP's patients was suffering from Asthma and he decided to get some treatment for it. Thus, he discovered this alternative therapy known as 'Buteyko breathing exercises'. As a result he managed to deal with his asthma with no medication whatsover.

According to the website:

The Buteyko Method is a set of breathing exercises developed by Professor Konstantin Buteyko to develop healthy breathing patterns, which help to maintain the correct ratio of oxygen and carbon dioxide within the bloodstream.

This method was created by Russian medical scientist Dr K.P Buteyko around 1967 but it was not till 1980 that it was established in Australia and in 1994 it came to the UK. It seems like a great method to treat respiratory disorders without having to deal with all the side effects of medication. It is based on physiological principles and it seems to have been successful in most patients that try it.

I thought it was fascinating in this instance that the patient was actually teaching the doctor. The patient was also happy he got some alternative treatment and improved his breathing significantly drug-free.

Another case today was a lady who came at the surgery last week and was in tremendous pain in her back. She could not straighten her back from the pain and as the GP showed her to her chair she pleaded him not to touch his back. Apparently she had a hiatus hernia operation and she believed this pain was a complication of the surgery. The GP decided that it sounded more like neuralgia/neuropathic pain, this decided to treat with amitriptylline (antidepressant) and if that did not work he would be moving onto gabapentin (anti-epileptic). Amitriptylline seems to be ideal for neuralgia and it did have amazing results in this lady. She came to the surgery today and she was pain free! Also, since she was on diazepam and citalopram to deal with her depression, she stopped taking all those altogether and the amitriptylline which is an antidepressant in itself helped with that side of things. It was unbelievable how happy she was and how relieved that there was no pain anymore. I thought that was fascinating and rekindled my faith in the good we can do as doctors. This is the most rewarding part of the job and it can only happen in General Practise. In GP you have the time to create a lasting relationship with the patient and you get to folllow them through their illness/problem. This does not normally happen in hospital. GPs also know the gossip within the family and can be really nosy. Furthemore, GPs just live on biscutis, sometimes tea and have weekends off. So maybe GP training is something people need to consider when they are thinking about applying for specialties.

Lastly, I learned about subclinical hypothyroidism, as this patient was completely asymptomatic but her routine blood tests showed raised TSH, but T4 was normal. Apparently this can be a common phenomenon and is treated with thyroxine if TSH >10. This lady had a TSH around 9.5 and my GP decided that he wanted to treat her and review in a month. If TSH was further raised then further investigations will need to be carried out.

This was my last day at GP. I have enjoyed the past two weeks and I feel like I have learned a bit of everything but not sure if I will remember them again. GP is definitely one of the specialties to consider when applying to specialty training. The working hours are good and for ladies is even better as it is set to accomodate the fact we are going to have a family so we need some time off.