Liamify

During one post-admission round, a senior doctor asked why the patient who came in unconscious the previous night was still being managed empirically and not with specific meds…the junior doctors’ response was that the relative had refused to authorise a lumbar puncture to be done and had signed in the file against it. This was one of the many cases I have seen where patients or relatives refuse consent for a lumbar puncture to be done. A simple response when asked why they refuse is always that they don’t think it is entirely necessary. The core of the answer however is the fear of imminent death once the procedure is performed. I too before I became a medical student had heard of many stories of how people had ‘died after a lumbar puncture’ had been done on them. I pictured it as a very invasive procedure that was probably performed with the patient positioned upside down or ‘turned inside out.’ How did we get here in the first place? Well am not too sure how, but have he