Chapter 1241: [1241] The academic dispute between two seniors

Young people working far from home, solitary and helpless—if they fall seriously ill, they might not fare much better than the elderly.

Doctor Dong and Sister Seo hurried over and asked Xie Wanying, “Did you do an electrocardiogram for her?”

“Not yet. The blood test results weren’t great, so I called the teacher over to take a look,” Xie Wanying replied, holding the freshly printed test report from the lab in her hand.

Doctor Dong took the results sheet from her hand, puzzled. “You didn’t do an ECG; how did you suspect her heart might be the issue?”

Generally, for a common cold or fever, heart-related tests wouldn’t be ordered.

“Her fever isn’t very high, so it’s unlikely to be tonsillitis. She seems lethargic, and when I listened to her chest, I noticed her heart rate was fast. A faster heart rate with a fever is normally a physiological response, but her point of maximum impulse might be shifting downward. I calculated this based on her weight and physique,” Xie Wanying explained her reasoning to the teacher.

Others listening could detect that she seemed to exhibit an unusually heightened alertness to myocarditis in young fever patients—almost like a seasoned cardiologist who’d seen many such cases.

As a cardiologist, Doctor Dong glanced at Li Chengyuan from cardiothoracic surgery. The two exchanged looks, both perceiving that Xie had likely encountered such patients before.

Yet, she had never studied in cardiology or cardiothoracic surgery.

“Have you seen such cases before?” Xin Yanjun directly asked Student Xie.

Teacher Xin was more skeptical than anyone, suspecting that Student Xie had accumulated considerable clinical experience long before.

Xie Wanying felt the need to clarify. She wasn’t experienced in all diseases because, after all, before her rebirth, she hadn’t been a clinical doctor.

“Our family used to have a neighbor who only had one son. After catching a cold, the son initially wasn’t diagnosed with myocarditis at the hospital. By the time they discovered it due to heart failure, it was already too late,” Xie Wanying said. “This seems like a case of occult progressive myocarditis.”

As she shared her thoughts, she engaged in an academic discussion with the cardiology and cardiothoracic experts present.

Doctor Dong didn’t dismiss her statement and said, “Occult progressive myocarditis is one of the trickiest conditions. In fact, the prognosis of acute myocarditis is generally good, as long as it’s diagnosed and treated early.”

“The case she described,” Li Chengyuan disagreed, saying, “sounds more like dilated cardiomyopathy. Whether it was caused by a virus or not is a question to investigate. Dilated cardiomyopathy and myocarditis are two different issues.”

“Some myocarditis patients do eventually develop into dilated cardiomyopathy,” Doctor Dong argued back.

Doctors who weren’t specialized in cardiology could only listen silently as the two debated back and forth.

“Who told you that?” Li Chengyuan shook his head at Doctor Dong’s remarks. “It’s that viral myocarditis can simultaneously trigger dilated cardiomyopathy, not that myocarditis leads to dilated cardiomyopathy. Don’t confuse the two.”

“You’re the one confused. Some end-stage myocarditis patients do present with dilated cardiomyopathy. If this didn’t arise from myocarditis, then where did it come from? Dilated cardiomyopathy can have congenital causes or viral infection factors. The latter is undoubtedly related to viral myocarditis, which is also viral in origin.”

In academic medical debates, the discussions often turned into a “which came first, the chicken or the egg” scenario. These two argued for half a day but clearly weren’t going to settle whether it was the chicken or the egg.

Myocarditis, often referred to clinically as viral myocarditis, doesn’t mean it’s exclusively caused by viral infections. Myocarditis can also result from non-infectious immune factors or toxic effects, such as drug-induced myocarditis from improper medication use.