By Brad Broker
If I ever contracted a rare disease, I wanted to be treated by the medically-omnipotent Dr. Gregory House, Director of Diagnostic Medicine at Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital in New Jersey. But several problems existed. First, there is no Princeton-Plainsboro hospital. Second, Dr. House practices in the same world as Hawkeye Pierce, Doogie Howser and the overly rammy staff at Grey’s Anatomy.
However, proving his worth as the world’s smartest diagnostician, Dr. House recently crossed over to the real world to help solve an actual case.
A 55-year old male presented with heart failure, fever, swollen lymph nodes, deafness and blindness. He was referred to the University of Marburg Center for Undiagnosed Diseases in Germany, where they learned that, in 2010, patient had had metal prosthesis inserted to repair a broken ceramic-on-ceramic hip prosthesis originally implanted in 2001.
Luckily for the patient, the clinic physicians were very familiar with Dr. House.
“Searching for the cause combining these symptoms—and remembering an episode of the TV series “House” which we used for teaching medical students (season seven/episode 11) — we suspected cobalt intoxication as the most likely reason,” said the case docs in an article published in The Lancet.
That episode featured guest star Candice Bergen as Dr. Cuddy’s mother, who became ill following hip replacement surgery. After a series of hijinx, sarcasm and misdiagnoses — all of which made “House” a hit show for its eight year run on Fox — Dr. House, at the last minute, finally and correctly deduced cobalt poisoning as the ailment.
Back in real life at the University of Marburg, doctors found that “measurement of cobalt and chromium in the blood showed severe increase of these metals.” Unlike Dr. Cuddy’s mother, who made a full recovery on “House,” the real-life patient’s hearing and vision only slightly recovered (but the fever reduced and cardiac function improved).
The doctors note that “cobalt intoxication has been a well known cause of cardiomyopathy for over 50 years” and “is an increasingly recognized and life-threatening problem.”
