Guide to medicine
Chief Medical Officer Fails-With-Numbers says: "Doctor! I need you to tear out that man's appendix, throw that clown out of medical, and stitch up that curator's face!" |
Medical care is serious business, and going halfway with your medical treatment can result in someone dying or worse. Make sure you know what you're doing before you try to fix someone up!
If you're going to treat someone, you're going to have to know what tools you need, how to identify injuries, what machinery and facilities you must use, and how to keep people from dying while in treatment.
Diagnosing
Main Damage Types
Damage Type: | Symptoms: | Ways to get damaged: | Treatment: |
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Brute |
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Burn |
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Suffocation |
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Toxins |
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Special Damage Types
Damage Type: | Symptoms: | Ways to get damaged: | Treatment: |
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Cellular |
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Brain |
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Trauma |
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Dismemberment |
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Bleeding |
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Treating Bleeding
WARNING: Incorrect blood types are toxic to the patient, and will not replenish their blood!
Recipient | Donor | ||||||||
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O− | O+ | A− | A+ | B− | B+ | AB− | AB+ | L | |
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O+ | |||||||||
A− | |||||||||
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B− | |||||||||
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L |
Treating Bleeding
- Bandage wound with a medical gauze to stop bleeding.
- Locate brute damage.
- Treat brute damages above ~30 to halt bleeding.
- Assess blood levels, if low or critical, proceed with blood transfusion.
- If a blood transfusion is unavailable, blood will be naturally produced by the body, albeit slowly.
- Iron and most foods will improve blood regeneration.
Blood transfusion:
- Use medical scanner on patient to find blood type.
- Obtain blood pack from surgery, virology, or cargo.
- Make sure IV drip is in the blue "inject" mode. You toggle this by clicking the IV drip when nothing is attached to it.
- Attach blood pack to IV drip.
- Click-drag IV drip onto patient.
- Check up on patient's blood levels regularly, this process moves quickly.
- Detach patient from IV drip by click-dragging the IV drip onto the patient again, or simply clicking the IV. If you forget this the patient will take some brute damage from the needle being ripped out.
- Detach blood pack by clicking on the IV drip.
Blood donation:
- Make sure IV drip is in the red "take" mode. You toggle this by clicking the IV drip when nothing is attached to it.
- Attach a beaker or an empty blood pack to IV drip.
- Attach to a donor by click-dragging it onto the donor.
- Blood pack will automatically fill. The alarm will sound if patient's blood levels reach critical.
- Detach IV drip by click-dragging it onto the donor again or simply clicking the IV.
- Click on IV drip to eject the beaker or blood pack. Label appropriately.
Organ Damage
Organ damage occurs regularly in decaying bodies, and irregularly in living ones under specific conditions. There are five main internal organs of note: the heart, the brain, the lungs, the liver, the stomach, and the appendix. Organs all have 100 health, which decays at a set amount in dead bodies per second, and regenerates a variable amount of health in living, well fed, bodies. A brief description of each organ, including their function, what damage does to them, and how to fix said damage, is as follows:
- Heart: This organ is responsible for pumping blood throughout the body, and it is the target of defibrillation.
- Heart damage is accumulated by a heart being in a non-living host, reaching an inoperable state within 5 minutes in a corpse. After a particular threshold of heart damage is taken, the heart is considered damaged - this will cause shortness of breath, and if the organ is damaged to the point of failure, it can cause heart attacks, which will rapidly result in death unless defibrillation is applied with haste.
- Heart attacks can be prevented with Corazones, but it will not heal the underlying heart damage. In the case of a need for immediate emergency heart healing, a coronary bypass can be done, but a heart can only have this done once to it, and it will bring it back from failing to functional.
- Replace the heart in an emergency with a fresh or cybernetic heart. Cybernetic hearts have different benefits to a normal heart. A cybernetic heart grants epinephrine and an upgraded cybernetic heart grants atropine.
- Lungs: This pair of organs is responsible for oxygenating blood, and promoting typical respiration.
- Lung damage is currently only accumulated via them being inside a decaying corpse, and damaged lungs will create shortness of breath and heightened oxygen consumption, similar to a damaged heart.
- Failing lungs will be unable to respirate properly, causing suffocation. In the case of a need for immediate emergency lung healing, a Lobectomy can be done, but a pair of lungs can only have this done once, and it will bring them back from failing to functional.
- Replace the lungs in an emergency with a fresh or cybernetic pair. Cybernetic lungs have different benefits to normal lungs and can be modified with a crowbar to improve breathing, but this takes more oxygen. Cybernetic lungs also allow you to survive in low pressure environments, and filter out low levels of bad gasses.
- Brain: This organ is responsible for piloting the bundle of flesh and bone that is your corporeal body.
- Brain damage is accumulated through a number of means, from taking dangerous narcotics, to being beaten on the head with weapons.
- Mental Traumas can form due to too much brain damage, which can be identified and combated as detailed in this guide. Brains have 200 organ health and decay much slower than other organs for balance reasons.
- Stomach: This organ is responsible for processing any orally ingested substances.
- Stomach damage is currently only accumulated via it being inside a decaying corpse, and a damaged stomach will cause vomiting and paint, while a failing one will prevent digestion altogether. It is only repairable through a nutritious diet, so be sure to keep it healthy so you can continue eating and digesting!
- Replace the stomach in an emergency with a fresh or cybernetic stomach. Upgraded cybernetic stomachs can store up to 8 nutriment when well fed, this is returned if you get hungry.
- Appendix: This organ is all but entirely vestigial, and served no real purpose. The appendix is prone to suddenly becoming inflamed, which will cause large amounts of discomfort and vomiting, and if left untreated, will cause severe damage to the appendix, which will flood your system with toxins when failing. This organ be removed preemptively with no ill effects!
- Liver: This organ is responsible for preventing toxin buildup and can purge toxins quickly under 3u. Too many toxins will prevent the liver from working correctly.
- Liver damage can be fixed by replacing the liver with a fresh or cybernetic pair. Cybernetic liver has different benefits to normal liver. It is resistant to alcohol poisoning and is very robust at filtering toxins.
Identification
First of all, grab a Health Scanner HUD from the medical storage and wear it. It shows the patient's overall health condition and therefore shows you instantly whom you should treat first from a group of patients. Identification is the first and foremost step in administering treatment. Here are ways to identify the type of injuries a person may have:
Things to note
- You want the patient to be as healthy as possible, so you have to heal all of these, and they have to be treated individually (unless you use a chemical which heals multiple damage types at once).
- The overall health status (from 100% to -100%) is determined by adding these damages together, except brain damage. If there are 0 damages, the patient is perfectly healthy (100%).
- If the patient has taken summarily 100 damage (except for bleeding), he will be in a critical condition (0%); lying on the ground, unresponsive and gasping for air. When in this condition, the patient cannot breathe on their own and will gradually take suffocation damage until death (-100%). This kills the patient.
- Bleeding is different from other types of damage. See below for a more extensive explanation.
- You can identify these different damage types quickly by using your health analyzer. You can also examine the patient (shift-click), but it only shows basic information.
- If a Health Analyzer is not available, observing the patient and their surroundings will help with diagnosis:
- If there is a pile of vomit next to, or under the patient then they are most likely suffering from toxin damage.
- If there is blood everywhere, blood on the person dying, or the patient has severe bruises, they are suffering from brute damage.
- If the patient has black scars across their body and no blood, or the patient has severe burns, they are suffering from burn damage.
- If the patient is gasping, they are most likely suffocating.
- If the patient keeps fainting, trails drips of blood as they walk or is unresponsive to other forms of "healing" they may be bleeding or be suffering from blood-loss
- If the patient reports other symptoms such as headaches, coughing or vomiting blood, they most likely have a virus.
Races and You
The setting of Space Station 13 is the future, and so you may encounter differing strange alien races about the station. Some of these particular xenos will require special treatment and attention.
- Preternis are a robotic-augmented species, and as such, most healing chemicals will have no effect on their robotic physiology. For proper healing, sent these victims to Robotics. Much like fixing the damage to prosthetic limbs, Preternis must be repaired with wires and welding. They must also recharge their internal batteries and will die if they run out of power. If one dies via lack of power their battery will need to be recharged before being revived, otherwise they'll die immediately after being brought back to life. This can be done by using an inducer on their chest but be wary that this will cause burn damage to the preternis. Once treated, have Robotics take them to an APC and let them feed on the power within.
- Plasmamen are sentient skeletons made of solidified plasma, which require specialized enviro-suits and plasma to breathe, and will ignite violently in reaction to a standard atmosphere. The main problem with them is that once they lose their environmental suits and plasma air tanks, you'll be left to treat a constantly igniting, suffocating skeleton. These are the same issues you'll encounter if you should happen to need to clone a plasmaman, as clones emerge from the cloner naked, which in this case means on fire and suffocating. Treatment of environmentally-compromised plasmamen should always begin with placing them under a shower and turning on the water. This will stop them from combusting infinitely, and allow you to address the issue of them needing to breathe. The Cargo department can order a Plasmaman Internals kit from Central Command, which includes a new environmental suit and plasma tank, which should be done urgently to prevent your patient from expiring (again). These can be applied by clicking and dragging the sprite of the other player to your own, and then clicking on the suitable equipment slots withe enviro-suit and plasma air tank in hand.
- Phytosians are sentient plants. Much like normal plants, they like being exposed to light, so being near a light source will slowly heal them - placing them next to a bright spotlight is an effective hands-off treatment method.
- Jelly and Slimepeople are sentient, humanoid slimes. Do not feed charcoal to them as it is toxic to them, and they can heal from chemicals normally toxic to other species. You can grind plasma at chemistry and have them drink it to heal and restore blood. Much like plasmamen they lack a heart, so if you wish to revive them you'll either have to implant a heart, or perform Brain Revival Surgery. Do not ever put them in cryogenics as the cold will kill them, if one happens to have cellular damage ask your chemist for Clonexadone to heal them with.
Your first patient
Your patient can arrive in two ways:
1. The patient walks in and needs treatment.
- "PLS DOC HLEP!!" You can see the patient's overall health status with your Health Scanner HUD with just a glance. However, this will only tell you how serious the situation is and how quickly you need to act.
- How to act:
- Use your Health Analyzer on the patient to identify the damage type.
- Proceed with the necessary treatment found in the next chapter.
2. The patient is dragged into Medbay and is in critical condition.
- The patient is unresponsive to the environment, on the floor, and gasping for air.
- How to act:
- The first thing you should do is administer Epinephrine. Epinephrine stops the general decline of the critical patient's health and helps treat wounds if the patient is in crit. Don't give them 30 or more unit of it, as that will cause toxin damage.
- If the patient is bleeding, apply a medical gauze. Dragging a bleeding patient will quickly drain their blood, unless you use a roller bed.
- If Epinephrine is not available, immediately perform CPR a few times to ensure the patient stays alive until you do the next step. Make sure they're also not suffering from any other significant problems, like being on fire, or in a low-pressure environment.
- NOTE: CPR on its own will not heal someone unless they are only suffering from suffocation damage. If they are in crit because of brute/burn/toxins/cellular damage it will only keep them from dying.
- Now you have many options:
- Take the patient to a sleeper. Drag the patient's sprite onto it to close it. Inject appropriate chemicals.
- Strip the patient's space suit off if they have one and put the patient into a cryochamber, wait for them to heal up and eject.
- Use sutures, mesh, brute patches, burn patches, salbutamol or other appropriate medication. See next section for examples.
Using Sleepers and Cryogenics
Sleeper
Sleepers are useful for freeing up your hands when dealing with multiple patients. They allow you to treat individuals (even if they're dead!) without using resources such as sutures or chemicals, as well as sedate any unruly patients. They are typically best used when other, more critical patients demand your attention or when time isn't a concern.
When their matter bins are upgraded, their healing effectiveness on corpses is increased, which makes them perfect for healing multiple bodies at once if you have several carcasses come in at once. For more information on how scientists can upgrade sleepers, check here.
Sleepers also show you chemicals present in the patient's bloodstream, though their reagent processing may be frozen if the sleeper has been fully upgraded.
How to use:
- Ensure the sleeper is open. If it's not, open it.
- Pull the patient near the sleeper.
- Click and hold on the patient, move the cursor to the sleeper, then release. This puts the patient inside. You can also ALT+CLICK the sleeper when they're on the same space as it.
- Click on the sleeper to open the menu.
- Select the option they need:
- Sedate: Injects 10u of morphine (to a maximum of 20 units) into the patient, putting them to sleep after some time.
- Treat Injuries: Heals brute and burn damage.
- Repair Organs: Heals a random damaged organ, with dead patients healing much slower. Requires a Nano Manipulator installed.
- Purge Toxins: Heals toxin damage and purges chemicals. Requires a Pico Manipulator installed.
- Wait until they are healed, then open the sleeper and kick them out.
Cryogenics Tube
Cryotube uses the fact that cryoxadone is effective at healing all types of damage, but only works in cold environments. Use it mainly to heal cellular damage, or if you're out of other options/unsure what to do. This is slow and forces the patient to sleep, so prefer using a sleeper or brute/fire patches for common damage types.
Cryotubes can also be upgraded by science parts. Better matter bins allow them to work slightly faster and more efficiently.
How to prepare (This needs to be done at the start of every round!):
- Wrench the oxygen canisters to connect them to the tubes and the freezer.
- Turn on the freezer. Set it to lowest temperature available.
- Load beakers with chemicals. A common and highly effective mix for general use is cryoxadone, clonexadone and mannitol.
- Set the tubes to Auto instead of Manual, so they'll open after the patient is healed. Otherwise, they'll be trapped in until someone opens the tube from outside.
How to use:
- Ensure the cryo tube is open first. If not, open it.
- Pull the person on top of the tube.
- Remove all clothes that prevent freezing, such as hardsuits. Else it won't work.
- Close the cryo tube with its menu, or click on them with your mouse and drag their sprite to the tube.
- Open the tube menu and turn it on. If their health starts to improve (sometimes it takes a moment to start), they're all set. If not, make sure everything is set up properly (cryoxadone in the tubes? pressure in the canisters?).
- Turning it on will put the patient to sleep.
- If set to auto, the tube will turn off and pop open automatically.
- Shake the person to get them up (switch to help intent and click on them multiple times).
- Let them redress (or do it for them) then kick them out.
Rarer Cases
These situations are not as common as normal damages, but they are still VERY LIKELY to happen. AND most of these cases are also more severe, and it is essential to be fucking fast and know this stuff!
So read up, these are the things that will separate quacks from real doctors!
Husk
Sometimes, people are dropped off in Medbay with charred, grey skin and a lack of definable features. This means that they are a husk. They either died through extreme temperature, or through a changeling sucking out all their valuable DNA: evidenced by being both a husk and also resembling a "crushed, empty juice pouch" on examine.
Luckily, with modern medicine: We can rebuild them. For victims of extreme temperature (hot or cold) they can be unhusked and either cloned or defibbed with the use of Synthflesh. Heal their burn damage to under 50, spray them with Synthflesh (from chemistry or medbay storage) and if they have 100u of Synthflesh in them, they will simply stop being a husk, and you can continue on normally with revival.
A harder (and only option for victims of changeling husks) is the researched surgery DNA recovery. Careful, as this requires Rezadone, which might be hard to come by. Upgraded Medical Cyborgs have Hyposprays with Rezadone in them. Once this surgery is completed, they can then be cloned normally.
If you try to de-brain a changeling victim husk corpse and put their brain into an MMI, it WILL fail and be unresponsive! Do not do this! You are not being clever nor helpful, it will never work, and that's the point! Do it the right way!
Overdose
Giving too much of some chemicals or drugs can cause an overdose. This means that you aren't doing your job correctly and you may even kill the patient if you don't stop doing it!
Chemicals that can overdose:
- Bicaridine 30u
- Kelotane 30u
- Anti-toxin 30u
- Omnizine 30u (Really deadly)
- Salicyclic Acid 25u
- Ephedrine 30u (Addiction at 30u)
- Morphine 30u (Addiction at 25u)
- Atropine 35u
- Epinephrine 30u
For a full list see Guide to Chemistry.
How to treat:
- Charcoal purges chemicals slowly and can help with toxin damage.
- Calomel purges chemicals quickly and is relatively easy to make in chemistry.
- Pentetic acid clears all chemicals from the body very quickly, and can also be found in upgraded sleepers.
Disease
Diseases are the most frustrating thing you will deal with, as it spreads, and can infect you as well. A disease can be identified easily with the Health Scanner HUD, it giving a green-unhappy-face-icon next to the patient. A Health Analyzer will give more detailed information about the disease and its cure.
How to Treat:
- Suit up in anti-viral equipment.
- Isolate the patient from public areas (if they have an infectious disease).
- Use your Health Analyze to see the cure for the disease (usually some basic chemical element).
- Administer the chemical element needed. OR if the virologist has made a vaccine, administering five units of it (or less if applied via injection) will instantly cure and immunize.
- Monitor the patient's condition, do not leave them until they are clear and have become resistant to the disease.
- Check if you are infected after dealing with the patient.
After:
- If you did not have the vaccine for the disease, take a blood sample from the cured patient and hand it to the virologist to help them make a vaccine.
If you half-ass curing people, the disease may return and kill the person. And they can get infected if they are cloned as well!
Blindness
The person cannot see, they usually will scream about this endlessly.
How to treat:
- If vision is just blurry, give carrots or a pair of prescription glasses.
- If they are completely blind, eye surgery.
- Omnizine has a chance of curing blindness while slowly healing eye damage.
- Oculine can be made by chemistry, and will heal all eye damage.
Deafness
The person cannot hear, they are usually unresponsive to verbal communication and can't even hear themselves talking.
What causes it:
- Genetic mutations can cause genetic deafness.
- Ear damage can render a person deaf temporarily, but extreme ear damage causes permanent deafness.
- Explosions cause ear damage.
- Flashbangs cause ear damage.
How to treat:
- Most ear damage will heal on its own.
- Inacusiate heals minor ear damage instantly.
- Put earmuffs on the patient and minor ear damage will quickly heal.
- Mutadone can reset genetic mutations including deafness.
Genetic Disabilities
Disabilities cannot be cured by normal medical tools. If a patient appears to be unable to move and/or they speak in very short sentences, they most likely have a genetic disability.
How to treat:
- Ask a competent geneticist to remove the bad mutation.
- A one unit mutadone pill or injection will instantly cure all genetic abnormalities. This includes beneficial ones.
Radiation
You will rarely treat this, it causes people to black out all the time and take steady toxin damage. It either comes from space radiation surges, after which crew members will "feel strange" and begin to vomit, but more likely you'll be treating engineers who got too close to the supermatter or geneticists and people undergoing genetic testing who've stuck themselves with too many SE injectors.
How to treat:
- If you have potassium iodide or pentetic acid, use them. These will remove the radiation before it poisons the patient further.
- Else, treat with charcoal (Anti-toxin) until the radiation levels have subsided.
Hallucinations
This nasty effect causes the victim to see (usually deadly) objects in his and others' hands, along with random visions of people and creatures attacking him, causing stamina damage. Extremely unpleasant. Caused by changelings, mindbreaker toxin,supermatter, and some bad 'shrooms.
How to treat:
- Synaptizine is good for removing hallucinations. But can cause light toxin damage.
- Haloperidol is not as good as synaptizine at removing hallucinations, but it will also quickly purge drugs that are likely causing them.
Death
If the patient is dead, the basic procedure for handling stiffs is the same. Your first plan of action should be trying to defibrillate the body and bring them back to life quickly. If they have this icon on your health scanner hud: it means the body is fresh enough for defibrillation.
- Inspect the body. Does it say they committed suicide or that their soul has departed? Nothing you can do for them, fast track them to the morgue.
- If they're just normal dead, scan them with a health analyzer. Do they have more than 180 brute or burn damage (tracked separately, having 179 of each is fine)? If so, you must heal the corpse with synthflesh until it has under 180 brute and burn. You can buy synthflesh sprays from the NanoMed Plus or have it made in chemistry.
- If the patient is wearing a space suit or hardsuit, take it off. To take it off, drag the sprite of the patient onto yours, and click the hardsuit in the menu that pops up.
- Once the patient is prepared, equip your defib. The large one goes on your backpack slot, and the compact defib that the CMO gets goes on your belt slot. Then empty both of your hands, and click the new defib hud icon on your top left to take out the paddles. Activate/click the paddles with the hand you're holding them in to wield them in both hands. Stop dragging the patient (with H or delete) or you will be shocked. Switch to help intent, target the chest, and then click on the patient. After a few seconds, you'll deliver an electric shock.
- If the defib pings and says the resuscitation was successful, drag the patient to a sleeper or use other medicine to get them healed up. If it instead says they have severe tissue damage, they have more than 180 brute or burn damage, and needs more synthflesh. If it says the heart tissue has decayed beyond saving, you are too late. If the body is a husk then defib will never work.
If defibrillation can't be done, you have a few choices:
- The easiest solution is usually to drag the corpse to cloning. If cloning is upgraded enough, you will be able to clone even husks and brains.
- If you have many corpses then cloning can be a slow process. Sometimes cloning might even be sabotaged. Consider doing revival surgery instead, if available.
- Another option for revival is the chemical strange reagent, which works similarly to defibrillation, except the patient needs to be below 100 brute and burn damage (instead of 180), and it works on corpses of any age.
- You can also clone people in Hydroponics, which works even if the patient is missing a head. See Replica Pod Cloning. This option creates podperson clones.
PLEASE NOTE In the morgue there are lights on the side of the trays. The red light means there is a dead body with no ghost occupying it. Green light means there is a body with a ghost in it, which means you should clone it. The green light is normally accompanied by a beeping sound as well, which can be turned off by alt-clicking the tray.
Cheat Sheet for the Lazy Efficient Doctor
Afternote
If you aren't serious about healing someone, don't give up halfway, get proper medical staff to help them. Don't leave them outside Genetics to just die either (this wastes everyone else's time, except yours, you selfish fuck), at least try to have a doctor save them.