Pink eye in residency; Ban antibiotics; Infused coffee; How radiologists read mammograms; Pediatrics is dying

Antibiotics don’t work for colds. Instead of recalling children’s cold medications, this ED physician thinks the FDA should outlaw inappropriate antibiotic use and ban amoxicillin.

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What happens when an ophthalmology resident gets pink eye? Well, he’s banished from the program for 2 weeks, since “a resident in ophthalmology working with pink eye is a set-up for disaster.”

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Those iPod Touch ads seemed to be on every commercial break while I was watching football this weekend. Less publicized was a study showing permanent hearing loss to those who listened to portable music devices at high volumes.

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Addicted to Medblogs
takes a trip on the Wayback Machine and looks at some classic medical blog entries no longer in the regular index. You’ll always be found if Google indexes you.

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“Coffee with benefits” is the latest food trend. As if the caffeine isn’t enough to get you going, infused coffee amps it up to the next level.

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Employees often don’t understand the rationale behind decisions with their health insurance plans. Charlie Baker thinks employers would benefit from educating them: “Perhaps we need to treat the open enrollment process as a pro-active, engaging event, so that people know what they’re getting and why from their employer. That way, people would understand why some plan designs made the cut, and others didn’t – and if they wished to raise issues about offerings the following year, they could.”

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Obama wins! Or at least the current polls favor him. How does that bode for physicians? Joe Paduda looks into his crystal ball.

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Ramona Bates talks about what radiologists look for on mammograms, and emphasizes that most abnormal findings are not cancer.

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Money often influences hospital decisions, hence the rush to build ambulatory surgery centers and oncology suites. This comes at the expense of primary care fields, like pediatrics, which are slowly being bled to death.

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