What’s one of the fastest growing health care fields?
A professional nitpicker. As in, the profession of picking lice out of hair.
In a recent New York Times story, it’s becoming apparent that parents will do anything to get rid of lice. Part of it is the stigma associated with it, part of it is the “ickiness” factor. As a parent myself, I certainly understand the sentiment.
This is …
I consider my most successful cases to be the ones that do not seem me any more. Not that they are “better”, but they and their families have come to realize the full complexity of the problems they are struggling with, and are getting appropriate help.
I inherited my “ADHD practice” from another pediatrician. He was wonderful man, a larger than life, toss babies in the air pediatrician with a hearty …
by Todd Neale
The greater burden of colorectal cancer in the black community appears to be related to healthcare utilization, and not biology, researchers found.
Similar proportions of black and white patients had polyps or masses detected by flexible sigmoidoscopy, but black patients were less likely than whites to have the recommended follow-up colonoscopy (62.6% versus 72.4%), according to Adeyinka Laiyemo, MD, MPH, of Howard University in Washington, and colleagues.
After adjustment for …
Bret Michaels is in critical condition from a subarachnoid hemorrhage.
I’ve been watching Celebrity Apprentice recently, and he comes across as a genuine person who, of course, has been raising awareness for Type 1 diabetes. As most people know, he has battled various diabetic complications on the show, and recently underwent an emergency appendectomy.
What’s his prognosis like?
Not good, I’m …
Dr. Desiree Pardi was the palliative care medical director at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. She died of metastatic breast cancer in 2009 at the age of 41.
Her story provides palliative care clinicians an opportunity to reflect on how our own personal mortality interacts with our professional lives.
I did not personally know Dr. Pardi. I write this post knowing that many readers did indeed know her, some …
by Emily P. Walker
My grandfather recently died of pancreatic cancer.
My grandpa was a WWII veteran, a nature enthusiast, an animal-lover, a chiropractor until the 1980s, and a firm believer in natural medicine. He helped my grandmother give birth to five children in her bed, and neither of them had ever taken any drugs except when both were hospitalized one winter with pneumonia.
As someone with a major respect for medical doctors …
When her gynecologist told her she had high blood pressure, Marie had a simple solution: switch doctors. After all, she had gone to him for a different problem, and this was the first time he had ever checked her blood pressure.
“He said, ‘Oh my God, you’re like a bomb waiting to explode.’ I said, ‘I didn’t come here for that, I came here for something else,’” she explained.
Two years later, …
by Kristina Fiore
If you’re surrounded by heavy drinkers, you’re more likely to become one, new research shows.
An analysis of data on alcohol consumption and social networks found that people are 50% more likely to drink heavily if someone they’re directly connected to does so, Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD, of Harvard University, and colleagues reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
“We’ve found that the influence of your friends and people you …
by Michael Kirsch, MD
Does anyone out there know why President Obama underwent a virtual ‘colonscopy’ (VC) instead of a conventional colonoscopy earlier this year?
In my gastroenterology practice, we do not offer colon cancer screening to 48-year-old individuals, unless special risk factors are present. Of course, maintaining the president’s health is in the national interest, so I understand why professional screening guidelines might not apply to him. For …
It’s an unfortunate scenario I’ve seen time and time again:
* Parent goes to prison.
* Child, who already felt neglected by parent, becomes more upset when parent ends up behind bars. Child either blames the parent for misbehavior that results in parent being taken away from child and/or blames him or herself (as children often do).
* Parent tries to have contact with child via phone calls, letters, or visits.
* Child decides …
by Michael Smith
If you look at the world map, the shapes of South America and Africa look as though they should fit together. Maybe they were once together and then drifted apart.
That theory was first put forward in the late 1500s by a Dutch map maker, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that the discovery of plate tectonics finally put the idea on a — well, …
by Crystal Phend
Only one person in 40 has an extraordinary ability to do safely what many take for granted in daily life — talk on a cell phone while driving.
These “supertaskers” excelled on a simulated driving exercise and a demanding, simultaneous test of memory and math skills conducted over the phone without any loss in performance on either, according to Jason M. Watson, PhD, and David L. Strayer, PhD, both …
Now, as you know, I am a big fan of epidemiology. I do not believe that a randomized controlled trial is the be-all-and-end-all in evidence generation, and a well done observational study can add to our reservoir of knowledge much more efficiently. Of course, I, as many others, acknowledge certain limitations of epidemiologic design. However, many of them can be overcome with careful design and analysis.
I have to confess, though, …
by Todd Neale
Children whose parents refuse vaccinations for them provide fertile ground for the spread of vaccine-preventable diseases, an investigation of a 2008 measles outbreak in San Diego demonstrated.
Although the rate of two-dose immunization against measles was 95% in the area, a single case of measles from a 7-year-old child returning from overseas sparked an outbreak that exposed 839 people and sickened 11 other children, according to David Sugerman, …
I am often asked how we get the prices for the radiology imaging tests, such as MRI’s and mammograms, or ultrasounds. Most people assume that my day job as a doc gives me some sort of special access to this info. But that’s just not the case. Anyone can find out testing prices.
However, over the last year, those of us working at LesliesList.org have gotten more experienced and better at …
Originally published in MedPage Today
by Joyce Frieden, MedPage Today News Editor
Almost 40 years and 100 billion federal dollars have been invested in the “War On Cancer” since President Richard M. Nixon declared it, but the campaign is far from over, two researchers concluded this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“These funds have been more than matched by …
My daughter, who turns two years old in June, is becoming something of a medical rarity. This isn’t because she is showing signs of a late-developing handicap or extraordinary ability for her age – it’s because she came into the world as a vaginal birth after Cesarean section (VBAC), delivered by a certified nurse midwife.
Although more than three-quarters of women who choose a trial of labor over a repeat Cesarean …
VBAC activists are clinging to their resentment and aggressively ignoring reality.
Amy Romano at Science & Sensibility asks the bizarre question: Do women need to know the uterine rupture rate to make informed choices about VBAC? It’s bizarre because she implies that this is a medical question and that the answer is unknown. However, this is a legal question and the answer has been clearly established by the courts. Not …
Originally published in MedPage Today
by John Gever, MedPage Today Senior Editor
When the mainstream media report on cancer treatments, they seldom note that aggressive therapies may fail or cause severe side effects, researchers said.
Analyzing more than 400 articles about cancer in major newspapers and magazines, investigators at the University of Pennsylvania found that adverse outcomes or palliative care were hardly …
Whether we like it or not, the lines between allopathic and alternative medicine continue to blur. Just last week I recommended glucosamine-chondroitin to a patient who suffers from osteoarthritis and wrote a prescription for Lovaza, a prescription-strength preparation of fish oil. And today I was asked about red yeast rice from a patient interested in controlling her cholesterol through “natural means.”
Like nutrition, complementary and alternative medicine, or CAM, is somewhat …
Get free updates delivered free to your inbox.
