May 20th, 2010 by Medgadget in Better Health Network, News, Opinion
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This is shaping up to be a big week for the Wii in medicine — not only is the American Heart Association’s endorsement of Wii and new partnership with Nintendo making waves, but today is a day we’ve marked on our calendar for a while: Trauma Team for Wii was released [May 18th].
After years of trauma center releases focusing on surgery (some of which we’ve written about here), this is the first offering that lets gamers delve into emergency and pre-hospital care.
Of course, the game runs counter to standard teachings (in one demo video we saw a practitioner abandon her airway procedures to tend to an abdominal wound) and is at least as unrealistic as prior offerings — but then again if we wanted more accuracy, we could just go to work…
Product page: Trauma Team
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
March 9th, 2010 by DrWes in Better Health Network, Health Tips, Research
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This week, coffee seems to be good for the heart:
“People who are moderate coffee drinkers can be reassured that they are not doing harm because of their coffee drinking,” said Arthur Klatsky, the study’s lead investigator and a cardiologist at Kaiser’s Division of Research.
These “surprising” data are to be presented at the AHA meeting March 5th. (You’ll have to wait until then to get the REAL scoop, it seems.)
But a quick Google search on Dr. Klatsky’s earlier studies using the same questionaire database shows the problems with using questionaire data to make such sweeping conclusions. Take, for instance, these findings from 1973: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
December 23rd, 2009 by DrWes in Better Health Network, Opinion, True Stories
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Are medical conferences becoming obsolete? I think so.
It was apparent to me at the Heart Rhythm Society Scientific Sessions meeting and now a similar trend was noticed by Dr. Steven Sedlis at this year’s American Heart Association meeting:
It felt like a ghost town. I ran into Ira Schulman, my medicine resident at Bellevue when I was a third year medical student; we looked at one another and simultaneously blurted out “where is everybody?”
. . .
There are probably numerous reasons for plummeting attendance at AHA. The economy, the on-line publication of trial results prior to presentation, the ubiquity of conference calls, e-mail strings and yes blogs that keep one in regular contact with colleagues throughout the country and the world without the need for face-to-face encounters are just some of the obvious causes.
Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
December 11th, 2009 by Richard Cooper, M.D. in Health Policy, Opinion
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On the heels of the American Hospital Association’s recent demonstration of gross discrepancies in the Dartmouth group’s data, MedPAC released its December 2009 report to Congress showing the same. Confirming data for 2000 (reported in their 2003 report), MedPAC demonstrated much less variation among states and metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) than described by Dartmouth for states or hospital referral regions (HRRs). Closer scrutiny of MedPAC’s data reveals even more. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at PHYSICIANS and HEALTH CARE REFORM Commentaries and Controversies*
