December 31st, 2011 by Linda Burke-Galloway, M.D. in News
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It’s an obstetrician’s worst nightmare and it continues to happen on a daily basis. The story of Michal Lura Friedman brings tears to my eyes. After 7 years of trying, the 44 year old songwriter finally became pregnant –with twins. Her husband, Jay Snyder, a free-lance voice-over artist, describes the 9 months of Friedman’s pregnancy as pure bliss. However towards the end, her blood pressure became elevated so she was scheduled to have a C. Section the day after Thanksgiving.
Snyder accompanied his wife to the hospital and witnessed the birth of his babies. Then Friedman began to bleed. And bleed. And bleed. At 9:30 p.m., she became yet another U.S. maternal mortality statistic.
At least 2 women die from complications of childbirth in the US daily. Some celebrities such as Christy Turlington Burns have become a Maternal Health Advocate as a result of first-hand experience. She Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Linda Burke-Galloway*
December 20th, 2011 by Linda Burke-Galloway, M.D. in News, Opinion
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Sometimes Fate has to shout in order to be heard, especially when the voice of reason is ignored. Michelle Duggar was pregnant with her 20th child to the aghast of many including this author. We squirmed in our seats. We moaned. We groaned. We blogged. The combination of Duggar’s 19 children and her advanced maternal age of 45 is enough to make any obstetrician or midwife cry, especially when she becomes pregnant, yet again. Not surprisingly, Duggar experienced a miscarriage with pregnancy number 20. According to media reports, when the Duggars presented for their ultrasound, a fetal heart beat could not be obtained. What occurred in obstetrical vernacular was a missed abortion or an early fetal demise. Based on the Duggars’ press release, his wife probably had no symptoms prior to receiving the ultrasound. The cramping, spotting, abdominal and back pain was probably absent. An early fetal demise without symptoms or missed abortion means the baby stopped growing because there was a condition present that was incompatible with life. Did Duggar’s age increase her chances of having a miscarriage? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Linda Burke-Galloway*
November 15th, 2011 by Linda Burke-Galloway, M.D. in News, Opinion
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OMG, Michelle Duggar is pregnant again. Is she competing with the wife of Feodor Vassilyev? Vassilyev was pregnant 27 times between 1725 and 1765 and gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, 7 sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets. 67 children survived infancy making her the woman who had the most documented number of children in the world. Vassilyev had a history of multiple births. What’s Duggar’s excuse?
I’ve written about Duggar before out of genuine concern and received over 2,000 comments on the Basil and Spice website. Many were unkind. People like Duggar because of her affable personality but want to ignore the facts: with each subsequent pregnancy, her life becomes fraught with danger. Her last pregnancy was extremely high-risk, complicated by pre-eclampsia and the emergency premature delivery of her daughter who only weighed 1.3 pounds at birth. It was a very close call. According to Answers.com, the Duggar family gets paid an estimated $25,000 to $75,000 per episode on the reality television show on Channel TLC. So, is it perhaps the show’s ratings that have prompted this 45 year old mother of 19 children to have yet another child? Is it the Baby-Doll syndrome where women have multiple children because they like the baby doll effect of having a newborn? I’m still scratching my head. However, I would be remiss if I did not, as an obstetrician offer some advice (albeit unsolicited) regarding the dangers of extreme parity (aka a great number of pregnancies). It was the same advice I offered almost 2 years ago: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Linda Burke-Galloway*
September 12th, 2011 by PreparedPatient in Health Policy
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How do you calibrate care so that it is neither too much nor too little? In this collection of recent posts, health care professionals search for that “just right” level of care.
“I bet celebrities and other VIPs (as they’re known in hospitals) get some of the worst healthcare in America. And, when I mean worst, I mean the most,” says Jay Parkinson in a recent post. Parkinson explores what is publically known about Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs’ care and calls specific attention to “incidentalomas.” Parkinson describes these asymptomatic tumors, sometimes discovered by especially aggressive care, and suggests that they may be over-treated, leading to poor health outcomes.
Mark W. Browne asks, Is the health quality bar set high enough? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Prepared Patient Forum: What It Takes Blog*
May 19th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Opinion
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On May 9th I had the pleasure of lecturing to an audience of critical thinkers at the NYC Skeptics meeting. The topic of discussion was pseudoscience on the Internet – and I spent about 50 minutes talking about all the misleading health information and websites available to (and frequented by) patients. The common denominator for most of these well-intentioned but misguided efforts is a fundamental lack of understanding of the scientific method, and the myriad ways that humans can fool ourselves into perceiving a cause and effect relationship between unrelated phenomena.
But most importantly, we had the chance to touch upon a theme that has been troubling me greatly over the past couple of years: the rise in influence of those untrained in science on matters of medicine. I have been astonished by the ability of “thought leaders” like Jenny McCarthy to gain a broad platform of influence (i.e. Oprah Winfrey’s TV network) despite her obviously flawed beliefs about the pathophysiology of autism. Why is it so hard to find a medical voice of reason in mainstream media?
The answer is probably related to two issues: first, good science makes bad television, and second, physicians are going about PR and communications in the wrong way. We are taught to put emotions aside as we carefully weigh evidence to get to the bottom of things. But we are not taught to reinfuse the subject with emotion once we’ve come to an impartial consensus. Instead, we tend to bicker about statistical analyses, and alienate John Q. Public with what appears to him as academic minutiae and hair-splitting.
I’m not sure what we can or should offer in place of our “business as usual” behavior – but I’ve noticed that being right isn’t the same as being influential. I wonder how we can better advance the cause of science (for the sake of public health at a minimum) to an audience drawn more to passion than to substance?
I would really enjoy your input, dear readers, because I’m at a loss as to what we should do next to reach people in our current culture, and with new communications platforms. What would you recommend?
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
It’s an obstetrician’s worst nightmare and it continues to happen on a daily basis. The story of Michal Lura Friedman brings tears to my eyes. After 7 years of trying, the 44 year old songwriter finally became pregnant –with twins. Her husband, Jay Snyder, a free-lance voice-over artist, describes the 9 months of Friedman’s pregnancy as pure bliss. However towards the end, her blood pressure became elevated so she was scheduled to have a C. Section the day after Thanksgiving.
