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Criminal Trial For Michael Jackson’s Physician Is Underway

The 2nd degree manslaughter trial of Dr. Conrad Murray, the doctor who attended Michael Jackson at the time of his death June 25, 2009,  is now underway in LA.  The testimony that is taking place is certainly revealing of the last day of Mr. Jackson’s life.  Michael Jackson died of an acute Propofol overdose and the toxicology report also revealed Valium, Lorezepam, Versed, Lidocaine  and Ephedrine in his system.  There were no illegal drugs.

Propofol is used as a powerful anesthetic and is given intravenously.  It is not a drug that would be used outside of a medical facility or hospital.  Versed (Midazolam) is also a drug that is used for conscious sedation for procedures in hospitals.

Dr. Conrad Murray is a cardiologist and served as Michael’s personal physician.  He was trained at Meharry Medical College and did post graduate work at Mayo Clinic and Loma Linda University Medical Center in California.  He studied Cardiology at Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*

The Conditions That Remain Tough To Beat

It’s too young to die at age 56. It’s too young to die when you have four children and a wife. It’s too young to die when you have led one of the most successful technology companies ever. It’s too young to die when you are very rich, have so much more to do and to give back. But pancreatic cancer doesn’t care. This time, again, one of our most deadly cancers won.

Medicines, nutrition, surgery, liver transplant, apparently Steve Jobs, celebrated CEO of Apple, tried them all. But, as I wrote in a recent blog, continuing was just too much. To be sure, Jobs did not have the most common type of cancer in his pancreas. His was a neuroendocrine tumor and life expectancy can be longer. But, as has been noted widely in the media, Steve Jobs came to know that his mortality clock was ticking. His eight year-survival was probably what he knew he was facing all along. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Andrew's Blog*

Study Looks Into New Afib Treatment: It’s Not All Good News

The news wires for atrial fibrillation were abuzz this last week. The vigor and speed with which health news travels is striking.

Since 2.6 million Americans live with AF, my guess is that many are looking at the release of the Medtronic-sponsored TTOP-AF trial with anticipation. Here is a link to the press release. The trial purported to show benefits of Medtronic’s novel phased RF ablation system in treating persistent AF.

The study was small and released at a relatively small symposium in Venice, Italy. The TTOP-AF trial randomized 210 patients with persistent AF (including flutter) to either ablation with Medtronic’s ablation system or conventional therapy with drugs and cardioversions.

They found, not surprisingly, that AF ablation reduced AF burden. AF ablation significantly reduced AF burden in 55.8% percent of patients versus only 26% of those treated with conventional medical treatment. Editorial comment: That kind of data is pretty typical.

The problem with the study Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*

How Technology Can Make The Doctor-Patient Relationship Impresonal

At work, we have Voceras.  They are little phones that we wear around our necks.  We use them to call each other, other departments, take phone calls.  They were a little annoying at first and kind of hard to get used to using, but now we all use them every day and I personally have found them to be really helpful.  Our unit is large, and instead of walking around trying to find Susie Q RN to tell her she has a phone call, we just click our Vocera button and can reach her instantly.  Easy.

They added a feature a little while ago.  The Voceras now tie in with the patient monitors.  I don’t know how it all works; for all I know, the unit secretary brings out a magic wand, chants a spell, and then the monitor and Vocera both know what patient I have that day.  This results in a couple of things.

First, Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at code blog - tales of a nurse*

What Patients Are The Lowest Quality Hospitals Serving?

Hospitals that provide the lowest quality care at the highest cost care for more than twice the proportion of elderly minority and poor patients as the nation’s best performers, researchers found. And patients at the “worst” institutions are more likely than patients elsewhere to die of certain conditions, such as heart attacks and pneumonia.

These hospitals and their patients may be the ones most at risk under new Medicare payment arrangements that could cut payments to hospitals that fail to meet quality metrics, reported researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health.

The researchers examined how quality, costs and patients served correlated among 3,200 hospitals nationwide. They then identified 122 “best” hospitals, those that were in the highest quartile of quality and lowest quartile of risk-adjusted costs, and 178 “worst” hospitals, those in the lowest quartile of quality and the highest quartile of costs.

Hospital quality and performance data were Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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