April 25th, 2011 by PeterWehrwein in News, Research
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Baseball fans have the Baseball Prospectus annual. Political junkies can get their fix from Nate Silver’s 538 blog.
For those of us with geeky interest in health and medicine statistics, graphs, and charts, the Health, United States, 2010 report from the National Center for Health Statistics is that kind of treat. The 41 charts and graphs and 148 trend tables in the 2010 report (it’s dated 2010 but was released earlier this year) could keep me happily occupied for hours.
One graph that really caught my eye shows the percentage of Americans that take a statin. Statins are prescribed mainly to lower “bad” LDL cholesterol, but they may have other benefits, too. The statins include atorvastatin (sold as Lipitor), rosuvastatin (sold as Crestor), and simvastatin (sold as Zocor but also available as a generic ).
Here is the graph I am talking about:
Many Americans take statins. No surprise there. But half of men, ages to 65 to 74, and 39% of women, ages 75 and older—that’s pretty stunning. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*
March 17th, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in Health Tips, Opinion
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Occasionally, I see patients who have received throat swabs for strep that have come back positive… even if they have no signs or symptoms of pharyngitis.
In this situation, there are 2 main actions a physician may take (I am biased towards one):
1) Prescribe antibiotics until throat cultures are normal
2) Do nothing
Personally, if a patient is without throat symptoms and has no history of rheumatic fever or kidney damage, I would not have even bothered obtaining a strep test. What for??? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*
March 16th, 2011 by StevenWilkinsMPH in Opinion, Research
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Is anyone else tired of hearing about how important empathy is in the doctor-patient relationship? Every other day it seems a new study is talking about the therapeutic value of empathy. Enough already!
It’s not that I don’t believe that empathy is important — I do. I also believe the data that links physician empathy with improved patient outcomes, increased satisfaction, and better patient experiences.
A recent study released in Academic Medicine reported that “patients of physicians with high empathy scores were significantly more likely to have good control over their blood sugar as well as cholesterol, while the inverse was true for patients of physicians with low scores.”
Findings from this study by Hojat, et al. are consistent with a 2009 study by Rakel, et al. which found that among patients with the common cold, those with physicians displaying high empathy had a significantly shorter duration of illness and trend toward lesser severity of illness and higher levels of immune response compared to those patients whose physician displayed less empathy. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*
March 16th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network, Research
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Obesity contributes to cardiovascular risk no matter where a person carries the weight, concluded researchers after looking at outcomes for nearly a quarter-million people worldwide.
Body mass index, (BMI) waist circumference, and waist-to-hip ratio do not predict cardiovascular disease risk any better when physicians recorded systolic blood pressure, history of diabetes and cholesterol levels, researchers reported in The Lancet.
The research group used individual records from 58 prospective studies with at least one year of follow up. In each study, participants were not selected on the basis of having previous vascular disease. Each study provided baseline for weight, height, and waist and hip circumference. Cause-specific mortality or vascular morbidity were recorded according to well defined criteria.
Individual records included 221,934 people in 17 countries. In people with BMI of 20 kg/m2 or higher, hazard ratios for cardiovascular disease were 1.23 (95 percent CI, 1.17 to 1.29) with BMI, 1.27 (95 percent CI, 1.20 to 1.33) with waist circumference, and 1.25 (95 percent CI, 1.19 to 1.31) with waist-to-hip ratio, after adjustment for age, sex, and smoking status. After adjusting for baseline systolic blood pressure, history of diabetes, and total and HDL cholesterol, corresponding hazard rations were 1.07 (95 percent CI, 1.03 to 1.11) with BMI, 1.10 (95 percent CI, 1.05 to 1.14) with waist circumference, and 1.12 (95 percent CI, 1.08 to 1.15) with waist-to-hip ratio.
BMI, waist circumference, or waist-to-hip ratio did not importantly improve risk discrimination or predicted 10-year risk, and the findings remained the same when adiposity — the carrying of adipose tissue (fat) — measures were considered. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
March 16th, 2011 by Davis Liu, M.D. in Health Tips, Opinion
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Colon cancer screening has a particular personal interest for me — one of my colleagues in residency training had her father die of colon cancer when she was a teenager.
No one should lose a loved one to a disease that, when caught early, is often treatable. But for both men and women, colon cancer is the third most common cancer behind lung cancer and prostate cancer in men, and behind lung cancer and breast cancer in women, it’s the second most lethal.
The problem is that patients are often confused about which test is the right one. Is it simply a stool test? Flexible sigmoidoscopy? Colonoscopy? Virtual colonoscopy? Isn’t there just a blood test that can be done? (No.)
In simple terms, this is what you need to know:
All men and women age 50 and older should be screened for colon cancer. Even if you feel healthy and well and have no family history, it must be done. Note that Oprah’s doctor, Dr. Oz, arguably a very health-conscious individual learned that he had a colon polyp at age 50 after a screening test. Left undetected, it could have cut his life short. This wake-up call caused him to abort his original second season premier on weight loss and instead show the country why colon cancer screening matters. He admitted that if it wasn’t for the show and the need to demonstrate the importance of screening to America, he would have delayed having any test done.
The least invasive test is a stool test. If it is to screen for colon cancer, then the test is done at home and NOT in the doctor’s office. Either the fecal occult blood test (FOBT) or the fecal immunochemical test (FIT) are available to screen for unseen microscopic blood that could be a sign of a colon polyp or cancer. Research shows that when a stool test is done annually, the risk of dying from colon cancer can fall by 15 to 33 percent. If you don’t want any fiber optic cameras in your rectum and lower colon, this is the test for you. You must do it annually.
The next two tests are similar but often confused: The flexible sigmoidoscopy and the colonoscopy. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Saving Money and Surviving the Healthcare Crisis*
