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Live Birth, MRI Style

At the Charité Hospital in Berlin, researchers have built a specialty MRI machine with enough space to fit a woman undergoing labor. The Local, a German newspaper in the English language, is reporting that the first images of a baby moving through the birth canal have been captured, and that the mother and child are doing just fine. The clinicians involved in the project hope to be able to study why some women end up requiring a Caesarian section, while others do not.

More at The Local: MRI scans live birth…

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

Pregnancy As A “Pre-Existing Condition”

Women who own individual healthcare policies, please take note. Should you become pregnant in the future, your individual healthcare policy might not cover your pregnancy.

A recent article in the Los Angeles Times by Michelle Andrews was revealing. Andrews described the plight of a North Carolina biology teacher who subsequently left teaching after the birth of her twins. She became a small business owner and was covered under individual health insurance policies. However, when she became pregnant again, she had a rude awakening. Despite paying an insurance premium of $400 per month, her pregnancy wasn’t covered unless she had paid for a special rider, prior to becoming pregnant. Since half of all pregnancies are “unplanned” how can you pay for coverage six months in advance of an unplanned event?

On October 12, 2010, the Committee on Energy and Commerce produced a dismal report that revealed a total disregard and absence of concern for pregnant women and their unborn babies by the insurance industry. The Committee’s chairmen, Congressmen Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak revealed the following: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Linda Burke-Galloway*

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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