June 23rd, 2011 by RamonaBatesMD in Uncategorized
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I hope @oracknows, Respectful Insolence, will write more about this. He is much better than I at sussing out fraudulent medical treatments.
I have lived and practiced in Little Rock, AR for over twenty years and I did not know this was in my backyard until my local paper (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette) reported on the outcome of the trial last week. The article title caught my eye as I was skimming the news: Jurors: Cancer therapy a fraud, Award in suit is $2.5 million (subscription only unfortunately).
A federal jury awarded $2.5 million in damages Tuesday to a California woman who paid $6,250 to undergo alternative treatments from a Jacksonville woman who promised a “100 percent success rate” in destroying cancerous breast tumors.
Antonella Carpenter, the former Jacksonville woman who has since moved to Broken Arrow, Okla., and continues to proclaim on her website that she has found a simple, painless way to kill cancerous tumors, wasn’t present for the verdict against her and her company, Lase Med Inc. …….
I don’t recall ever hearing of Lase Med Inc: LIESH Therapy.
The plaintiff in the lawsuit is Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*
June 16th, 2011 by RamonaBatesMD in Health Tips
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Yesterday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released the new rules regarding labeling of sunscreen. The goal is to make it easier for the average person to chose a sunscreen.
The new labels will not be in place until next summer, so you need to be aware.
When the new labels are in place, NO sunscreen will be allowed to be labeled as a SUNBLOCK or as WATERPROOF.
Under the new labeling rules
- Products that have SPF values between 2 and 14 may be labeled as Broad Spectrum if they pass the required test.
- Only products that are labeled both as Broad Spectrum with SPF values of 15 or higher may state that they reduce the risk of skin cancer and early skin aging, when used as directed.
- A warning statement will be required on any product that is not Broad Spectrum, or that is Broad Spectrum but has an SPF between 2 to 14 stating that the product has not been shown to help prevent skin cancer or early skin aging.
In addition to the final rule for sunscreen labeling, the FDA released a Proposed Rule which would Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*
June 9th, 2011 by RamonaBatesMD in Health Tips
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Earlier this week this tweet from @prsjournal caught my eye
Most Popular: Management of Horse and Donkey Bite Wounds: A Series of 24 Cases: No abstract available http://bit.ly/lgNkCS
I missed this article when it came out in the June 2010 issue of the Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Journal. As I have covered fire ant bites, cat bites, and snake bites. Fellow blogger Bongi has written about hippo bites. It’s time to cover horse and donkey bites.
Dr. Köse, Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Harran University Hospital, Turkey and colleagues presented a retrospective evaluation of 24 patients treated for animal bites (19 horse and five donkey bites) from 2003 to 2009. The head and neck were the most frequent bite sites (14 cases), followed by the extremities (8 cases) and the trunk (2 cases).
The article is very short, representing their personal viewpoint and experience. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*
June 1st, 2011 by RamonaBatesMD in Research
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Have you ever lost your sense of smell or taste? Recall how it feels when your face/mouth don’t work properly until the nerve blocks wear off after a dental procedure.
Those are all things (and more) a facial transplant patient has to deal with. The article discussing recovery of sensation after facial transplantation in the May issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery discusses this topic (first reference below).
In addition to reviewing their own face transplant patients (n=4), Dr. Maria Siemionow and colleagues did a literature review (English literature for peer-reviewed articles published between 1940 and 2010) of sensory recovery after various standard nerve repair techniques.
These other nerve repair techniques included repair of the peripheral branches of the trigeminal nerve; sensory return after free tissue transfer (ie noninnervated flaps, including radial forearm, lateral thigh, anterolateral thigh, latissimus dorsi, trapezius, et al and innervated free flaps, including radial forearm, anterolateral thigh, and rectus abdominis musculocutaneous flaps); and sensory recovery following replantation of scalp and forehead. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*
May 27th, 2011 by RamonaBatesMD in Health Tips
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Last year I didn’t write about dog bite prevention until the first week of June even though I know National Dog Bite Prevention Week is always the third full of week of May.
The numbers shared by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) haven’t changed: 4.7 million people are bitten by dogs each year in the US with 800,000 of them requiring medical attention.
If you have read this blog for very long, you know I dearly love my dogs — deceased ones (Columbo, Ladybug (photo), and Girlfriend) and the living one, Rusty. Still, I have no illusions that dogs bite and given the right provocation, I think mine would though most of the time they are totally harmless and would just invite you in to rob me.
Sadly, children are by far the most common victims of dog bites, occurring most often in children 5-9 years of age. Senior citizens are the second most common dog bite victims.
Children are also more likely to be severely injured and represent half of the dog-bite victims requiring medical attention every year. Almost two thirds of injuries among children Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*
