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Google Social Search: Track Your Online Persona

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Do you remember Personas that visualizes the map of your online presence? Here is a better solution. From one point of view, it’s great to have such a useful tool as Google Social Search. A short video about what it is and how it works.

Social Search taps into a user’s social network profiles and displays relevant links and status updates that members of a user’s own social network have shared at the bottom of the default search results page. According to Google, Social Search will enhance the search experience on Google by providing users with more personally relevant search results.

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*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Questions And Answers About H1N1 Flu Vaccine Safety

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The questions and concerns continue to swirl regarding the H1N1 swine flu vaccine, and health consumers continue to fear the safety of the H1N1 swine flu vaccine.

Many health consumers are asking if there are adjuvants in the vaccine, should they receive the vaccine if there’s thimerosal, and what’s the difference between a multiple dose (multi-dose) and a single dose.

Others are asking if they have certain health conditions (diabetes, heart disease, lyme disease, bipolar, etc.) should they receive the H1N1 vaccine.

I constructed a series of questions based on information you are looking for and medical expert, Bruce B. Dan, MD, a specialist in infectious diseases addresses your concerns and helps relieve your fears. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Health in 30*

Breast Augmentation Using Fat Injections

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A new study on fat grafting for breast augmentation was presented at last week’s American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) Plastic Surgery 2009 conference which I wasn’t able to attend.  The ASPS News Brief section gave an update on the presentation with a pdf of the abstract.

The main study author, Roger Khouri, MD, FACS, is featured in a video explaining the study and technique.  He feels that his study of 50 women is enough to settle the question of safety and effectiveness of fat injections for cosmetic breast augmentation.  Even though his results are good, I remain a skeptic.

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*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*

An Open Letter To My Pancreas

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Unemployed pancreas.

Dear Pancreas,

I’m not sure what the hell happened to you, but you’ve taken it upon yourself to stop working.  You did have that job for about six years, where you got up early every day and produced my insulin, but apparently that was too much for you.  You were laid off or fired or something.  Don’t blame it on that virus again.  I think you just slept through the alarm and were let go and you just don’t want to admit it.

All you do is sit around, hiding out behind my stomach, reading smut novels and watching reruns of The Facts of Life.  Sure, you push out the occasional juices and you can sound important when you talk about “trypsinogen” and “chymotrypsinogen,” but you and I both know that you don’t do much.  It’s not even like you empty the dishwasher or anything.  The least you could do, after I’ve been testing blood sugar levels and bolusing all day long, is have dinner on the table when I come home.  Is that too much to ask? Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Six Until Me.*

What To Do When Your Patient Wants To Leave The Hospital Against Your Better Judgment?

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When a patient decides they are leaving against medical advice what responsibility does the physician have to their care?  When I was a resident in training, and even early on in my position as a hospitalist, I would get a call from the nurse that  Mrs Smith was demanding to leave the hospital against medical advice.  I would tell the nurse “Fine. Let her go. I’m not her father.”  I would tell the nurse to discharge Mrs Smith with no medications and leave it up to them to find follow up.

I would suspect this is a prevalent attitude for many hospital and emergency based physicians.   I’ve seen it over and over again.  And I still see it today.  Many doctors and nurses feel obliged to let grown men and women make poor decisions.    However, being a grown man or woman able to make poor decisions is apparently not enough to keep a doctor for being sued and losing that lawsuit because a patient chose to make poor decisions.   Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at A Happy 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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