March 29th, 2010 by Shadowfax in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion
Tags: ACEP, American College of Emergency Physicians, Emergency Medicine, Emergency Room Patients, ER Doctors, Healthcare Policy, Healthcare reform
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Last year when I interviewed then-American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) President Nick Jouriles I was disappointed that the ACEP had not staked out a clear position on healthcare reform. However, it wasn’t terrible that they didn’t have a position at that time, because the House bill was still being finished up and the Senate was still mired deeply in the fruitless “Gang of Six” negotiations. If ACEP wasn’t going to endorse reforms sight unseen, that was pretty reasonable, I thought. President Jouriles suggested that, in time, ACEP would weigh in with a position, one way or the other.
But we never heard ACEP take a position in the intervening months. So when I saw this post appear over at The Central Line, linking to this letter on the ACEP web site from ACEP’s current president, Angela Gardner, I was not surprised to see that ACEP has taken the weasel’s path and abstained from taking a position on the more or less final healthcare reform package. It’s pathetic, and brings into question whether ACEP can fulfill one of its most crucial functions: advocating for emergency room patients and advocating for emergency medicine physicians. The excuses offered by Dr Gardner for ACEP’s reticence to take a stand are fairly lame. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
March 28th, 2010 by Medgadget in Better Health Network, News, Research
Tags: Brain, Cognitive Function, Communicate With Thought, EEG-Based Writing System, Electrodes, Head, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Mind Speller, Nano-Technology, Nanoelectronics, Neurology, Neurophysiology, Psychophysiology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wireless EEG Signals
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Belgian researchers from the European nanoelectronics and nano-technology research center Imec, Holst Centre, and Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven developed an EEG based writing system that may be helpful for people with severe disabilities.
The Mind Speller, though, seems very similar to University of Wisconsin-Madison’s communication tool we wrote about a year ago that flashes rows and columns of characters and monitors when the brain notices the character it wants to type.
It detects and interprets P300 event-related potentials in the EEG-signals of a person that is selecting characters from a display presenting alternate rows and columns of characters. P300 potentials are often used as metrics of cognitive function in decision making processes. However, currently available P300 devices are large, expensive and uncomfortable in use. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
March 28th, 2010 by Berci in Better Health Network, Health Tips, News, Research
Tags: Capsules, FDA, FDA-Approved Drugs, Food and Drug Administration, National Library of Medicine, NLM, Pharmacology, Pill Indentification System, PillBox, Solid Dosage Pharmaceuticals, Tablets
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Pillbox is the result of a partnership between the National Library of Medicine and the Food and Drug Administration. It helps you identify unknown pills and tablets by parameters such as form, color, size or imprint. The constantly updated database now has more than 7,000 entries with images.
Pillbox was developed to aid in the identification of unknown solid dosage pharmaceuticals. The system combines high-resolution images of tablets and capsules with FDA-approved appearance information (imprint, shape, color, etc.) to enable users to visually search for and identify an unknown solid dosage pharmaceutical. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
March 27th, 2010 by Peggy Polaneczky, M.D. in Better Health Network, News, Opinion, Research
Tags: Breast Cancer Death Rates, Breast Cancer Mortality, Breast Cancer Screening, British Medical Journal, Denmark, Imaging Studies, Mammogram, Mammography, Preventive Screening, Promised Effect, Radiology
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A well-done analysis in the BMJ this week calls into question previous research that has been used to tout mammography as an effective tool for lowering breast cancer mortality in Denmark. That previous study compared breast cancer death rates in Copenhagen, where women were offered screening mammography in 1991, to areas in Denmark where mammograms were not offered until 17 years later, and concluded that the introduction of mammogram screening resulted in a 25 % reduction in breast cancer mortality in screened areas.
The new study adds an additional county where screening was offered (with a little implication that perhaps the previous researchers should have included this other area, but I’ll stay out of the academic finger pointing) and then reanalyzes the data. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Blog that Ate Manhattan*
March 27th, 2010 by Steve Novella, M.D. in Better Health Network, News, Opinion, Quackery Exposed, Research
Tags: Acupuncture, CAM, Complimentary and Alternative Medicine, Placebo Effect, Placebo Medicine, Science-Based Evidence
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In the Wall Street Journal last week was a particularly bad article by Melinda Beck about acupuncture. While there was token skepticism (by Edzard Ernst, of course, who is the media’s go-to expert for CAM), the article credulously reported the marketing hype of acupuncture proponents.
Toward the end of the article Beck admits that “some critics” claim that acupuncture provides nothing more than a placebo effect, but this was followed by the usual canard:
“I don’t see any disconnect between how acupuncture works and how a placebo works,” says radiologist Vitaly Napadow at the Martinos center. “The body knows how to heal itself. That’s what a placebo does, too.”
That is a bold claim, and very common among CAM proponents, especially acupuncturists. As the data increasingly shows that acupuncture (and other implausible treatments) provides no benefit beyond placebo, we hear the special pleading that placebos work also.
But is that true? It turns out there is a literature on the placebo effect itself, and the evidence suggests that placebos generally do not work. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
