July 22nd, 2010 by AndrewSchorr in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion, Quackery Exposed, Research
Tags: Avandia, Avastin, Bevacizumab, Breast Cancer Diagnosis, Breast Cancer Treatment, Breast Cancer Trials, Cancer Research, Diabetes Drug, Diagnostic Radiology, Duke University, False Hope, FDA, Food and Drug Administration, GlaxoSmithKline, Medical Credentials, Medical Errors, Medical Mistakes, Oncology, Pathology Errors, Patient Harm
1 Comment »
The news wasn’t good this week for women concerned about breast cancer.
First came the story that some women were diagnosed with breast cancer, very early stage, had treatment –- including disfiguring surgery -– and then found out they never had cancer in the first place. The pathologist goofed, maybe even a second pathologist also misread the biopsies.
How does this happen? Not surprisingly it comes back to the clinical experience of the doctor. Properly diagnosing breast cancer, whether through radiology scans or pathology biopsies is not always easy. And in many communities the general radiologists and pathologists just don’t have enough specialized experience. This leads to mistakes, especially when the suggestions of possible cancer are subtle and minute. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Andrew's Blog*
July 22nd, 2010 by Medgadget in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Health Tips, Humor, News, Opinion, Research
Tags: Anesthesia & Analgesia, Anesthesiology, Biodiesel, Earth's Atmosphere, End Of The World, Environmental Contaminants, Environmental Health, Gas Content, General Surgery, Global Warming, High Fresh Gas Flow Rates, Inhaled Anesthetics, N2O, Ozone Layer, Sevoflurane, University of California-San Francisco, University of Oslo
No Comments »
In a development that may have you undergo your next medical procedure the old-fashioned way, two researchers from the University of California-San Francisco and the University of Oslo are reporting that inhaled anesthetics significantly contribute to the destruction of the ozone layer and add to the overall global warming gas content in the atmosphere.
Moreover, the study’s authors conclude with some valuable advice for your own practice: “From our calculations, avoiding N2O and unnecessarily high fresh gas flow rates can reduce the environmental impact of inhaled anesthetics.”
We’d like to venture even further. Not only would we recommend closed-circuit, low-flow anesthesia even with sevoflurane (damn those kidneys!), we’d also suggest that patients arrive by bicycle or, if absolutely necessary, a biodiesel-powered ambulance.
Press release: Study Shows Global Warming Impact of Anesthetics …
Abstract in Anesthesia & Analgesia: Global Warming Potential of Inhaled Anesthetics: Application to Clinical Use
Image: brutal
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
July 22nd, 2010 by David H. Gorski, M.D., Ph.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion, Quackery Exposed, Research
Tags: Alt-Med World, American Nurses Association, Andrew Wakefield, Anti-Vaccine Propaganda, Anti-Vaccine Quackery, Autism, CAM, Complementary And Alternative Medicine, Dr. Kimball Atwood, Dr. Rashid Buttar, Dr. Rolando Arafiles, Family Physician, H1N1, Health2Fit, License To Practice Medicine, Medical Quackery, Morgellons Disease, Naturopathy, North Carolina Board of Medical Examiners, North Carolina Integrative Medicine Society, North Carolina Medical Board, Nutritional Supplement, Pseudomedicine, Pseudoscience, SBM, Science Based Medicine, Shruggie, Suzanne Somers, Texas Medical Board, Texas Nurses Association, TMB, Unscientific Medicine, Urine Therapy, Whistleblowing Nurses, Winkler County Memorial Hospital, Zrii
No Comments »
I can’t speak for anyone else who blogs here at Science-Based Medicine, but there’s one thing I like to emphasize to people who complain that we exist only to “bash ‘alternative’ medicine.” We don’t. We exist to champion medicine based on science against all manner of dubious practices. Part of that mandate involves understanding and accepting that science-based medicine (SBM) is not perfect. It is not some sort of panacea. Rather, it has many shortcomings and all too often does not live up to its promise.
Our argument is merely that, similar to Winston Churchill’s invocation of the famous saying that “democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried,” science-based medicine is the worst form of medicine except for all the others that have been tried before. (Look for someone to quote that sentence soon.) It’s not even close, either. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
July 21st, 2010 by GarySchwitzer in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion, Quackery Exposed, Research
Tags: ADHD, Autism, Bible of Psychiatry, Bipolar Disorder, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Dr. Allen Frances, Dr. Daniel Carlat, DSM-IV, Duke University School of Medicine, Gary Schwitzer, HealthNewsReview.org, Mental Disorder, Mental Disorder Epidemics, Mental Health, Mental Illness, National Institute of Mental Health, NIMH, Normality, Overdiagnosis, Psychiatric Fads, Psychiatric Times, Psychiatry, Psychology, Unhinged
No Comments »
There’s a noteworthy column in Psychiatric Times, “Normality Is an Endangered Species: Psychiatric Fads and Overdiagnosis,” by Allen Frances, M.D. He was chair of the task force that worked on the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual — DSM-IV — one edition of the “bible of psychiatry.” He is professor emeritus of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine. There’s a lot of common ground between what Dr. Frances writes and what Dr. Daniel Carlat (the subject of an earlier blog posting) writes about. Dr. Frances is concerned about the directions that might be taken in the authoring of DSM-V, now underway.
Excerpts:
“Fads in psychiatric diagnosis come and go and have been with us as long as there has been psychiatry. The fads meet a deeply felt need to explain, or at least to label, what would otherwise be unexplainable human suffering and deviance. In recent years the pace has picked up and false “epidemics” have come in bunches involving an ever-increasing proportion of the population. We are now in the midst of at least 3 such epidemics–of autism, attention deficit, and childhood bipolar disorder. And unless it comes to its senses, DSM5 threatens to provoke several more (hypersexuality, binge eating, mixed anxiety depression, minor neurocognitive, and others). Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
July 21st, 2010 by AlanDappenMD in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, Primary Care Wednesdays, Research, True Stories
Tags: Accessibility, Affordability, Case Report, Convenience, Cost Less, Direct Pay, DocTalker Family Medicine, Dr. Alan Dappen, Empowerment, Fixing American Healthcare, General Medicine, Got It, I Get It Moment, Internal Medicine, Just A Phone Call Away, Medical Practice Mission, Price Transparency, Primary Care, Quality, Trust
No Comments »
After seven years, my wife has finally stopped asking me for “The Power of DocTalker” story of the day. Now when I start with the details of the latest case report justifying the model, she stops me with “I get it, I get it! Go write the case report up and post it on your website for others to ‘get it,’ too.”
Case reports center on the mission of our medical practice, with points regarding care that include quality, accessibility, convenience, affordability, empowerment, trust, and price transparency. Because our patients pay us directly for the service and don’t necessarily expect any insurance “reimbursement,” we are a very unique practice. We adhere to the points in our mission and also outperform all our local competition — i.e. medical offices that accept insurance payment for service in order to survive as a business.
To the patient, our services cost a lot less than services available via the insurance model. About 40 percent of our clientele have no insurance, and the other 60 percent have insurance yet chose to use our services because they believe it’s worth paying directly in order to assume control of their care. (As a quick aside — my favorite clients in this group are health insurance executives and CEOs of large companies, who have the best health insurance in the country.) Read more »
