October 19th, 2011 by Steve Novella, M.D. in Health Tips, Research
Tags: B12, Beliefs, Benefits, Culture, Deficiency, Diet, Evidence, Health, Marketing, Micronutrients, Nutrition, Prenatal Vitamins, Risks, Science, Science Based Medicine, Society, Supplement Industry, Supplements, Vitamin D, Vitamins
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The discovery of various vitamins – essential micronutrients that cause disease when deficient – was one of the great advances of modern scientific medicine. This knowledge also led to several highly successful public health campaigns, such as vitamin-D supplementation to prevent rickets.
Today vitamins have a deserved reputation for being an important part of overall health. However, their reputation has gone beyond the science and taken on almost mythical proportions. Perhaps it is due to aggressive marketing from the supplement industry, perhaps recent generations have grown up being told by their parents thousands of times how important it is to take their vitamins, or eat vitamin-rich food. Culture also plays a role – Popeye eating spinach to make himself super strong is an example this pervasive message.
Regardless of the cause, the general feeling is that vitamins Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
October 18th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Research
Tags: Cancer, Clinical Trials, HPV, Human Papilloma Virus, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Men's Health, Oral Sex, Pharmaceuticals, Research, Sexually Transmitted Infections, Throat Cancer, Vaccination, Women's Health
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Oropharyngeal cancers caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV) are on the rise in the United States since 1984, as changes in sexual habits further the virus’ spread. But the focus of the HPV vaccine will remain on preventing genital warts and cervical cancer.
Reuters reported one clinician’s opinion that throat cancer linked to HPV will become the dominant cause of the disease, ahead of tobacco use.
To study the issue, researchers determined HPV-positive status among 271 of all 5,755 oropharyngeal cancers collected by the three population-based cancer registries in Hawaii, Iowa and Los Angeles from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program from 1984 to 2004. Prevalence trends across four calendar periods were estimated by using logistic regression. The study appeared online Oct. 3 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
HPV prevalence Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
October 17th, 2011 by Happy Hospitalist in Opinion, Research
Tags: Documentation, Efficiency, Government Regulations, Hospitalist, Insurance Companies, Paperwork, Patient encounters, Patients, Potential, Quality of Care, Survey
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How many patients should a hospitalist average on any given day? What do you think? The Hospitalist asked that question to hospitalists and 421 of them responded. They were given responses in quintiles of 10 or fewer, 11-15, 16-20, 21-25, and more than 25 total patient encounters per day.
Go check out their results. I’m not surprised. But, as they say, there is no right answer. The right number is the number that brings WIN-WIN-WIN-WIN to the patient-doctor-hospital-insurance quadrangle. WIN-WIN-WIN-WIN is possible. It just takes a great understanding of removing the barriers to efficiency. Efficiency and quality of care can move in the same direction. They don’t have to be opposing forces. You can be better and faster if given the tools, whether those tools are driven by IT support, systems process changes, communication enhancement, physical and structural hospital layout changes or documentation support tools. There are many others. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist*
October 17th, 2011 by Medgadget in News, Research
Tags: Automate, Cell Colonies, Cell Cultivation, Cell Cultures, Cell Growth, Device, Dr. Albrecht Brandenburg, IPM, Lab, Machine, Max Planck Institute, Microscopic, Research, Robot, Technology
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Cell cultures form the basis of many types of lab research, however growing these cell cultures has always been a time-consuming, laborious job that is largely done by hand.
That is about to change, with the Fraunhofer Institute and Max Planck Institute having developed a machine that completely automates the process of cultivating cells.
From the press release:
The device consists of an array of modules: One of these is a robot that transports the vessels containing the cell cultures, known as multititer plates, from one place to the next. Dr. Albrecht Brandenburg, group manager at IPM describes another module: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
October 16th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Research
Tags: Community Size, Free Time, Hospitals, Job solicitations, Lifestyle, Location, Medical Education, Merritt Hawkins, New Physicians, Personal Networking, Private Practice, Recruitment, Regret, Research, Residents, Survey, Work-Life Balance
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Sometimes having no end of job prospects, more than one in four new doctors regret going into medicine by their graduation, according to a recruitment firm survey.
Recruiters Merritt, Hawkins asked new doctors if they would study medicine if they had it all to do over again, and 28% said they would select another field, up from 18% in a similar survey in 2008.
Still, the newly minted physicians have plenty to do while they mull other options. About 78% of newly minted physicians received at least 50 job solicitations during their training, and 47% received 100 or more contacts from recruiters.
Despite the heavy rotation of recruiters, residents Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
