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Potential Alternative For Breast Reconstruction Following A Mastectomy

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Though mastectomies are often a necessary and even welcome intervention to save the lives of women suffering from breast cancer, they also may contribute to the overall physical and emotional trauma facing the patients. In order to alleviate some of these problems, surgeons have developed breast reconstruction procedures that usually entail restoring the mound by implanting a silicone sac filled with salt solution (saline) or gel under the skin and pectoral muscles. The traditional process to prepare for implantation of the sac may be long and sometimes painful because it involves weekly bolus saline injections (sometimes up to 22 weeks) in order to create a pocket of sufficient size.

A potential alternative solution is being developed by AirXpanders, a med tech start-up in Palo Alto that focuses on tissue expansion for breast reconstruction following cancer. Their system, known as AeroForm, just recently Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

Attempts To Reduce Re-Admissions To Hospitals May Not Be Worth It

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Hospitals across the country are working on quality initiatives to reduce re-admissions to hospitals.  There are consultants, conferences, forums, meetings, physicians, nurses and administrators who are spending hours upon hours (and lots of $$$) to find ways to keep patients who have been discharged from being readmitted within 30 days.  Why all of this activity?  It is one of the quality measures that is being tracked by Medicare and Medical (CMS) and decreased reimbursement will be next if a patient is readmitted to any hospital within 30 days of a discharge. The diagnosis doesn’t matter.

A new study shows all of this focus and cost may not be worth it.  Readmission after a hospital discharge may not be an indication of poor care.

The study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal looked at 4,812 patients and had medical experts review the cases of the 649 who needed urgent readmission within 6 months. (Not one month as we are measuring).  They found that Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*

Stanford Researchers Find A New Method For Reattaching Blood Vessels

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Gluing blood vessels together, just like gluing a cut garden hose together, does not seem like a great idea at first, but Stanford researchers just might have figured out how to do this safely and effectively.

Over the past century and still currently used today is to hand-sew the cut ends of the blood vessel together using stitches. This method of reattaching blood vessels is time-consuming and tedious, especially when the blood vessels are tiny.

In this new glue method which is FIVE times faster, a special substance is Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*

Article Recommends Herpes Zoster Vaccine For Adults Over 60

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shingles.I am often asked by elder persons whether or not they should take the herpes zoster (“shingles”) vaccine. Up until this point, I have been answering “yes” based on my own experience, but now there is some data to support this recommendation.

In the article, “Herpes Zoster Vaccine in Older Adults and the Risk of Subsequent Herpes Zoster Disease,” Hung Fu Tseng and his colleagues reported their findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA 2011;305[2]:160-161). They evaluated the risk of herpes zoster after persons received the vaccine in a general practice setting.

In a retrospective (looking back at a cohort of patients from medical records) study, the researchers compared Read more »

This post, Article Recommends Herpes Zoster Vaccine For Adults Over 60, was originally published on Healthine.com by Paul Auerbach, M.D..

Managing The Drug Shortage: Many Hospitals Are Buying “Gray Market” Drugs

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Severe shortages for life-saving medications have driven a “gray market” in the wholesale drug supply industry, a watchdog group reports.

And the mark-up on gray market drugs is a budget-buster, reports the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit organization devoted entirely to medication error prevention and safe medication use. Purchasing agents and pharmacists at 549 hospitals responded to a survey on gray market activities associated with drug shortages.

The report includes chilling anecdotes from the respondents about pressure from physicians and administrators to ensure drugs are available, and drastic price gouging from the gray market suppliers. Price mark-ups of 10 times or more than the contract price were reported by about a third of respondents from critical access hospitals and community hospitals, and more than half of university hospitals. Examples include a box of calcium gluconate that cost $750 instead of the contract price of $50 (1,400% mark-up), and a supply of propofol that cost $25,000 instead of $1,500 (1,567% mark-up). Oh, and there’s exorbitant shipping and handling fees, too. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP 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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