January 4th, 2011 by RamonaBatesMD in Better Health Network, News, Research
Tags: Breast Augmentation, Breast Implants, Breast Size, Canadian Journal of Plastic Surgery, Cosmetic Surgery, Dr. Ramona Bates, Geographical Comparison, Self Image, Suture For A Living, Women's Health
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This article (full reference below, free access) came to my attention via MDLinx. It was interesting to read. The conclusion verified my expectations rather than surprised me.
The authors conducted a retrospective review of patient demographics and implant information from three university settings: Kelowna (British Columbia, Canada), Loma Linda (California, USA), and Temple (Texas, USA). Each cohort included 100 consecutive breast augmentation cases. Characteristics analyzed included age, height, weight, BME, parity, and average implant volume.
When considering the 300 as one cohort, the average age was 34 years with a height of 163 cm (5’4”), weight of 58.1 (127.8 lb) and parity of 1.7 . The average implant size was 370 ml. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*
January 3rd, 2011 by Michael Kirsch, M.D. in Opinion, Research
Tags: Alzheimer's Disease, Dr. Michael Kirsch, General Medicine, Genetics, MD Whistleblower, Missed Diagnosis, New York Times, Overtesting, Quality of Life, Risk Vs. Harm, Risks vs. Benefits, Too Many Medical Tests, Too Much Testing, Unnecessary Medical Tests, Unnecessary Testing, Value Of Medical Tests
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The medical profession’s ability to diagnose far exceeds its ability to effectively treat the conditions discovered. Consider arthritis, Parkinson’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome, strokes, emphysema, and many cancers.
When a physician orders a diagnostic test, ideally it should be to answer a specific question, rather than a buckshot approach. A chest X-ray is not ordered because a patient has a cough. It should be done because the test has a reasonable chance of yielding information that would change the physician’s advice. If the doctor was going to prescribe an antibiotic anyway, then why order the chest X-ray?
Physicians and patients should ask before a test is performed if the information is likely to change the medical management. In other words, is a test being ordered because physicians want to know or because we really need to know the results?
Does every patient with a heart murmur, for example, need an echocardiogram, even though this test would be easy to justify to patients and to insurance companies? If the test won’t change anything, then it costs dollars and makes no sense. Spine X-rays for acute back strains are an example of a radiologic reflex. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at MD Whistleblower*
January 3rd, 2011 by KevinMD in Better Health Network, Research
Tags: Absence of Disease, Accuracy in Diagnosis, Archives of Internal Medicine, Diagnosis and treatment, Diagnosis Error, Dr. Kevin Pho, False Negatives, False Positives, General Medicine, Incorrect Diagnosis, KevinMD, Medical Diagnosis, Medical Diagnostics, Medical Malpractice, Misdiagnosis, Overtesting, Patient Death, Presence of Disease, Preventable Death, Too Many Medical Tests, Too Much Testing, Unnecessary Medical Tests, Wrong Diagnosis
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I’ve written in the past that more medicine and tests do not necessarily reflect better care.
There is no test that is 100 percent specific or sensitive. That means tests may be positive, when, in fact, there is no disease (“false positive”), or tests may be negative in the presence of disease (“false negative”).
It’s the latter that often gets the most media attention, often trumpeted as missed diagnoses. But false positives can be just as dangerous. Consider this frightening case report from the Archives of Internal Medicine:
A 52-year-old woman presented to a community hospital with atypical chest pain. Her low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein levels were not elevated. She underwent cardiac computed tomography angiography, which showed both calcified and noncalcified coronary plaques in several locations. Her physicians subsequently performed coronary angiography, which was complicated by dissection of the left main coronary artery, requiring emergency coronary artery bypass graft surgery. Her subsequent clinical course was complicated, but eventually she required orthotropic heart transplantation for refractory heart failure. This case illustrates the hazards of the inappropriate use of cardiac computed tomography angiography in low-risk patients and emphasizes the need for restraint in applying this new technology to the evaluation of patients with atypical chest pain. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
January 1st, 2011 by Berci in Better Health Network, Research
Tags: Berci, Blog 4 Global Health, Dr. Bertalan Mesko, Facebook and Medicine, Global Health Communication, Global Health Council, Health 2.0, Health Bloggers, Healthcare Blogging, Healthcare Social Media, Medical Blogging, Medical Social Networking, Medicine 2.0, Science Roll, Social Media In Medicine, Social Networking and Healthcare, Twitter and Healthcare
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From Blog 4 Global Health — an “interactive blog from the Global Health Council’s Policy, Research and Advocacy team” — here’s The Top 10 in 2010 Global Health Communication. An excerpt:
If global health communication was characterized by anything in 2010, it was the rise of Twitter and other social media among non-profit organizations as a way of bypassing increasingly irrelevant traditional media and taking their messages directly to their target groups. From the Global Health Council, we saw more and more of our members — large and small — embracing new media like blogging, micro-blogging and social networks like Facebook. At the year’s last meeting of our Global Health Communicators Working Group in November, I asked for a show of hands of those whose organizations were not using social media. No hands went up.
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
December 31st, 2010 by PeterWehrwein in Better Health Network, Health Tips, News, Research
Tags: Annals Of Internal Medicine, Cold and Flu, Cold Remedy, Common Cold, Echinacea, Harvard Health Blog, Harvard Health Letter, Harvard Health Publications, Harvard Medical School, Harvard University, Infectious Disease, National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Natural Medicines, Natural Remedies, Nature Medicine, Naturopathy, NCCAM, NIH, Peter Wehrwein, Self-Care
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Does echinacea, the popular natural cold remedy, really work?
It depends on what you mean by “work.” Results [recently] reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that echinacea may reduce the length of a week-long cold by 7 to 10 hours and make symptoms a little less onerous. That can’t be characterized as a major effect, so many people may figure that the trouble and expense of echinacea just isn’t worth it (fortunately, side effects from echinacea don’t seem to be much of an issue.)
But others may decide that some benefit is better than none, and these results do fit with others that have left the door slightly ajar for echinacea having some effect as a cold remedy — a modest effect, but an effect, nonetheless.
A summary for patients published by the Annals summed up the situation nicely:
People who take echinacea to treat colds may experience a decrease in the length and severity of their cold symptoms but to such a small degree that they may not care about the difference. Although many studies of echinacea have been performed, researchers still disagree about its benefits in treating the common cold. This study is unlikely to change minds about whether to take this remedy.
Have you tried echinacea as a cold remedy? Has it worked? How do research findings, pro and con, affect your opinion of so-called alternative medicines?
Many of the echinacea studies, especially early on, were sponsored by companies making or selling the product. This study was supported by a grant from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which is part of the National Institutes of Health.
– Peter Wehrwein, Editor, Harvard Health Letter
*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*
