October 17th, 2011 by DrWes in Opinion
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There they were, little maroon flags outside three patient exam room doors. You could almost hear the game show host ask the question:
Will it be Door #1, Door #2, or Door #3?”
So I asked the medical assistant, “Who’s next?” and she pointed me to Door #2.
It was a new patient with a familiar problem, one I’ve seen probably a thousand times before. Another day, another case. Bada bing, bada boom. Nothing to it. You would think that all cases, and all people are the same in some ways. Certainly, those managing our health care system of the future would like us to believe it’s so simple: just another case of heart failure (what can go wrong?) or supraventricular tachycardia (love that one, there’s NOTHING hard about that!) or maybe a few PVC’s (Check). Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
October 17th, 2011 by Medgadget in News, Research
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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
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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*
October 16th, 2011 by Elaine Schattner, M.D. in Research
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Ductal Carcinoma in Situ (DCIS) in the breast, histopathology w/ hematoxylin & eosin stain, Wiki-Commons image
More, a magazine “for women of style & substance,” has an unusually thorough, now-available article by Nancy F. Smith in its September issue on A Breast Cancer You May Not Need to Treat.
The article’s subject is DCIS (Ductal Carcinoma in Situ). This non-invasive, “Stage 0” malignancy of the breast has shot up in reported incidence over the past two decades. It’s one of the so-called slow-growing tumors detected by mammography; a woman can have DCIS without a mass or invasive breast cancer.
While some people with this diagnosis choose to have surgery, radiation or hormonal treatments, others opt for a watchful waiting strategy. The article quotes several physicians, including oncologists, who consider Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medical Lessons*
October 16th, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in Opinion
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Over the years, I have found that patients can be loosely grouped into 4 different types. Nothing particularly wrong with any type, but it does help me to approach patients appropriately if I can get a sense of what type they are.
The four types are:
Type A: If a surgery can “fix” or “cure” me such that I won’t have to take medications every day of my life, than let’s do it.
Type B: I will never consider surgery unless it is a life-threatening situation. If a medicine can help, why do it???
Type C: I will consider surgery only as a last resort when all else fails.
Type D: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*
