August 21st, 2011 by GarySchwitzer in News, Opinion
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Right off the top, let me be clear that I am NOT minimizing the importance of this week’s news about an experimental treatment for leukemia – one that has drawn much news attention.
It is an important finding.
What I am commenting on herein is the news coverage.
The ABC television piece itself wasn’t bad, with good perspective from Dr. Len Lichtenfeld of the American Cancer Society. But the lead-in and the ending, both involving anchor Diane Sawyer, were hyperbolic. The following screenshot was part of Sawyer’s lead-in. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
August 21st, 2011 by Lucy Hornstein, M.D. in Opinion
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There’s nothing new under the sun, or in medicine. I’m not talking about monoclonal antibody targeted chemotherapy; I’m talking about taking care of patients, and specifically about running a medical practice. Not even the incursion advent of all our fancy new electronics has (or should have) a fundamental effect on how we take care of our patients. The latest thing to come down the pike is the so-called Patient Centered Medical Home, a collection of policies, procedures, and practice re-structuring (webinars, templates, guidelines, etc. all available at low, low prices, of course) that essentially makes large group practices function like a solo doc from the patient’s point of view.
Because the buzzword of this new model is “teamwork”, we’re all supposed to begin the day with a brilliant new concept called the “huddle“: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Dinosaur*
August 20th, 2011 by DeborahSchwarzRPA in News
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As of May 2011, performance of MitraClip, a minimally invasive procedure to correct mitral regurgitation, has been voluntarily suspended due to a problem with its catheter delivery system.
Since 2008, about 3000 patients with severe mitral valve regurgitation (leaky mitral valve) have been treated with MitraClip rather than open surgery. In this minimally invasive procedure a small clip is delivered via catheter to the heart, where it is carefully placed over the center of the mitral valve. This non-surgical option has been an important alternative for patients who may be unable to withstand open surgery. MitraClip has been advanced and investigated at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia since the first EVEREST trial in 2004, and is currently available throughout the U.S. as part of the EVEREST II trial. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Columbia University Department of Surgery Blog*
August 20th, 2011 by American Journal of Neuroradiology in Research
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Bilateral symmetric claustrum lesions shown on MR imaging are rarely reported, especially transient and reversible lesions associated with seizures, such as herpes simplex encephalitis,1 unidentified encephalopathy,2 and acute encephalitis with refractory repetitive partial seizures.3 To our knowledge, there are no reports of symmetric bilateral claustrum lesions with mumps encephalitis.
A 21-year-old man had been experiencing cold like symptoms with headache and fever for a week when he vomited and had a tonic-clonic seizure and was subsequently taken to a nearby emergency hospital (day 1). He had been noticing spasms on the left side of his face for 2 days. On his last visit to the hospital, he reported disorientation accompanied by fever; however, a brain MR imaging and CSF analysis showed no abnormalities. Because he was instatus epilepticus on hospitalization, midazolam was administered by intravenous infusion at 3.0 mg/h. Around this time, the patient started to experience visual hallucinations and reported seeing Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at AJNR Blog*
August 20th, 2011 by Paul Auerbach, M.D. in Research
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Yellow fever is an affliction caused by a potentially lethal viral (flavivirus) hemorrhagic (causes bleeding) virus common in parts of Africa and South America. A highly effective vaccine made from live virus (known as the “17D vaccine”) is currently used to inject persons to prevent yellow fever; this vaccine is known to rarely cause serious adverse effects, namely, onset of allergic reactions, or a life-threatening or fatal infection that resembles yellow fever.
So, there is need for a safer (“nonreplicating”—in other words, not based on live virus) vaccine. In a recent article, “An Inactivated Cell-Culture Vaccine against Yellow Fever,” Thomas Monath, MD and his coauthors described their experience with a potentially safer vaccine (NEJM, 2011;364:1326-33). In their study, Read more »
This post, Advancement In Research For A Safer Yellow Fever Vaccine, was originally published on
Healthine.com by Paul Auerbach, M.D..
