September 1st, 2011 by EvanFalchukJD in Health Tips
No Comments »
Billionaire Teddy Forstmann has apparently been diagnosed with a serious form of brain cancer. There’s a tragic twist to the story: according to Fox Business News, Forstmann believes that for more than a year, he had been misdiagnosed with meningitis.
ABC News wonders:
How could such a misfortune befall a billionaire —- a man able to afford the best doctors, best technology and the most sophisticated diagnostic tests?
They’re missing the point. Misdiagnosis happens with shocking regularity – as much as Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at BestDoctors.com: See First Blog*
August 28th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network
No Comments »
Four out of five doctors agree that they don’t need scans to make the right diagnosis.
It’s an old-fashioned concept frequently discussed among ACP members, but the history and physical combined with basic tests is way more important to diagnosis than ordering scans and advanced tests. A recent research letter in the Archives of Internal Medicine makes the case.
In the letter, Israeli researchers described a prospective study of 442 consecutive patients admitted from the emergency department in 53 days.
A senior resident examined all patients within 24 hours of admission (mean=14), including a history, physical, and review of ancillary test findings done at the emergency department, such as blood and urine tests, electrocardiography, and chest radiography. The resident also reviewed additional tests such as Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*
August 12th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Research
No Comments »
Prescriptions for antidepressants given by nonpsychiatrists to patients without a specific psychiatric disorder increased more than 12% in 12 years, leading to the drug class becoming the third most commonly prescribed, a study found.
A study in the August issue of Health Affairs reported that antidepressant prescriptions by doctors who didn’t record a specific psychiatric disorder increased from 59.5% of all prescriptions by nonpsychiatrists in 1996 to 72.7% in 2007.
Researchers reviewed data on patients age eighteen or older from the 1996-2007 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Ambulatory Medical Care Surveys, a national sample of more than 233,000 office-based visits. The proportion of antidepressants prescribed for patients without a psychiatric diagnosis increased from 2.5% of all visits to nonpsychiatrist providers to 6.4% between 1996 and 2007. For visits to primary care providers, antidepressant prescribing grew from 3.1% to 7.1%. For other nonpsychiatric providers, visits without a psychiatric diagnosis grew from 1.9% to 5.8%. In contrast, antidepressants prescribed with a psychiatric diagnosis increased from 1.7% to 2.4%.
Patients who received antidepressants without a psychiatric diagnosis by nonpsychiatrist providers were more likely to be Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
July 29th, 2011 by Davis Liu, M.D. in Opinion
3 Comments »
Let me say first that I am a practicing primary care doctor who is very much focused on patient centered care. Though I cannot go back to being a patient who is unaware about what a doctor does, the terminology she uses, or what the importance of certain test results are, I can empathize with the overwhelming amounts of information, challenges, and stressors patients and families can have in navigating the healthcare system to get the right care. This is the reason I wrote my book.
However, over the past few months I’ve noticed a particularly disturbing trend. Patients are not consulting doctors for advice, but rather demanding testing for diagnoses which are not even remote possibilities. A little knowledge can be dangerous particularly in the context of little to no clinical experience. Where many patients are today are where medical students are at the end of their second year – lots of book knowledge but little to no real world experience.
More patients are becoming the day traders of the dot.com boom. Everyone has Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Saving Money and Surviving the Healthcare Crisis*
July 28th, 2011 by AndrewSchorr in Health Tips, True Stories
No Comments »
You know I am a cancer survivor – 15 years down the road from a leukemia diagnosis and enjoying a 10 year remission. So whenever something seems weird about my health it’s cancer coming back, right? Wrong! Just how wrong was proven last night. I am writing this from my hospital bed in Seattle.
The first symptom of a possible problem came three days ago when I had soreness in my right calf. A pulled muscle? Maybe. But I had not noticed straining it. Back at the gym the next day I had soreness again but thought it was no big deal. Last night it was worse. It hurt some to walk. I got home and, after my wife and son were asleep, got ready for bed. I had a slight fever and then noticed the right calf was not only sore, but swollen and warm. Very strange. I’d never seen that before.
Trying not to be stupid I called the 24-hour consulting nurse. She immediately began to focus on deep vein thrombosis (DVT), a worrisome condition that affects about two million Americans a year and can lead to a life threatening situation. She had a doctor call me. Normally those doctors would rather make a house call then send you to the more costly emergency room. But not this time. “Dr. Steve” urged me to go to the ER rather than let a DVT progress and endanger my life. An ultrasound exam would determine if it was really a DVT. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Andrew's Blog*
