September 15th, 2011 by KerriSparling in News
No Comments »
I’m not hooked on Apple products (I refuse to get an iPhone because I’m addicted to my Blackberry), but Chris and I do love that foolish iPad. And I love seeing apps for diabetes devices stocking the virtual shelves in the iTunes store. Makes me feel like we’re busting in to the mainstream, as a community.
Which is why I’m excited to see the first app from Dexcom. (And it’s free … as these apps should be, in my opinion.) While I’m hopeful that future apps include a way for the Dexcom receiver to transfer data to Mac products (because running parallels on my Mac is wicked annoying), this is a great start for people who are looking for introductory information on the Dexcom system. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Six Until Me.*
May 19th, 2011 by Harriet Hall, M.D. in Health Tips, Opinion
No Comments »
In my recent review of Peter Palmieri’s book Suffer the Children I said I would later try to cover some of the many other important issues he brings up. One of the themes in the book is the process of critical thinking and the various cognitive traps doctors fall into. I will address some of them here. This is not meant to be systematic or comprehensive, but rather a miscellany of things to think about. Some of these overlap.
Diagnostic fetishes
Everything is attributed to a pet diagnosis. Palmieri gives the example of a colleague of his who thinks everything from septic shock to behavior disorders are due to low levels of HDL, which he treats with high doses of niacin. There is a tendency to widen the criteria so that any collection of symptoms can be seen as evidence of the condition. If the hole is big enough, pegs of any shape will fit through. Some doctors attribute everything to food allergies, depression, environmental sensitivities, hormone imbalances, and other favorite diagnoses. CAM is notorious for claiming to have found the one true cause of all disease (subluxations, an imbalance of qi, etc.).
Favorite treatment.
One of his partners put dozens of infants on Cisapride to treat the spitting up that most normal babies do. Even after the manufacturer sent out a warning letter about babies who had died from irregular heart rhythms, she continued using it. Eventually the drug was recalled.
Another colleague prescribed cholestyramine for every patient with diarrhea: not only ineffective but highly illogical.
When I was an intern on the Internal Medicine rotation, the attending physician noticed one day that every single patient on our service was getting guaifenesin. We thought we had ordered it for valid reasons, but I doubt whether everyone benefited from it. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
March 18th, 2011 by GarySchwitzer in News, Opinion
No Comments »
A new post on the Embargo Watch blog, “The power of the press release: A tale of two fish oil-chemotherapy studies,” addresses an issue that had me running around in circles for hours last week.
Some news organizations were reporting on a paper in the journal Cancer, reporting that it had been published in that day’s online edition.
But it hadn’t been – not when the stories were published.
Instead, all I could find was a study by the same authors on the same topic that had been published in the same journal two weeks prior.
What apparently happened, as Embargo Watch surmises as well, is that many journalists simply covered what was in the journal’s news release – not what had already been published two weeks prior – which was a more impressive article. And they rushed to publish before the new study had even been posted online – all over a very short-term study in a small number of people. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
March 5th, 2011 by Dr. Val Jones in True Stories
1 Comment »
In medicine we’re often reminded not to base our therapy solely on lab test results. Although it’s tempting to reduce patient care to a checklist of “normal” bloodwork targets, we all know that this is only a fraction of the total health picture. Today I made a mistake that brought this truism home: “Don’t treat the number, treat the patient.”
I’m turning 40 this year and decided to make an ambitious fitness goal for myself — to be in better shape at 40 than I was at 30. No small feat for a person who used to be in good form a decade ago (not so much now, ahem). So, I joined a gym owned by an affable triathlete and invited her to make me her project. Let’s just say that Meredith believes that one piece of sprouted grain bread is the breakfast of champions — and with that she has me doing many hours of cardio sprints and strength training every week. I’m still alive. Barely.
Today in my endurance spinning class (an unusual form of torture where you get yelled at — I mean encouraged — on a stationary bicycle for an hour and a half in a dark room filled with high-decibel rock music and sweaty co-sufferers), I was somewhat alarmed by my heart rate. I was taught in medical school that one’s maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age. So mine should be about 180. I assumed that anything higher than that was incompatible with life.
So when I saw my heart rate monitor rise to 185 on a steep climb at maximum speed, I wondered if I might be about to die. I certainly felt physically challenged, but not quite at death’s door, so I looked around sheepishly at my nearest peer’s monitor to see if she was handling the strain any better. Nope, she was also at 185. “Gee, what a coincidence,” I thought. “We must be exactly the same fitness level.” Read more »
September 29th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Expert Interviews, Video
No Comments »
My friend and fellow blogger, Paul Levy, is the CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston. He was recently listed as one of the “top 9 people to watch in healthcare” – thanks to his pioneering efforts on behalf of patient safety and transparency of hospital quality data.
I recently interviewed Paul to get his take on how patients can plan for a safe hospital stay, and what Paul is doing at BIDMC to advance quality care for all. Many thanks to Johnson & Johnson for the unrestricted grant that allowed me to create the videos.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV1oRLNtLhc
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY1GJPQ_0uI
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRWS4p9t-9Q
Check out Johnson & Johnson’s YouTube Health Channel for more great videos.
