September 12th, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in News
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Surgery is messy… and I don’t mean in terms of blood and guts…
What I mean are wires, cables, tubing, etc.
Electric cord for the operating tableLet’s take a routine tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy for example…
- Electric cord for the anesthesia machine
- Electric cord for the surgeon’s headlight
- Light cord from the surgeon’s headlight to the lightbox
- Breathing circuit tube from the patient to the anesthesia machine
- Carbon dioxide outflow tube from the patient to the anesthesia machine
- Suction tubing from the surgical table to the vacuum canister
- Vacuum cable from the vacuum canister to the wall socket
- Electrocautery cable (along with electric cord to power the machine)
- Coblation cable (along with electric cord to power the machine)
- IV fluids lines from patient to IV bags
- EKG lines
- Grounding pad cable
- All the wires and cables that go with running a computer
- etc. etc. etc. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*
July 4th, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in Health Tips
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One June 20, 2011, NPR aired a great story about how a person may not “see” a person getting beat up on the side of a jogging path when they are focused on a task (pursuing another jogger)… even if they pass RIGHT BY THE FIGHT!!!
In fact, only a third of the subjects reported seeing this mock fight when the experiment was conducted at night. Even more surprisingly, broad daylight didn’t improve the statistics (only 40% noticed the fight).
Though the situation and circumstances do not exactly correspond, there is a lesson to be learned here that applies to a medical visit.
As an ENT, I often see patients for a very specific complaint…
“My right ear hurts.”
“I have a bad cough.”
No matter what the complaint, unless it is for a specific task (there is earwax… can you remove it), I most always still do a complete ear, nose, and throat exam no matter the complaint.
Why??? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*
June 20th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Health Policy, Health Tips
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Salmonella food infections continue despite success reducing disease caused by other pathogens, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.
Salmonella should be targeted because while infection rates have not declined significantly in more than a decade, they are one of the most common, the CDC reports in its latest Vital Signs.
Contaminated food causes approximately 1,000 reported disease outbreaks and an estimated 48 million illnesses, 128,000 hospitalizations, and 3,000 deaths annually in the U.S. Salmonella causes 1 million foodborne infections annually, incurring an estimated $365 million in direct medical costs. Salmonella infections in 2010 increased 10% from 2006-2008.
The same prevention measures that reduced Escherichia coli infections to less than 1 case per 100,000 need to be applied more broadly to reduce Salmonella and other infections, the CDC reports. These measures include: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
April 29th, 2011 by GarySchwitzer in News, Quackery Exposed
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On the NPR Shots blog, Scott Hensley reports: “This Just In: Fake News Is No Way To Sell Acai Berries.” Excerpt:
“Some marketers of weight-loss products containing acai berries are also purveyors of news you shouldn’t use, the Federal Trade Commission says.
The FTC has asked federal courts to put a stop to the activities of 10 different outfits that the commission alleges use “fake news websites” to tout acai berry weight-loss products.
Chances are you’ve stumbled across the sites, which often sport the logos of major mainstream news organizations, such as ABC, CNN and Consumer Reports. (See this example posted by the FTC.)
Take, for example the FTC’s complaint against Beony International LLC, a company based in San Diego.
The company allegedly ran sites with names such as “News 6 News Alerts,” “Health News Health Alerts,” and “Health 6 Beat Health News.” The sites feature purportedly objective investigative reports of acai products by reporters, who supposedly tried the stuff “and experienced dramatic and positive results.”
The blog post also includes links to examples and complaints posted by the FTC, a Consumer Reports feature on acai scams and this Better Business Bureau video warning about free trial scams.
Unfortunately, every day in our nationwide scan of health news stories, we see REAL news stories that look like advertising. So advertising that is made to look like news is not surprising.
*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
March 11th, 2011 by DavedeBronkart in Research, True Stories
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[Recently] NPR’s popular program “Talk of the Nation” covered something we discuss often: How e-patients find information and find each other online. Featured guests were Pat Furlong, mother of two boys with a rare disease who started an online community, and Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a frequent contributor here. The audio is here.
It’s a good combination: Pat speaks from the heart about her own experience and her passion for community, and Susannah, as usual, speaks as an “internet geologist” — as she once put it, “A geologist doesn’t have opinions about the rocks, she just observes and describes them.” Susannah spoke about her newly-released report “Peer-To-Peer Healthcare,” about which she recently wrote here.
Listener comments begin around 13:00. Examples:
— A woman describes how she started a Facebook group for her painful chronic condition (ankylosing spondylitis) and it’s grown into a website, HurtingButHelpful.org. (Spoonies, take note!) What drove her to create a patient community? “There’s no one else who can understand what I’m talking about.”
— The mother of a newborn with a heart defect found similar parents online. Hearing their stories — and even seeing an upsetting photo — helped her prepare for the surgery.
— On the downside, the daughter of an ovarian cancer patient said her now-cured mom keeps going online to patient communities and getting scared by what she reads. (Host Neal Conan’s observation: “There other parts of the computer that can be addictive, and I guess this one can, too.”)
It’s heartening to hear coverage of online patient communities, including the risks and challenges, in a respected outlet like NPR. (Time covered it, too, a year ago.) And there’s no equal for the reality check of Pew’s data. Some patient activists suggest (and some people fear) that the Internet “frees” patients from doctors, but Pew says that’s not what people are doing. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at e-Patients.net*
