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Breast Health in 2010 And Mammogram Guidelines – What You Need to Know

Unless you’ve been living on another planet, you know that in mid-November, the US Preventive Services Task Force released new recommendations on screening mammography, in which they recommended against routine mammogram screening in women under age 50, and recommended that mammograms now be every two years in women ages 50-74.

What you may not have heard is that the Task Force has acknowledged that the mammogram guidelines were poorly worded, and have revised their original statement to clarify their intentions, mostly by removing those two little words “recommends against”. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The Blog that Ate Manhattan*

Skin Cancer Alert: Tanning Bed Use Increases In Winter

It’s winter so why think about skin cancer?   One of the major risk factors is UVA and UVB rays from sun exposure which is much more common in the summer.  Tanning beds never cease being used, regardless of season and may even be used more in the winter than summer.

There is never a wrong season to be reminded of the prevalence of skin cancer or the risk factors for skin cancer or ways to prevent skin cancer. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*

Another Petri Dish Study Touted By Media As Miracle Cure For Cancer

Maitake soup Tiny Urban Kitchen.jpgEarlier this week, I saw one of the best treatments of a misinterpreted story that has me thinking about how all news outlets should report in vitro laboratory studies.

Only thing is that it didn’t come from a news outlet.

It came a brainwashing site run by those medical socialist types – I am, of course, speaking of the UK National Health Service and their excellent patient education website, NHS Choices.

You may recall reading in the popular dead-tree or online press that investigators from New York Medical College in Valhalla published in British Journal of Urology International about maitake mushroom extract killing bladder cancer cells. The most widely cited reports came from the UK Daily Mail by Tamara Cohen entitled, “Mushroom ‘shrinks cancer tumours by 75 percent,'” and “Cancer Cure: Mushrooms Can Shrink Tumors,” by Jo Willey of the UKDaily Express. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Terra Sigillata - PostRank (PostRank: All)*

When Bad News Surprises Us

It’s that part of the job that I’ve never gotten used to.  I hope I never do.

I saw a man recently with an unexpected finding on his exam – a “lesion” that should not have been there.  I was seeing him for his diabetes and blood pressure, and was doing my “ritual” physical exam, when the “lesion” blared into my vision.

I say “ritual” exam because the exam itself had little to do with his medical problems.  It is just my practice to do a cursory  exam of the head, neck, chest, and lungs of most everyone who comes to the office.  I guess it’s the “laying on of hands” part of the practice of medicine that makes me do this; there is something about the human touch that makes a doctor’s visit different from a visit to the accountant. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Distractible Mind*

Pap Smears for Women: New Guidelines

Right in the middle of the national firestorm about Mammogram recommendations, the American College of Gynecologists (ACOG) has issued new guidelines for screening of cervical cancer. After 40 years of successfully convincing women to get pap smears annually, the new recommendations say women should not get their first pap test until age 21 and the intervals for testing can then be stretched out.

The new recommendations say that women should start pap screening at age 21 (not teens who are sexually active as previously recommended) and then every two years through age 29. Women age 30 and over with three negative pap smears can stretch it out for three years. Women over age 65 can stop getting pap tests if their previous tests have been negative. Women who have had a hysterectomy for non-cancer reasons never need a pap smear. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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