August 5th, 2011 by Paul Auerbach, M.D. in Health Tips
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Led by Andrew Luks MD and his colleagues, the Wilderness Medical Society has published Consensus Guidelines for the Prevention and Treatment of Acute Altitude Illness (Wild Environ Med 2010:21;146-155). These guidelines are intended to provide clinicians about best evidence-based practices, and were derived from the deliberations of an expert panel, of which I was a member. The disorders considered were acute mountain sickness (AMS), high altitude cerebral edema (HACE), and high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE). The guidelines present the main prophylactic and therapeutic modalities for each disorder and provide recommendations for their roles in disorder management. The guidelines also provide suggested approaches to prevention and management of each disorder that incorporate the recommendations.
In outline format, here is what can be found in these Guidelines: Read more »
This post, Wilderness Medical Society Publishes Prevention And Treatment Tips For Altitude Sickness, was originally published on
Healthine.com by Paul Auerbach, M.D..
July 7th, 2011 by admin in Research
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Nearly forty years ago, President Richard Nixon famously declared a “War on Cancer” by signing the National Cancer Act of 1971. Like the Manhattan Project, the Apollo program that was then landing men on the Moon, and the ongoing (and eventually successful) World Health Organization-led initiative to eradicate smallpox from the face of the Earth, the “War on Cancer” was envisioned as a massive, all-out research and treatment effort. We would bomb cancer into submission with powerful regimens of chemotherapy, experts promised, or, failing that, we would invest in early detection of cancers so that they could be more easily cured at earlier stages.
It was in the spirit of the latter that the National Cancer Institute launched the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Cancer (PLCO) Screening trial in 1992. This massive study, which eventually enrolled more than 150,000 men and women between age 55 and 74, was designed to test the widespread belief that screening and early detection of the most common cancers could improve morbidity and mortality in the long term. Not a few influential voices suggested that the many millions of dollars invested in running the trial might be better spent on programs to increase the use of these obviously-effective tests in clinical practice.
They were wrong. As of now, the PLCO study is 0-for-2. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Prepared Patient Forum: What It Takes Blog*
June 24th, 2011 by John Mandrola, M.D. in Health Tips, Opinion
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Not every Friday brings doctoring bliss. Sorry.
Some Fridays, the wrongness of our healthcare approach squeezes you like a vice-grip.
The medical news of the week can hit you hard.
–This highly tweeted report on how Overweight is the new normal speaks to the futility of asking people to help themselves. That our strong, vibrant, and proud citizenry is succumbing to fatness saddens me deeply. Building wider doors, heavier toilets and restaurant seats without armrests is the wrong approach to fighting obesity.
–We also learned this week that the advancing fury of medical therapeutics cannot counter high rates of obesity, smoking and inactivity. The WSJ health blog reports life expectancy in some Southern US counties trails that of El Salvador and Latvia.
–The nation’s chief doctor prescribes prevention over treatment, and no one retweets her. Silence.
–And the final egg on the face of wellness was this warning from the FDA: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*
May 27th, 2011 by RamonaBatesMD in Health Tips
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Last year I didn’t write about dog bite prevention until the first week of June even though I know National Dog Bite Prevention Week is always the third full of week of May.
The numbers shared by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) haven’t changed: 4.7 million people are bitten by dogs each year in the US with 800,000 of them requiring medical attention.
If you have read this blog for very long, you know I dearly love my dogs — deceased ones (Columbo, Ladybug (photo), and Girlfriend) and the living one, Rusty. Still, I have no illusions that dogs bite and given the right provocation, I think mine would though most of the time they are totally harmless and would just invite you in to rob me.
Sadly, children are by far the most common victims of dog bites, occurring most often in children 5-9 years of age. Senior citizens are the second most common dog bite victims.
Children are also more likely to be severely injured and represent half of the dog-bite victims requiring medical attention every year. Almost two thirds of injuries among children Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*
May 20th, 2011 by RamonaBatesMD in Health Tips, Research
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I stumbled across this review article (first full reference below) earlier this week.
Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States. Most skin cancers form in older people on parts of the body exposed to the sun or in people who have weakened immune systems (such as inflammatory bowel disease patients on immunosuppressive therapy).
According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), in there were more than one million new cases of nonmelanoma skin cancers (NMSC) in the United States in 2010. There were less than 1,000 NMSC deaths during the same time.
NMSC includes squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and basal cell carcinoma (BCC). Both occur more frequently on sunlight-exposed areas such as the head and neck. BCC is far more common than SCC and accounts for approximately 75% of all NMSC. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*
