Better Health: Smart Health Commentary Better Health (TM): smart health commentary

Latest Posts

Study Shows That Most Women Do Not Choose Immediate Post-Mastectomy Breast Reconstruction

Despite the benefits of immediate post-mastectomy breast reconstruction, only a small minority of women, regardless of age, choose this option, a new study indicates. Research has shown that compared with a delayed procedure, immediate post-mastectomy reconstruction improves psychological well-being and quality of life. The new study, headed by Dawn Hershman, M.D., associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center, indicates that only about one-third of women opt for the procedure, according to the American Association for Cancer Research.
Source: cosmeticsurgerytimes.modernmedicine.com/
cosmeticsurgerytimes/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=751765

Immediate breast reconstruction does lead to better results in patients with early stage breast cancer. That is a pretty much well known fact. This statistic of less than a third of women seeking this type of reconstruction in this light seems kinda sad, but keep reading: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Truth in Cosmetic Surgery*

Hand-Held Device To Aid In The Detection Of Intracranial Hematomas: Ready For Prime Time?

I read this headline and said, “Wow!, finally I won’t need to CT all those patients’ heads!”

FDA permits marketing of the first hand-held device to aid in the detection of bleeding in the skull

Helps to determine if immediate CT scan is needed

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today allowed marketing of the first hand-held device intended to aid in the detection of life-threatening bleeding in the skull called intracranial hematomas, using near-infrared spectroscopy.

via Press Announcements > FDA permits marketing of the first hand-held device to aid in the detection of bleeding in the skull.

But then, wait, said I, is it any good? Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at GruntDoc*

Learning To Use Exercise To Help Relieve Neck Or Shoulder Pain

Neck-painDo your neck and shoulders ache? Not long ago, you would have been told to rest, maybe use a neck brace, and wait until the pain had ebbed away. Doctors have changed their song about the best treatment for neck and shoulder pain. They now recommend movement instead of rest.

As described in Neck and Shoulder Pain, a newly updated Special Health Report from Harvard Health Publications, there is mounting scientific evidence for the role of stretching and muscle strengthening in treating people with neck and shoulder pain. After a whiplash injury, for example, people heal sooner and are less likely to develop chronic pain if they start gentle exercise as soon as possible. For those with long-term pain (called chronic pain), results from controlled studies show that exercise provides some relief.

One review of the research found that Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*

E. Coli Outbreak Is Traced Back To Ready-To-Bake Cookie Dough

The investigation of a multistate outbreak of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli O157:H7 (STEC) that sickened 77 people and hospitalized 35 was traced back to ready-to-bake cookie dough, prompting infectious disease specialists to ask for stronger pasteurization and more consumer warnings.

like smack by Robert S. Donovan via Flickr and a Creative Commons licenseA report in Clinical Infectious Diseases outlined the outbreak and the work done by national and local health officials to track down the source.

No single source could be identified for certain for the outbreak. But one brand of dough was present in 94% of cases, and three nonoutbreak STEC strains were isolated from it, leading to a recall of 3.6 million packages of the cookie dough.

The detective work began with May 19, 2009, through PulseNet, the network of public health and food regulatory agency laboratories coordinated by the CDC. It identified Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

Majority Of California Children’s Hospitals Found To Offer Unhealthy Meals

A study published in the journal Academic Pediatrics reveals that 93% of California children’s hospitals offered unhealthy food to outpatients, visitors and staff in the cafeteria and snack bars.  Said another way, only 7% offered healthy food.  What did these foods consist of to be called “unhealthy”?  Try fried food, sweetened beverages, burgers and lots of sugary sweets.

The study found that 81% of the cafeterias placed high-calorie, high-sugar items like ice cream right by the cash register, a well known marketing plan to tantalize and increase selection.  Forty four percent didn’t even offer low calorie salad dressing and fewer than 1/3 had no nutrition information.

Health care workers, like the rest of America, suffer from increasing obesity.  One study showed over 54% of 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…

Read more »

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…

Read more »

See all interviews »

Latest Cartoon

See all cartoons »

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…

Read more »

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…

Read more »

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…

Read more »

See all book reviews »

Commented - Most Popular Articles