Fight Aging! Newsletter, December 18th 2023
In conclusion, given the relative safety and the favourable effects of aspirin, its use in cancer seems justified, and ethical implications of this imply that cancer patients should be informed of the present evidence and encouraged to raise the topic with their healthcare team. « Back to Top Aged Transplant Organs Cause Harm to Younger Recipients https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2023/12/aged-transplant-organs-cause-harm-to-younger-recipients/ Old tissues are dysfunctional in ways that young tissues are not. This has always been known in the context of organ transplants, but absent me...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 17, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

Age-Related Dysbiosis as a Contributing Cause of Delerium
Delerium is not an often discussed topic in the context of aging research, but it is an age-related occurrence, usually presenting in the old, particularly those suffering neurodegenerative conditions. Researchers here argue that the aged gut microbiome contributes meaningfully to risk of episodes of delerium. The balance of populations in the gut microbiome changes with age in detrimental ways, such as an increase in pro-inflammatory microbial species and a loss of those microbes that generate beneficial metabolites. It is now known that Alzheimer's and Parkinson's patients exhibit a distinctly different gut microbiome fr...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 14, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs

Do What You Do Better: Using AI Tools to Ease the Workload Burden on Faculty  
On this episode of the Academic Medicine Podcast, Christy Boscardin, PhD, Brian Gin, MD, PhD, Marc Triola, MD, and Academic Medicine assistant editor Gustavo Patino, MD, PhD, join host Toni Gallo to discuss the ways that artificial intelligence (AI) tools can help ease the workload burden on faculty and staff, with a focus on assessment and admissions. They explore the opportunities that AI tools afford as well as ethical, data privacy, bias, and other issues to consider with their use. They conclude by looking to the future and where medical education might go from here. This episode is now available through App...
Source: Academic Medicine Blog - December 13, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: amrounds Tags: AM Podcast AM Podcast Transcript Academic Medicine Academic Medicine podcast admissions AI artificial intelligence assessment ChatGPT Source Type: blogs

Self-management skills that are not top of the pops
When I carried out my informal survey of the pain self-management skills people had used in the past week, there were no real surprises. Movement, activity management (pacing – and I will have more to say about this in a couple of weeks!), sleep, attention management and doing something fun were all at the top of the list. Others were lower down and while they don’t get to shine as much, I’m not so sure they are as seldom used as this wee survey suggests. At the bottom of the list is having hands-on treatment for relaxation or to feel good. OK, perhaps understandable because the whole ongoing debat...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - December 10, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Coping strategies Occupational therapy Psychology Research Resilience/Health Science in practice assertiveness Clinical reasoning pain management Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs

My Cancer Story  
By JEFF GOLDSMITH On Christmas Eve 2014, I received a present of some profoundly unwelcome news: a 64 slice CT scan confirming not only the presence of a malignant tumor in my neck, but also a fluid filled mass the size of a man’s finger in my chest cavity outside the lungs. Two days earlier, my ENT surgeon in Charlottesville, Paige Powers, had performed a fine needle aspiration of a suspicious almond-shaped enlarged lymph node, and the lab returned a verdict of “metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck with an occult primary tumor”.  I had worked in healthcare for nearly forty years when ca...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 5, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Medical Practice The Business of Health Care Cancer Jeff Goldsmith Medicare Advantage Patient Experience Source Type: blogs

Patients are Not “Consumers”: My Cancer Story 
By JEFF GOLDSMITH On Christmas Eve 2014, I received a present of some profoundly unwelcome news: a 64 slice CT scan confirming not only the presence of a malignant tumor in my neck, but also a fluid filled mass the size of a man’s finger in my chest cavity outside the lungs. Two days earlier, my ENT surgeon in Charlottesville, Paige Powers, had performed a fine needle aspiration of a suspicious almond-shaped enlarged lymph node, and the lab returned a verdict of “metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck with an occult primary tumor”.  I had worked in healthcare for nearly forty years when ca...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 5, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Medical Practice The Business of Health Care Cancer Jeff Goldsmith Medicare Advantage Patient Experience Source Type: blogs

“ S/he ’ s just not taking the message on board ” – A word to clinicians
I’ve heard it many times, probably said it myself some years back. You’ve presented an idea to the person, but they just don’t seem to be ‘getting it.’ What to do, what to do? The context of this kind of problem is often when someone’s pain isn’t settling down, or when some kind of self-management strategy is being recommended. To the clinician, the message is probably quite logical: “Here’s some information about pain that I am telling you about” and the unspoken assumption is that the person ought to listen carefully, maybe ask some questions, but essentially...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - December 4, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Back pain Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Coping Skills healthcare Occupational therapy pain management Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs

AdaptX Raises $10M to Expand its AI-Driven Medical Data Analysis for Healthcare Providers
AdaptX, a Seattle tech company that uses AI to help healthcare providers analyze medical data to improve patient care, raised an additional $10 million to support its growth and further invest in its technology. Led by investment firm Cercano Management, the new funding brings the company’s total amount raised to more than $20 million. Other investors in the round included Memorial Hermann Health System and Morningside Ventures, plus prior AdaptX investors Founders’ Co-Op, Fortson VC, Star Equity, and WRF Capital. Self-serve tools developed by AdaptX let clinical leaders analyze data from their electronic medical recor...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - November 28, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Healthcare IT News Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT AdaptX Cercano Management Dr. Dan Low Fortson VC Health IT Funding Health IT Fundings Health IT Investment MDMetrix Memorial Hermann Health System Morningside Ventures Paul Allen Star Equity Vulc Source Type: blogs

What are the most commonly used pain self-management strategies?
This study also demonstrates how novel interventions can be examined in groups with small numbers, but still allowing us to measure important changes. As an exploratory design, single case study design replicated with several participants is a method we need to use more. In a systematic review and meta-analysis, Blasco-Belled and colleagues (2023) found that positive psychology interventions do enhance positive affect and reduce anxiety but didn’t alter depression. There were not many studies included in this analysis suggesting that we still have a hang-up on promoting joy and compassion and all the good things i...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - November 26, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Coping Skills Coping strategies Occupational therapy Resilience Resilience/Health Science in practice biopsychosocial pain management Research Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs

Navigating life stories and medical decisions
As a physician, I am given both the gift and the burden of another’s most intimate moments or even their indiscretions. There is a cloak of invisibility that wraps around a patient and me when behind a closed door. Almost as if the concept of guilt, innocence, opportunity, loss, life, and death are all present Read more… Navigating life stories and medical decisions originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - November 24, 2023 Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Physician Anesthesiology OB/GYN Source Type: blogs

What are the most commonly used pain self-management strategies?
In a very unscientific vox populi survey conducted via my blog, I asked people with pain to tell me the FIVE self-management strategies they’d used over the week prior. If you’re interested in completing this yourself, click here: click. (Scroll down that page to the survey). My reason for asking the question is that we have a list of self-management strategies, but the definitions and the way strategies are used in daily life are quite murky. For example, we don’t have a clear definition of ‘activity pacing’ though we are starting to investigate it. We also don’t know whether strateg...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - November 19, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Coping strategies Research Resilience/Health pain management Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs

Human Consciousness May Emerge At Birth — Or Perhaps Before (M)
Until the 1980s, doctors regularly performed operations on newborns without anaesthetics, because they were assumed to lack awareness. (Source: PsyBlog | Psychology Blog)
Source: PsyBlog | Psychology Blog - November 15, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Jeremy Dean Tags: Child Psychology Consciousness subscribers-only Source Type: blogs

Transforming the preoperative patient consultation: from “ clearance ” to “ evaluation and optimization ”
A guest column by the American Society of Anesthesiologists, exclusive to KevinMD. Put yourself in the anesthesiologist’s shoes. It’s 7:00 a.m., and you’ve just finished setting up the operating room (OR). You make your way to the preoperative unit to evaluate your patient and find a prescription pad note that says, “Patient cleared for surgery at Read more… Transforming the preoperative patient consultation: from “clearance” to “evaluation and optimization” originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - November 13, 2023 Category: General Medicine Authors:

Quiz: Do You Know Pharmacology Facts?
This is the final post in our miniseries on pharmacology. Check out the others: “What Is Pharmacology?“, “What Happens to Medicine In Your Body?“, and “How Do Medicines Work?“ Credit: NIGMS. Pharmacologists research how the body acts on medicines (e.g., absorption, excretion) and how medicines act in the body, as well as how these effects vary from person to person. NIGMS-funded pharmacology researchers are: Conducting research to design medicines with fewer side effects Exploring how genes cause people to respond differently to medicines Developing new methods and molecul...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - November 13, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Being a Scientist Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmacology Common questions Medicines Miniseries Quiz Source Type: blogs

How confident are clinicians to deliver pain self-management?
Over the past few weeks I’ve been talking about pain self management from many perspectives. It’s an important topic because most people living with pain will be self managing most of the time. Being able to confidently self manage leads to less disability, distress and lives that look like life, not some endless healthcare regime. A paper by Penlington et al., (2023) explored confidence beliefs of clinicians working in the UK in primary or community settings prior to a training programme that was then delivered to them. The sample included in the survey is therefore a subset of those who might be expected t...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - November 12, 2023 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Coping Skills Coping strategies Pain conditions Research Science in practice Health healthcare pain management Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs