Overcast with a Chance of Showers
Summer 2012After my rock-climbing group vacation last summer, my new friend, KMac, read my memoir. My last chapter is an excursion into self-discovery—the boy who grew up with immense suffering becomes a man without much. I list all the people in my life who have passed away resulting from cancer: three grandparents, some patients I met in treatment, a friend’s dad, and some others. The list was shorter than expected because until recently, I pushed the cancer community away.Of the 15 cancer “survivors” on our vacation, some were still in treatment and some would begin again soon. This is the nature of young people...
Source: I've Still Got Both My Nuts: A True Cancer Blog - November 26, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: life lessons Source Type: blogs
Facts About Bladder Cancer
Bladder cancer is a cancer is hardly discussed. This is why most people do not readily know its symptoms or risk factors. However, this is a cancer that can be normally cured, if treated early.Contributor: Linda M. McCloudPublished: Oct 15, 2013 (Source: Most Recent Health Wellness - Associated Content)
Source: Most Recent Health Wellness - Associated Content - October 15, 2013 Category: Other Conditions Source Type: blogs
Medical Mispronunciations and Misspelled Words: The Definitive List.
Hearing medical mispronunciations and seeing misspelled words are an under appreciated joy of working in healthcare. Physicians often forget just how alien the language of medicine is to people who don't live it everyday. The best part about being a physician is not helping people recover from critical illness. The best part is not about listening and understanding with compassion and empathy. Nope, the best part about being a physician is hearing patients and other healthcare providers butcher the language of medicine and experiencing great entertainment in the process. Doctors c...
Source: The Happy Hospitalist - October 2, 2013 Category: Internists and Doctors of Medicine Authors: Tamer Mahrous Source Type: blogs
Takeda failed to adequately warn of Actos cancer risks, U.S. jury finds
WILMINGTON, DELAWARE – A Maryland jury has ruled that Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. failed to properly warn a former U.S. Army translator and his doctor about the risks of the firm’s Actos diabetes drug and ordered it to pay more than $1.7 million (¥168 million) in damages, but a judge immediately threw out the verdict, court documents show.
Jurors in state court in Baltimore deliberated more than six hours over two days before finding Asia’s largest drugmaker liable for the death of Diep An from cancer, said one of the family’s lawyers, Michael Miller.
Since jurors also found that An contributed to his death by smo...
Source: PharmaGossip - September 28, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
Takeda Loses Second Actos Trial Over Bladder Cancer Risks
A Maryland state court jury ordered Takeda Pharmaceuticals to pay $1.7 million in damages for failing to properly warn a former US Army translator and his physician about the risk of cancer associated with the Actos diabetes drug. Starting in 2007, Diep An took the medication but was diagnosed with bladder cancer four years later.
However, under Maryland law, the verdict was set aside immediately because the jury also found An contributed to his own death. How so? He smoked for 30 years and “failed to exercise reasonable and ordinary care for his own health and safety, and that his failure was a substantial factor in c...
Source: Pharmalot - September 27, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: esilverman Source Type: blogs
Dogs Being Trained to Sniff Out Ovarian Cancer; It's Quite Possible
The topic of a recent article was the use of dogs to "sniff out" early ovarian cancer in patients. Ovarian cancer in its early stages can be difficult to diagnosis and vigorous efforts have been directed toward the development of biomarkers to diagnose its presence (see: Patient Symptoms Inadequate Way to Diagnose Ovarian Cancer; Abbott to Offer Automated HE4 Ovarian Cancer Test to Monitor for Tumor Recurrence). But do we really need to turn to dogs, albeit highly trained ones, to help us diagnose disease? Here is the article about these dog diagnosticians (see: Dogs Trained to Sniff Out Early Signs of Ovar...
Source: Lab Soft News - September 16, 2013 Category: Pathologists Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Clinical Lab Testing Laboratory Industry Trends Medical Research Source Type: blogs
Takeda Put Actos Sales Ahead of Safety, Lawyer Tells Jury
Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. (4502), Asia’s biggest drugmaker, put sales ahead of safety by failing to warn consumers about its Actos diabetes medicine’s cancer risks, a lawyer argued in the second case over the drug to go to trial.Officials of Osaka, Japan-based Takeda knew by 2005 at the latest that studies had shown links between Actos and cancer, and didn’t issue a warning until six years later, Stuart Simms, a lawyer for the family of Diep An, told a jury yesterday in state court in Baltimore. An’s family blames Actos for the Vietnamese immigrant’s bladder-cancer death last year.Takeda executives...
Source: PharmaGossip - September 5, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
Health insurance is wasted on the young
There has never been a time in my life when I’ve owed a lot of money. That certainly has changed this past two years as my husband and myself find ourselves with medical debt that we may never pay off . As you can guess, we have no health insurance — we can’t afford it and even if we did have an extra $650 a month we couldn’t obtain it due to our pre-existing conditions.
Briefly, I had emergency surgery to remove a cyst on my ovary in 2010, a diagnosis of an autoimmune disease in 2011 and two bladder cancer surgeries in 2012. My husband has had high blood pressure for over 25 years due to a heart defect discove...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - September 1, 2013 Category: Family Physicians Tags: Patient OB/GYN Source Type: blogs
Healthcare Update Satellite — 8-21-2013
Look for more updates on my other blog at DrWhitecoat.com
Judge orders Colorado family to pay $340,000 in legal fees after losing the medical malpractice suit it brought against a hospital.
The family plans to declare bankruptcy. The family’s attorney, Stacy Warden, alleges that the hospital lacked compassion for “going after a family with a severely disabled child.” If attorneys file frivolous cases, perhaps the attorneys should be on the hook, not the families …
West Virginia couple is suing a physician for failing to diagnose an epidural abscess that later rendered the patient with permanent paralysis, in additi...
Source: WhiteCoat's Call Room - August 21, 2013 Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Authors: WhiteCoat Tags: Healthcare Update Source Type: blogs
Malpractice defense: Chiropractic adjustment allegedly caused Bell’s Palsy
I’m the former chairman of the board of Advanced Practice Strategies (APS) and I always find their malpractice defense cases to be fascinating.
Illustrated Verdict
by APS
APS’ Demonstrative Evidence Group shares case examples from our archives to show how a visual strategy can support the defense effort. We hope that it is of value in your practice as you develop your defense strategies on behalf of health care providers. Please feel free to forward it to colleagues or clients.About Us
APS is a leading provider of demonstrative evidence for the defense of medical malpractice claims. Our team of me...
Source: Health Business Blog - August 13, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: dewe67 Tags: Patients Physicians Source Type: blogs
Healthcare Update Satellite — 07-09-2013
More updates available tomorrow on my other blog at DrWhitecoat.com
Why does an $11,596 emergency department visit cost $1,100? A spokesperson for the California Hospital Association says that it is because of government regulation. I want to know what doctor ever gets paid $4,242 for a Level 4 emergency department visit.
California attorneys are trying to raise the cap on damages under California’s Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act. Caps are currently $250,000 and haven’t been raised in more than 35 years.
The article says that many attorneys won’t take medical malpractice cases in California because they are t...
Source: WhiteCoat's Call Room - July 9, 2013 Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Authors: WhiteCoat Tags: Healthcare Update Source Type: blogs
Prostate Cancer: What It Is and Who It Affects
By Amy Campbell
First, the bad news. Research tells us that Type 2 diabetes is a risk factor for several types of cancer, including breast, endometrial, colorectal, liver, and pancreatic cancer. Knowledge of the link between cancer and diabetes is actually nothing new. Back in 1910, a biostatistician made the connection between diabetes and cancer. More recently, studies have shown that diabetes does indeed increase cancer risk, likely, in part, due to the incidence of overweight and obesity, not-so-healthy food choices, and lack of sufficient physical activity (all modifiable risk factors, by the way).
Now, for the somewh...
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - June 24, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: Amy Campbell Source Type: blogs
Diabetes and Cancer
By Quinn Phillips
Two weeks ago, actress Angelina Jolie announced that she had undergone a preventive double mastectomy, a choice she made after finding out she carries a rare gene that raises a woman's risk of developing breast cancer to about 65%. This revelation sparked a flurry of media coverage, which touched on everything from the cost of genetic testing to cultural factors that may influence whether a woman chooses to undergo a mastectomy. Suddenly, it seemed, breast cancer was on everyone's mind. So it seemed like an opportune time for Diabetes Flashpoints to discuss the link between diabetes and breast cancer, as ...
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - May 29, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: Quinn Phillips Source Type: blogs
Assessing damage from chemotherapy
To refuse chemotherapy for breast cancer is tantamount to suicide. Very few people who have been diagnosed with stage 2 or greater have survived the disease without aggressive treatment. Having said that however, I am well aware of the lasting and detrimental effects of chemotherapy drugs. Every day I feel those effects; my joints hurt, my brain dysfunctions and my eyesight waivers. What else has been done to my organs and other bodily systems I can only guess.
While my oncologist continues to monitor me for recurrence or metastasis from the original breast cancer, blood tests will alert us to changes in my blood or mar...
Source: Life with Breast Cancer - May 9, 2013 Category: Cancer Authors: Kathy-Ellen Kups Tags: Breast Cancer Source Type: blogs
World Class
This is what can happen when a private practice surgeon refers a complicated colon cancer patient to a medical oncologist affiliated with a certain multinational, gigantic world-famous non-profit health care system.
Let's say the surgeon is asked to see a patient with a large bowel obstruction. Perhaps the colonoscopy demonstrated a high grade constricting lesion in the distal sigmoid/upper rectum and the CT scan revealed a massive, locally infiltrating mass invading into the bladder and a possible liver lesion. Perhaps the patient has lost 30 lbs recently and has noted foul smelling material in her urine. &nb...
Source: Buckeye Surgeon - May 3, 2013 Category: Surgeons Authors: Jeffrey Parks MD Source Type: blogs
