Taking Charge of My Medical Crap - Again
I try to be in charge of my medical care. I really do. I take notes at appointments and I write little notes to myself in my calendar on things to ask my doctors at each visit. I am not sure if I am weird for doing this or not but I have no brain so I can ' t remember anything.In recent months, I have a new pain management doctor who has been very good at talking to me about different pain medications and what are options. I am very happy with this. Basically he is helping me switch to new medications to replace the ones that I have with ones that work better - fewer side effects, reducing the number of medications I am on...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - May 7, 2017 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: doctor questions health issues medical crap organization Source Type: blogs
Frankly my dear, I do give a damn
LITFL: Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog
LITFL: Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency medicine and critical care medical education blog
aka: Paediatric Perplexity 016
An 18 month old girl is brought in by Gran after developing a very red rash over the last 2 days.
She was seen by her GP a few days before with fevers, sore throat and lethargy and was diagnosed as a viral infection.
However the rash then came up the following day and she seemed to deteriorate…
What is the diagnosis?
+ Reveal Answer
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Scarle...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - May 2, 2017 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Johnny Iliff Tags: Clinical Cases Pediatrics paediatric rash scarlet Source Type: blogs
Why Science is Mistrusted
By, SAURABH JHA MD
Recently, the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, in their press release, reported about the effect of surgical checklists in South Carolina. The release was titled, “South Carolina hospitals see major drop in post-surgical deaths with nation’s first proven statewide Surgical Safety Checklist Program.”
The Health News Review, for which I review, grades coverage of research in the media. Based on their objective criteria, the Harvard press release would not score highly.
The title exudes certainty – “nation’s first proven.” The study, not being a randomized controlled trial (RCT), though s...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 22, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: at RogueRad Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Bad bug, no drugs: The real end of antibiotics?
Follow me on Twitter @JohnRossMD
In September 2016, a woman in her 70s died of septic shock in Reno, Nevada, from an infection which was fully resistant to 26 different antibiotics. She had spent much of the previous two years in India, where she was treated for a hip fracture. The hip became infected, and after several more hospital stays, she returned to her home in Nevada.
Within weeks, she was desperately ill, and back in a hospital in Reno. A sample from her hip wound revealed a strain of the bacteria Klebsiella pneumoniae which was not sensitive to any antibiotics. It was even resistant to a drug called colistin, an ...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - February 27, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Ross, MD, FIDSA Tags: Drugs and Supplements Health Infectious diseases Source Type: blogs
Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 175
Just when you thought your brain could unwind on a Friday, you realise that it would rather be challenged with some good old fashioned medical trivia FFFF…introducing Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 175.
Question 1
A young woman presents with swelling of the lips and eyes, has a hoarse voice and shortness of breath. This came on after passionately kissing her boyfriend. Her past medical history is significant for penicillin allergy. What is a potential cause for her symptoms?
+ Reveal the Funtabulous Answer
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Source: Life in the Fast Lane - February 3, 2017 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Neil Long Tags: Frivolous Friday Five camel trauma epilepsy John Hughlings Jackson kissing lead poisoning Pituri Robert Bentley Todd saturnine gout Source Type: blogs
What Experts in Law and Medicine Have to Say About the Cost of Drugs
By ANDY ORAM
Pharmaceutical drug costs impinge heavily on consumers’ consciousness, often on a monthly basis, and have become such a stress on the public that they came up repeatedly among both major parties during the U.S. presidential campaign–and remain a bipartisan rallying cry. A good deal of the recent conference named Health Law Year in P/Review, at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, covered issues with a bearing on drug costs. It’s interesting to take the academic expertise from that conference–and combine it with a bit of commo...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 2, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Andy Oram Drug Pricing Pharma Source Type: blogs
Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 171
Just when you thought your brain could unwind on a Friday, you realise that it would rather be challenged with some good old fashioned medical trivia FFFF…introducing Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 171
Question 1
Which famous fictional character suffered from Erethism?
+ Reveal the Funtabulous Answer
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The Mad Hatter due to mercury exposure.
Common symptoms include irritability, low self-confidence, depression, apathy, shyness, personality changes, memory loss and delirium.
The connection between the Mad Hatte...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - January 5, 2017 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Neil Long Tags: Frivolous Friday Five Bedlam Bethlem Royal Hospital Erethism FFFF Flemming insulin leonard thompson lewis carroll mad hatter mercury penicillin selfies The Fountains Abbey Source Type: blogs
Randomized Trialomania
BY ANISH KOKA, MD
This story is old, but the age of the story should not detract from the lessons of the story.
It was 1982, the place was Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. Workers at Fujisawa pharmaceuticals began testing fermented broths of Streptomyces species that had been retrieved from soil samples at the base of Mount Tsukuba. They were working to solve the remaining achilles heel of organ transplantation – effective suppression of the immune system that would prevent the body from attacking its new guest. It had quickly became apparent to the medical community that the key to long term survival of patien...
Source: The Health Care Blog - November 18, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Anish Koka RCT Source Type: blogs
COBIOPHAD Device Promises Quicker, More Efficient Drug Allergy Diagnosis
The COBIOPHAD (Compact Biophotonic Platform for Drug Allergy Diagnosis) Project, an initiative of the Photonics Public Private Partnership, has led to the development of a faster, low-cost allergy detector device that project coordinators aim to have available in hospitals as soon as in the next five years.
Upwards of 5.4 million Americans exhibit hypersensitivity to β-lactam antibiotics. This class of broad-spectrum antibiotic, which includes penicillin, its derivatives (e.g., amoxicillin), and cephalosporins, is among the most widely prescribed to treat bacterial infections. Of those that suffer from hypersensitivity to...
Source: Medgadget - November 9, 2016 Category: Medical Equipment Authors: Zach Kaufman Tags: Diagnostics Medicine Pediatrics Source Type: blogs
The Race to bring Penicillin to the Troops in WWII
By: John P. Swann, Ph.D. This Veterans Day we remember that nearly 75 years ago dozens of American academic, commercial, nonprofit, and governmental institutions – including FDA – joined together in a race to provide a promising but complex and … Continue reading → (Source: FDA Voice)
Source: FDA Voice - November 8, 2016 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Closer to a crisis
By FRED TROTTER
How close to we need to get to cybersecurity crisis in healthcare before we, as an industry take deliberative action?
Should we approach cybersecurity in healthcare differently? What approaches will work best? What commonly repeated advice about cybersecurity is actually wrong in healthcare settings? What ideas that would be effective in healthcare cybersecurity are being ignored? What is being missed from discussions about healthcare cybersecurity? What are we too concerned about? What threats do not get enough attention?
These might sound like rhetorical questions, designed to engage the reader before th...
Source: The Health Care Blog - September 17, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Physicians will rise to take back the bedside
Art explains medicine by explaining human needs. In December of 2015, Dr. Michael P. Jones wrote a piece that had 27K shares: “We’ve killed the way physicians should be.” It is interpreted that 27K readers or more identified with what Dr. Jones wrote.
In his essay, he claimed the identity of a physician was being “killed” by the reality of practice demands. The essay referenced an image of the essence of doctoring seemingly outdated pictured in a painting “The Doctor” by Sir Luke Fildes. In 1877 Sir Luke Fildes’ first son fell ill, and the doctor who tended to him sat at his bedside ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - August 28, 2016 Category: Journals (General) Authors: < a href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/jean-robey" rel="tag" > Jean Robey, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Primary care Source Type: blogs
10 Ways to Cultivate Good Gut Bacteria and Reduce Depression
In this study published in the journal Neuroscience, the performance of mice on various tests of mental and physical function began to drop just four weeks after being fed a diet high in fat and sugar. Monosaccharides, the simplest carbohydrates containing a single molecule of glucose and fructose (a piece of Wonder bread), disrupt a healthy microbial balance because they are digested very easily by us and absorbed into our small intestine without any help from our microbes. That leaves our gut bugs hungry, with nothing to munch on, so they begin nibbling on the mucus lining of our intestines, which is meant to be a stro...
Source: World of Psychology - August 9, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Therese J. Borchard Tags: Alternative and Nutritional Supplements Books Depression Mental Health and Wellness Personal Research Alcohol Caffeine Diet gut bacteria Gut flora Lactobacillus leaky gut Monosaccharides Probiotic sugar Source Type: blogs
Minor corrections.
It is " welt, " not " whelp. " A welt is something you get on your skin. A whelp is a newborn puppy. If you tell me your patient gets covered with whelps when they take penicillin, I will be momentarily charmed by that mental image. I might miss what you say next.It ' s " stent, " not " stint. " I don ' t want you to stint somebody ' s heart, as that means that you ' ve given that organ less than it deserves. You can stent it, however, in order to improve blood flow and muscular function.It is pronounced " lairINKS, " not " lairNICKS. " Likewise, it ' s NUClear medicine, not NUCUlar medicine. I can forgive G.W. Bush everyt...
Source: Head Nurse - July 31, 2016 Category: Nursing Authors: Jo Source Type: blogs
Hospital Records Commonly Being Hacked and Sold for a Premium on the Web
< p > Hospitals are often the target for ransomware attacks (see: < a href= " http://labsoftnews.typepad.com/lab_soft_news/2016/04/see-monday-morning-update-4416-from-jack-re-medstar-health-has-a-major-portion-of-their-infrastructure-and-server.html " > Hospitals and Ransomware; How Should Hospitals Protect Themselves? < /a > ). In a recent note, I discussed a software product that could theoretically help to protect hospitals from this threat (see: < a href= " http://labsoftnews.typepad.com/lab_soft_news/2016/07/israeli-system-protects-hospital-data-from-ransomware.html " > Israeli Software Designed to Protect Hospital Da...
Source: Lab Soft News - July 23, 2016 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Information Technology Hospital Executive Management Medical Consumerism Source Type: blogs
