As if there aren’t enough things to think about when a medical device is implanted into your body, here’s a new, 21st-century concern: hacking! As reported on AboutLawsuits.com, Medtronic, the manufacturer of the Paradigm insulin pump, is investigating the cybersecurity of the drug delivery device used by diabetics in lieu of daily injections. The concern….
Continue ReadingArchives for October 2011
Annual Chest X-Rays Don’t Help Smokers Beat Lung Cancer
A new study might add to the perception that U.S. medical care is uncontrollably expensive thanks in part to unnecessary tests. “Screening by Chest Radiograph and Lung Cancer Mortality” concludes that people who have an annual chest X-ray do not have a significantly lower mortality rate than people who don’t. The study, whose lung data….
Continue ReadingMRIs for Sports Injuries Can Lead to Overtreatment
It’s natural to want an X-ray or MRI or some other kind of scan when you’ve had an injury that’s so painful it hurts to use the involved body part. But many orthopedic surgeons are starting to speak out against the overuse of MRI scans in particular. They say it leads to over-diagnosis of injury….
Continue ReadingWas Steve Jobs’ Death Hastened by “Magical Thinking”?
The question will never be answered with any certainty. But it’s worth thinking about, because many of us will eventually be required to make our own hard choices about what kind of treatment to get for a scary disease. The known facts about Jobs are these. He had an unusual form of slow-growing cancer of….
Continue ReadingExposing the Myth of Frivolous Lawsuits, One Laugh at a Time
Stephen Colbert knows a thing or two about hypocrisy in the USA and how to get a laugh out of it. In this segment on his show, he interviews Susan Saladoff, director of the HBO documentary, Hot Coffee, about the myth of frivolous lawsuits. Why mention this on a patient safety blog? Because the medical….
Continue ReadingCellphone Hazards: Radiation? Maybe; Germs? Big Time
When you get up close and personal with your cellphone, what are you exposing yourself to, literally? Dangerous radiation? Maybe. Nasty germs? Most certainly. Two studies examining different potential hazards of cellphones have been in the news lately. One concerns the ongoing debate about the radiation risks of extended close contact with your phone, and….
Continue ReadingComparing Accredited and Nonaccredited Hospitals
In the past, evaluating the impact of hospital accreditation was challenging because there was no nationally standardized data. So the Joint Commission and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) compared hospitals it accredited with those it didn’t using other evidence-based measures of quality. Those included data that are mandatory to report publicly for….
Continue ReadingScared Pink: The Dubious Value of Fear Mongering about Breast Cancer
The relentless campaign to convince every American woman of her imminent risk of fatal breast cancer doesn’t measure up to any calm review of the numbers on who dies from what in the United States. And the value of regular mammograms for women is coming under increasingly skeptical scrutiny. The latest skeptical report on breast….
Continue ReadingUnder Scrutiny, Orthopedic Device Manufacturers Cut Dough Flow to Surgeons
A review of money paid over three years from orthopedic device manufacturers to orthopedic surgeons is an eye-opening manual of influence-peddling at best and conflict of interest at worst. A study published in Archives of Internal Medicine concluded that once surgeons were required to disclose these payments, they declined in both total number and amount…..
Continue ReadingTask Force Calls for Reduced Pap Testing
Last week the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), about which we wrote recently, weighed in with another advisory to cut back on what has long been standard gynecological practice. As Reuters reported, although Pap smear tests are still the best practice for the prevention of cervical cancer, the USPSTF says that many women needn’t….
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