Several prestigious universities, including Stanford, Duke and Yale, conducted a research study on behalf of the federal government to examine which of two levels of oxygen given to extremely premature babies was better at preventing blindness without increasing the risk of brain damage or death. The purpose and execution of the study were solid; the….
Continue ReadingArchives for April 2013
Suggested Reading: Several New Takes on the Dangers of Prescription Drugs
Sometimes, we read an article or book about health, medicine and/or patient safety that’s fascinating but too long to summarize fairly in a blog post. So here’s a shout-out to a few recent stories you might want to look up, on a common theme. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), drug….
Continue ReadingIntensive Care Drives Some Patients Crazy, Literally
Intensive care in hospitals includes extreme measures that can induce delirium in many patients, and that, doctors are now discovering, don’t necessarily go away when the patient leaves the ICU. About 3 in 4 ICU patients develop delirium, according to a story in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and delirium is associated with poorer survival rates and….
Continue ReadingTime Magazine Lost Its Head in the Cancer-Cure Clouds
Talk about extremes. Last month we championed an exhaustive examination published in Time magazine of how health-care costs are unnecessarily inflated. But Time’s April 1 cover story, “How to Cure Cancer,” is more of an April Fool’s joke than a conscientious news story. It has been judged by Slate.com’s Seth Mnookin as possibly the worst….
Continue ReadingPulling Back the Curtain on Dr. Oz
Dr. Mehmet Oz is everywhere-on TV, all over the web and often cited as an authority in news stories. You have to wonder why he’s so popular, given how often his advice is bad, and sometimes dangerous. This isn’t the first time we’ve called Dr. Oz on the carpet, and our purpose is not to….
Continue ReadingMore Evidence to Let Caution Be Your Guide in CT Scans
Computed tomography (CT) is a scan of internal organs that creates cross-section images using X-rays. It’s a very popular kid on the medical technology block: Between 1980 and 2007, the number of CT scans performed in the U.S. increased from 3 million to 70 million. An estimated 29,000 future cancers, according to a National Cancer….
Continue ReadingDon’t Trust Labels That Read ‘Latex-Free’
Although many people have suffered from allergies as long as they can remember, others are new to this often annoying and, at times, potentially lethal immune response. You can develop an allergy any time, even to something that never used to bother you. A common later-onset allergy is latex. As discussed in the Harvard Men’s….
Continue ReadingDocs Don’t See—or Pay Attention to–Epileptic Drug Alerts
Patients depend on their doctors not only for diagnosing and treating health problems, but for keeping current with important medical news. So it’s unsettling to learn that many neurologists–doctors who treat the brain and central nervous system-may not be getting important information in timely fashion about the risks of certain anti-epileptic drugs. According to a….
Continue Reading