When patients experience bad headaches, severe chest pain, back or neck aches, or even when kids come in with gut pain that likely is appendicitis, doctors too readily push them into and through what may be hospitals’ over-sized cash-generating machines. It’s past time to end wasteful use of high-powered imaging systems, experts from the Mayo….
Continue ReadingArchives for January 2019
OK, you’re sick and hurting. Can’t we still hit you up about donating to our hospital?
Already-admitted patients shouldn’t be flummoxed if they’re moved into a bigger, quieter, and nicer room. There, a fluffy complimentary robe may await them. They may receive a warm welcome from well-attired executives — those senior enough so their pictures may even hang in pictures on the hall walls. And, yes, make no mistake, their nurses….
Continue ReadingFor too many women, an unending and painful tangle with surgical mesh
Tens of thousands of women complain that a surgery to implant mesh to bolster weak abdominal tissue, instead has inflicted on them incontinence, chronic pelvic pain as well as pains in the groin, hip, and leg, and with intercourse. Others say they suffer complications as if they had the immune system attacking disease lupus, leaving them with….
Continue ReadingWhat’s prodding contact sports’ big shifts on head trauma? Insurance companies’ ‘panic’
Parents and young athletes may have wrestled with the decision whether to play contact sports, as research shows the injuries that players can suffer from blows to the head. But lesser known parties to the games may be the undoing of professional and organized soccer, hockey, and football: Insurance companies. The firms, which provide necessary and….
Continue ReadingSavvy Rx from a resident: Docs, know why and what you’re ordering, please
Well, just because. That isn’t a great answer for cranky toddlers with too many questions. It’s also an unacceptable but real reason why too many hospitalized patients get woken up in the middle of the night and subjected 24/7 to expensive, invasive, and often unnecessary tests and procedures. Abraar Karan (right), an internal medicine resident….
Continue ReadingDiabetes is serious. So why aren’t patients getting more treatment help?
Doctors, hospitals, health officials, and disease advocacy groups race to warn about diabetes’ risks, harms, and increasing prevalence. But why, then, doesn’t modern medicine also do much more to help diabetics with the skyrocketing costs of their care, whether with insulin at excessive prices or with expensive medical aids? Ted Alcorn of the New York Times….
Continue ReadingRich family played big role in opioid crisis, court records show
A plutocratic clan that has labored to portray itself as enlightened patrons of the arts, science, and medicine, instead has been depicted in new court documents as drug profiteers, eager to exploit the misery and even deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. The stories in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post,….
Continue ReadingPot harmless? No, and pro-con arguments over marijuana are ablaze, again
Moderation matters with health issues, so skepticism about marijuana and its widening use may be welcome. But let’s see how much of recent wariness about this intoxicant is just a puff of smoke — or does it catch fire and become something more? Author Alex Berenson has become the latest advocate for tamping down the….
Continue ReadingObesity and poverty may stall 25-year decline in cancer deaths, experts warn
Cancer hasn’t gotten knocked out of its spot as Americans’ No. 2 killer, but health officials have delivered some good news about the disease that once was considered irreversible in its lethal course: Cancer deaths rates have fallen now for a quarter of a century. The American Cancer Society, pointing to 1991 as a peak….
Continue ReadingOverdose deaths soar among women 30+
A new kind of gender equality can only be seen as tragic and sad: Drug overdoses are soaring among women older than 30, with a giant spike in these deaths due to opioids. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that since 1999, drug overdose death rates “increased by approximately 200 percent….
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