As the nation rapidly grays, not only are middle-aged and older patients undergoing increasing numbers of knee, hip, ankle, and shoulder surgeries, back operations also have spiked — and a significant number of these procedures may be unwarranted and harmful. Spinal surgery is a booming business for orthopedic surgeons and hospitals, with Wall Street analysts….
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Online portals let patients get their medical records. They’re full of errors, and patients can get them corrected.
As doctors and hospitals switch to electronic medical record systems and try to amp up the business efficiency of their enterprises by opening online consumer portals, more patients may access their caregivers’ files on them, including doctor notes that may be shocking in their inaccuracy. Heather Gantzer, a doctor practicing at Methodist Hospital in St…..
Continue ReadingFlummoxed by shifting Covid advisories? Medicine makes progress sometimes by reversing well-accepted advice
The worst public health crisis in a century has brought with it some swiftly changing coronavirus health measures, and many by now are reacting with weary exasperation, asking: “Why can’t doctors get it straight? Why do they keep changing their minds and telling us to do so many different things?” Yes, the public health messaging during….
Continue ReadingDozens of tuberculosis infections, including northern Virginia, tied to putty used in orthopedic surgeries
A rare outbreak of tuberculosis among dozens of surgical patients — some of them at hospitals in northern Virginia — is under investigation by federal health authorities, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC suspects the infections may be tied to a malleable bone putty used in spinal and other orthopedic procedures…..
Continue ReadingGetting ready for a return to more normal health care
We may not have realized it, but all of us have participated these last 12 months in one of the major health care experiments in recent times. It may reshape the practice of modern medicine, and could have big impacts on individual well-being and pocketbooks. When the coronavirus pandemic raged in 2020, the U.S. medical….
Continue ReadingCancer experts seeing advanced cases with care delayed by pandemic fears
One consequence of the coronavirus pandemic may be showing up in tragic fashion: Cancer specialists say they are treating a wave of advanced cases in which patients might have benefited from earlier care had fear of Covid-19 infection not kept them away from doctors’ offices and hospitals. The information about the harms of missed appointments,….
Continue ReadingMizzou pays $16.2 million to 22 over knee surgeries involving veterinarian
It’s long been routine, if often controversial, for operating rooms to welcome medical device sales people and surgical trainees to watch the work of surgeons and nurses. But now the University of Missouri health system may have reset the bar with its $16.2 million settlement with almost two dozen patients over questionable knee surgeries. The….
Continue ReadingWhen end-of-life wishes get ignored, courts see another kind of malpractice
Many Americans took a good step for themselves and their loved ones after getting shocked by learning about treatments, like prolonged machine ventilation, that coronavirus patients may undergo. Not for me, the healthy may have decided. They committed to determining end-of-life wishes, committing these to “advance directives” or POLST (portable orders for life-sustaining treatment) forms. That….
Continue ReadingPatients finally gaining new access to medical records and doctors’ notes
Millions of Americans may be finding that their doctors routinely refer to them with terms like SOB and BS. But patients will be better off with this knowledge, once they learn how to translate medical abbreviations. The Associated Press reported that hospitals and health care systems nationwide quietly are complying with deadlines, and, under a….
Continue ReadingUnchecked Covid-19 pandemic gives U.S. a new reason to hold its breath
Falsehoods, even when loudly repeated, do not magically become true. The Covid-19 pandemic rages across the United States, and the facts do not support in any way the myth that the nation is “rounding a corner” in seeing the disease diminish its destructive course or magically disappearing. The toll of the coronavirus is ripping toward….
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