HealthDay reports on a paper published in JAMA Internal Medicine: “The costly form of radiation therapy that has become the norm for prostate cancer in the United States may be no better than the older, cheaper variety — at least for some men, a new study suggests. Researchers found that among more than 1,000 U.S. [...]
Kudos to Julie Appleby, Kaiser Health News, and the Washington Post for publishing the story, “Hospitals promote screenings that experts say many people do not need.” It’s a story that is reported infrequently, even though it could be reported any time in almost any city in the US – the practice is that widespread. The [...]
BMJ blogger Richard Lehman’s weekly review of medical journals is worth a weekly visit. This week he comments on a New England Journal of Medicine article, “Surgery versus Physical Therapy for a Meniscal Tear and Osteoarthritis.” He writes: “To my mind, the words “meniscal tear” conjure up Monday morning at the surgery, with young men [...]
Laparoscopic cholecystectomy, as Paul Levy writes on his Not Running A Hospital blog, is a surgery to remove a gall bladder using laparoscopic instruments through holes in the abdomen instead of cutting it open. Lap choles, for short. “So, what do you do if you are a robotic surgery device company that has saturated the [...]
Newspapers in the UK went nuts today with stories about “Nobel-worthy” research and “breakthrough” and “cure.” Interestingly, the story is slow to crack US news organizations yet. The Guardian: Back pain breakthrough could eliminate need for major operations The Daily Mail: Antibiotics costing just £114 may cure chronic back pain in 40% of patients in [...]
The New York Times Sunday magazine piece, “Our Feel-Good War on Breast Cancer,” is by Peggy Orenstein who begins: “I used to believe that a mammogram saved my life. I even wrote that in the pages of this magazine. It was 1996, and I had just turned 35 when my doctor sent me for an [...]
The American College of Cardiology holds its annual scientific sessions in San Francisco from March 9 – 13 this year. It is quite common for organizations like the ACC to send out news releases in advance of a meeting about papers that will be presented at the meeting. But it is uncommon for an organization [...]
“Between the Lines: Finding the Truth in Medical Literature,” by Marya Zilberberg, MD, MPH….and “The Patient Paradox: Why sexed-up medicine is bad for your health,” by Margaret McCartney, MD, are two books to add your reading list. I’ve written several times about smart blog posts by Zilberberg, an adjunct professor of epidemiology at U-Mass Amherst. [...]
This public radio program in Indiana interviewed me in response to the paper by John Ioannidis and colleagues in JAMA, “Empirical Evaluation of Very Large Treatment Effects of Medical Interventions.” You can listen to the 12-minute segment online. A few of the points I tried to make: Oftentimes, if it sounds too good to be [...]
Have you ever tried having a discussion of the evidence for Tamiflu with your doctor? (A physician-reader of our work has reminded me to use generic names whenever possible. The generic name for Tamiflu is oseltamivir.) Is this one of the top medical marketing success stories after, say, Lamisil (terbinafine) for toenail fungus? On Forbes.com, [...]
This story focuses on a family that may have a rare genetic mutation that increases their risk of heart disease. Unfortunately, the “rare” part wasn’t mentioned until 1,600 words into this 2,100 word story.
While this story adequately addressed 7 of our 10 criteria, the 3 on which it missed were significant omissions, yet could have been easily addressed.
Solid medical conference reporting, with many expert interviews and good context provided. Goes far beyond the conference presentation itself.
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