Search Results for "Skeptical Scalpel"

Podcast: Doctors who blog

This podcast is about physicians who blog …

Why they do it, what they’ve taken away from the experience, and what they see as the role blogging plays in the medical information landscape.

Brain damage in the NFL: under-recognized at first; now likely overstated

A study published in JAMA looking at the brains of former football players donated to a brain bank, a highly selective sample, found signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) — a degenerative neurological disease — in nearly all deceased players examined. The mainstream media converged towards numerical consensus. Fox News reported “99 % of NFL […]

Superficial coverage of medical errors could leave erroneous impression with readers

Kevin Lomangino is managing editor of HealthNewsReview.org. He tweets as @KLomangino. The health news media were hopping yesterday with a big story about medical errors. Seemingly all the major outlets carried the story, with headlines so alarming that they’d have any conscious hospital patient demanding an immediate discharge. CBS: Medical errors now 3rd leading cause […]

Five-Star Friday: statins, funeral home death, devices, overtreatment, scorecards

This is our continuing look at excellence in writing about health care. The Five-Star Friday feature won’t appear every Friday, but whenever we can, and whenever we’ve collected enough gems to shine a light on. . -0- Fresh today, we published a criteria-driven 5-star review of a New York Times story, “2 Studies Back Guidelines for […]

Don’t start fist-bumping over a study in two people!

The Skeptical Scalpel, the nom de digital of a retired surgeon on a blog and Twitter, writes this week: Some well-intentioned researchers from West Virginia University published a small study claiming that substituting a fist bump for a handshake might reduce the transmission of bacteria. Since many illnesses can be transmitted by contaminated hands, the […]

More questions about expanded uses of robotic surgery: gallbladder and bladder cancer operations

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 […]

Another bad example of reporting on robotic surgery

The surgeon who blogs and tweets as The Skeptical Scalpel (@Skepticscalpel) started my day with a Tweet that read: Houston Chronicle’s hard-hitting exposé on robotic surgery. http://is.gd/lT5ed4 You have to know his work and his style to know that he was being sarcastic about “hard hitting exposé.” The headline of the piece is: Advances in […]

Week-ending roundup of health care news gems you may have missed

Flu Follies:  CNN’s Piers Morgan Falls Ill Days After Getting Flu Shot On The Air From Dr. Oz. Should Journalists Cite Material from Predatory Journals? – Scholarly Open Access blog. Eve Harris, who recently took a fulltime job as a patient navigator at UCSF,  published her “coming out” piece, as she calls it –  “Skin […]

New York Times “Novelties” story ramps up robotic hype

A journalist wrote me: “Ack! Another rah rah rah robotic surgery article, this time in the Times.” The blogging surgeon known as the Skeptical Scalpel tweeted: Skeptical Scalpel ?@Skepticscalpel ICYMI. Robotic surgery puff piece in the NY Times. http://is.gd/EjhZbe What draws their ire? A New York Times piece, “When Robotic Surgery Leaves Just a Scratch.” […]

Examples of medical marketing for the week: full body skin cancer scans, robotic hysterectomy

Both of these were sent to me by journalists: An email pitch letter from a medical group: Medical Office has First Full Body Scanner to Protect Against Skin Cancer Dear xxxxx, We thought that this might make for a very interesting and informative article. With the approach of summer break, this is a time when […]

Canada has 1 surgical robot for every 97 in the U.S.

The surgeon who blogs as the Skeptical Scalpel – and who is a frequent critic of the proliferation of robotic surgical systems – is at it again, this time posting “Robots attack America, but Canada not so much.”   (Addendum on April 12:  Don’t miss our later post on direct-to-consumer website promotion of robotic prostatectomy.) […]

Major-market TV news glorification of “scarless” robotic surgery

An example of how major-market television news delivers gee-whiz, awestruck segments on robotic surgery. This is from the NBC station in Los Angeles. The formula is familiar: surgeon comes on the set still wearing scrubs he says he just did 3 robotic procedures that day one of them was “first single-site, single-incision gallbladder removal done […]

How hospitals recoup the cost of buying robotic surgery systems

The blogger known only as the Skeptical Scalpel (self-described as a surgeon for 40 years and a surgical department chairman and residency program director for over 23 of those years) continues his thread of posts raising questions about the proliferation of robotic surgery. The latest is entitled “Study: Robotic surgery financials explained.” It’s his take […]

Do health care news readers need an “information diet”?

As we close out the week and prepare to head to a beach for a desperately-needed mid-winter break, here are some catch-up items we meant to write about earlier. NPR interview with author of The Information Diet making the case for “conscious consumption of news and information.”  We certainly make that case for health news […]

Surgeon blogs that robotic surgery is all hype and no substance

The surgeon who blogs as Skeptical Scalpel writes that he (she?) is unable to contain him(her)self any longer and then lunges into a review of evidence (or lack thereof) for robotic surgery. You may disagree with Skeptical Scalpel’s decision to be anonymous, but he/she explains: “I’ve been a surgeon for almost 40 years and a […]