1) Claudia Henschke has been coming under fire after the NY Times connected her research to tobacco companies.

My take: She has been the most zealous proponent of CT scans for lung cancer screening. Unreasonably at times, ignoring basic evidence-based medicine principles. Perhaps in the future its time will come. Today, the data is too inconclusive to make a firm recommendation.

Now that we hear that she stands to benefit financially (through the patents she held on the technology), and that Big Tobacco financed her research.

It is unfortunate that the media took her message and ran with it. Hopefully they will report the questions surrounding her research with the same vigor.

2) Medicare is on the road to insolvency.

My take: Dr. Wes alluded to this today.

Physicians are being killed slowly with payments not keeping up with practice costs, patients face rising health premiums, and the number of uninsured continue to grow.

Maybe we should let Medicare die, so some real change can happen.

3) Only half of all patients with heart attacks arrive to the hospital via ambulance.

My take: In cases of acute MI, seconds count. It is foolish to discount chest pain unless proven otherwise. Don’t “tough it out” and drive yourself to the hospital when chest pain occurs.

4) The BBC reported that breast MRIs are having problems with specificity.

My take: Specificity is defined as the frequency of a positive test in the absence of disease. As advanced imaging studies continue to be promoted by the media as “better”, more patients will believe that.

The problem is that CTs, MRIs or PET scans increasingly detect findings that are benign, leading to more invasive tests. Unnecessarily ordering these studies exposes the patient to potential biopsies, which can have serious complications.