Conditions

Polycystic ovary syndrome is more than ovarian

Conditions

May 24, 2026

The name polycystic ovary syndrome may have unintentionally narrowed how medicine understood one of the most common endocrine disorders affecting women. The ovaries were visible. The deeper physiology was not.

For decades, the syndrome was largely framed around irregular ovulation, infertility, excess androgen symptoms, and the characteristic “string of pearls” appearance seen on ultrasound. Yet many patients experienced something far broader long before medicine fully acknowledged it. They struggled not only …

When normal creatinine hides post-operative kidney injury

John Erbey, PhD

Conditions

May 23, 2026

The conversation in the surgical ICU happens the same way every time.

“His creatinine spiked post-op, but it came back down before discharge. The labs look normal now. The kidney recovered.”

Cardiac surgeons hear this reassurance so often it’s become standard. The patient leaves the hospital with normal kidney function on the discharge summary. By every conventional metric, the surgery was a success. The acute kidney injury was resolved.

Except it didn’t. Not …

The hidden cost of medical malpractice litigation

Gerald Kuo

Conditions

May 23, 2026

The emergency department was bright after midnight. An older man in his 80s arrived short of breath and frightened, surrounded by anxious family members. He had diabetes, chronic kidney disease, heart failure, and a recent fever. The nurse checked his blood pressure and tried to calm his daughter. The physician reviewed the chart and knew immediately: This would not be a simple night.

In medicine, we often work in the gray …

How lifestyle interventions reverse type 2 diabetes

Mahima Gulati, MD

Conditions

May 23, 2026

I was a resident physician in New York City when I met a Jamaican woman in her early 40s, newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. The hospital was always crowded and the schedules unpredictable, making continuity difficult. But appointment after appointment, she found her way back to me. She trusted me and even brought me gifts on holidays.

Her hemoglobin A1c was 7.2. She had mild obesity, and no major complications. …

Why thymic involution is the aging organ doctors miss

Francisco M. Torres, MD

Conditions

May 23, 2026

There is an organ sitting behind my sternum that most of my patients have never heard of. Most of my colleagues rarely mention it. And yet, quietly, steadily, for the past four decades, it has been disappearing.

The thymus. The schoolhouse of the immune system. The place where T cells learn to distinguish self from non-self, friend from threat. By the time most of us reach our fifties, roughly 85 …

How HIV stigma creates barriers to effective HIV care

Alejandro Acety

Conditions

May 23, 2026

HIV in Puerto Rico is no longer defined by lack of treatment, but by the persistence of stigma. From my perspective as a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) student and future Adult-Gerontology Primary Care Nurse Practitioner (AGPCNP), stigma remains one of the most significant barriers to effective HIV care. While biomedical advances such as antiretroviral therapy (ART), pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and the Undetectable = Untransmittable (U=U) framework have transformed HIV …

Prescribing is down, opioid overdose deaths are not

Richard A. Lawhern, PhD

Conditions

May 22, 2026

It is often said in popular literature that figures lie and liars figure. However, sometimes in science, the lie is by omission. What we don’t say can be even more important in our conclusions than what we do. Two charts illustrate this principle in a centrally important issue of U.S. clinical practice.

The first chart is compiled by Statista, a well-respected data services company known worldwide. It addresses the relative potency …

Wearable technology saves lives through early detection

Sidney J. Winawer, MD

Conditions

May 22, 2026

I am a 94-year-old physician who would like to share a recent experience in which my Apple Watch played a critical role in the detection of a life-threatening event.

Over the course of my career, I focused on early detection and prevention in medicine, particularly in colorectal cancer. This made my recent personal experience with early detection of a cardiac event and prevention of its serious consequences through wearable technology especially …

Medicare will pay for the work your nurses already do

Rachel Yates, RN

Conditions

May 22, 2026

Walk into any independent primary care practice and ask the nurse what she did on her lunch break. There’s a good chance she’ll tell you she was on the phone with the daughter of a dementia patient, calling the dialysis center to sort out a transportation problem, or following up on the discharge med rec for the COPD patient who landed in the ED again last week. None of it …

Diagnostic bias almost cost me my life

Victoria Rundus, MD

Conditions

May 22, 2026

F*ck fibromyalgia? No, f*ck diagnostic bias.

I’m in pain today, so please forgive the profanity. Pain has become a constant companion for me for several years now, though some days are worse than others.

I am also a pediatrician, which means I am one of the “nice doctors” who does not curse. I have never been particularly good at following that expectation outside of the exam room.

As I lay in a hospital …

Read more…

Diagnostic bias almost cost me my life

Why perimenopause insomnia hurts metabolic health

Isabella Soreca, MD

Conditions

May 22, 2026

Ask most physicians when perimenopause begins and they will point to the menstrual cycle: irregular periods, shortened cycles, the first hints of hormonal flux. Ask most women and they will say the same. We have built an entire cultural narrative around the period as the harbinger. But for a significant number of women, perimenopause announces itself first at 3 a.m. Not with a hot flash. Not with missed bleeding. With …

Social media told her to abort her Turner syndrome baby

Stephanie Waggel, MD

Conditions

May 22, 2026

Two of my recent teaching topics with medical students have been people taking medical advice from social media and the rise of “wild births,” where babies receive no medical care whatsoever. Then I opened one of my Facebook moms’ groups and saw a pregnant woman post that her baby’s genetic screening came back positive for Turner syndrome. Immediately, strangers in the comments started telling her to abort. Not physicians. Not …

Prior authorization delays vital transplant medication

Payton Herres

Conditions

May 22, 2026

I am a heart transplant recipient. I understand the responsibility that comes with the organ I was given. I take my medications exactly as prescribed. I go to my appointments. I monitor for anything that could signal a problem. I do everything I am supposed to do. And I still almost ran out of my transplant medication.

What I was not prepared for was having to fight to get the medication …

Precision psychiatry is finally catching up to medicine

Carrie Friedman, NP

Conditions

May 21, 2026

One of the hardest parts of practicing psychiatry is that we still cannot reliably predict which medication will work for which patient.

A patient comes in struggling with depression. We choose a medication based on symptoms, history, side effect profile, family history, clinical experience, and sometimes educated guesswork. Then we wait. Sometimes the medication helps quickly. Sometimes it causes side effects. Sometimes nothing happens at all. Then we adjust, augment, switch, …

How medical residents build patient trust today

Sarah Whaley

Conditions

May 20, 2026

Spend enough time in a hospital, and patterns start to emerge. Not the clinical kind, the human kind. During my daughter’s recent hospitalization, residents rotated in and out every 12 hours. Over time, I found myself paying attention in a different way. Not with the intent to evaluate, but with a kind of quiet curiosity about how different people showed up in the same role, under the same conditions. It …

How to improve protein absorption after gastric bypass

Kevin Huffman, DO

Conditions

May 20, 2026

I have spent over two decades treating bariatric patients, and one of the most frustrating clinical situations I encounter is this: A patient sitting across from me who has done everything right. They are hitting 75 grams of protein a day. They are tracking every gram. They are bringing their food logs to every appointment. And they are still losing hair, losing muscle, and showing up with low labs.

In my …

The exam question OB/GYNs were never taught to ask

Michael Reed, MD

Conditions

May 20, 2026

Something is happening in women’s health care. Perimenopause is finally being discussed openly. Vaginal estradiol has entered mainstream conversation. Testosterone therapy for women is no longer confined to niche clinics or whispered discussions. Across medicine and social media alike, women are asking new questions about tissue health, sexual function, intimacy, discomfort, sensation, and quality of life. And perhaps more importantly, they are no longer accepting silence as an answer.

These conversations …

Social media addiction rulings impact mental health

Oliver Power

Conditions

May 20, 2026

Recently, a California jury found the tech giants Meta and Google guilty for the depression and anxiety which ensued in a young woman following her compulsive use of social media. The court found the corporations liable for features that cause children to become addicted to the platforms and that it results in the aforementioned mental health distress. Many are calling this ruling social media’s tobacco moment, citing parallels …

How fecal incontinence impacts infection prevention today

Deanna Vargo, RN, Karen Lou Kennedy-Evans, RN, APRN, and Simone Hugar

Conditions

May 19, 2026

Health care-associated infections (HAIs), including Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI), Candida auris, and multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs), persist as significant challenges for U.S. hospitals despite advancements in infection management, environmental cleaning, and isolation protocols. These infections pose a huge threat to patients and health care staff. But at the bedside, there is one persistent issue that seems more overwhelming and messier than other protocols dealing with fecal incontinence in critically ill patients …

How citation metrics reshape modern academic medicine

Rao M. Uppu, PhD

Conditions

May 19, 2026

I sometimes find myself reflecting when my well-cited journal articles begin to show a decline, whether gradual or sudden. In academic medicine, citations have become a form of currency, used not only to trace ideas but also to measure worth. Yet what gets cited is not always what matters most. In biomedical research, citations support arguments and help measure impact. In principle, they show how knowledge develops over time. In …

Conditions

Most Popular

Past Week

Past 6 Months

Recent Posts

Subscribe to KevinMD and never miss a story!

Most Popular

Past Week

Past 6 Months

Recent Posts