Conditions and Diseases

Physicians writing on KevinMD about the diseases they treat and the people who have them: cancer and its screening arguments, pain and the drugs that treat it, diabetes and the obesity argument, mental illness and who gets treated for it, and the decisions at the end of a life. Five maintained records draw on this archive: Cancer: what physicians say, in their own words, Opioids: what physicians and pain patients say, in their own words, End of life: what physicians say, in their own words, Diabetes and obesity: what physicians say, in their own words, and Mental health: what psychiatrists and physicians say, in their own words.

12 psychiatrists missed my medication-induced psychosis

Scott Standage, MD

September 17, 2026

During deliberations in the recent murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, jurors made an unusual request. They asked to see the bags of prescription medication bottles that had been introduced into evidence.

Clancy’s defense had argued that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she killed her three young children in 2023, and that her condition had been compounded by overmedication and inadequate psychiatric care. Prosecutors disputed that account. After weeks of …

The Pennsylvania measles outbreak and the cost of forgetting

Christine King, CRNA

Conditions and Diseases

September 17, 2026

On Saturday, August 29, 2026, a headline in my local paper caught my eye. There were 460 confirmed measles cases in Pennsylvania as of Friday, August 28, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. As of Wednesday, September 16, there are 731 cases in 38 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, and over 120 hospitalizations.

A brief search of the CDC website shows that since 1991, the number of measles cases nationwide has been in …

4 fibromyalgia myths the current evidence doesn’t support

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

Conditions and Diseases

September 17, 2026

Fibromyalgia is a chronic nociplastic pain syndrome characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain, fatigue, non-restorative sleep, and cognitive difficulties (often called “fibro fog”), frequently accompanied by other symptoms such as mood changes or overlapping conditions like irritable bowel syndrome. It arises primarily from altered central nervous system pain processing rather than peripheral tissue damage or inflammation.

Myth: Fibromyalgia is “all in the head” or purely psychological

Fact: While psychological factors and stress can …

Physician well-being is not an individual problem

Heather Buckley

Conditions and Diseases

September 16, 2026

The effectiveness of a health care system is routinely judged by the care patients receive. Far less attention is given to the conditions under which that care is delivered. Health care policy continues to emphasize insurance coverage, access to care, rising costs, workforce shortages, and health outcomes. Yet one question remains largely unaddressed: Who is caring for our physicians?

Physician well-being has traditionally been viewed as an individual concern. Current evidence …

AI in dementia care could give doctors time to listen

American Brain Foundation

Conditions and Diseases

September 15, 2026

The questions a doctor asks a patient and their family are particularly important for a diagnosis in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, but the demand for care is rapidly outpacing the supply of clinicians, and the time to truly listen keeps shrinking. My colleagues and I have been testing a possible way to protect that conversation: a voice-based artificial intelligence “agent” that interviews patients before they ever see a clinician, …

Barriers to yoga practice, and how to lower them

Kaivalya Kasturi, Duc Chung, MD, MBA, Samuel Doty, MD, and Karim Amireh, MD

Conditions and Diseases

September 15, 2026

Musculoskeletal and mental-health conditions are among the most consequential and costly health challenges in the United States. Musculoskeletal conditions affect more than one-third of U.S. adults and account for more than $300 billion in medical spending, while mental illness is estimated to cost the broader U.S. economy approximately $282 billion annually. Although many of these conditions are chronic and cannot be addressed through a single universally effective intervention, …

5 nutrition questions for every weight-loss drug follow-up

Standard Process

Conditions and Diseases

September 15, 2026

Picture a common follow-up visit: Six weeks into glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) treatment, a patient has lost weight and their glucose measures have improved. They describe the nausea as “manageable.” Then you ask what they ate yesterday: coffee until noon, a few bites at lunch, half a dinner, and less water than usual because everything feels too filling. They’ve also stopped walking because they feel weak.

The medication may be working as …

Women’s health in primary care needs continuity, not visits

Michael Baker, MBA

Conditions and Diseases

September 15, 2026

My wife and my daughter both have endometriosis.

I have spent nearly thirty years working in community health, much of that time leading a federally qualified health center. I know how health care works. I know how referrals work. I know how to ask questions, find resources, and push when something does not make sense. None of that shortened the road for the two women I love.

I watched appointments end with …

Breaking bad news: my wife’s brain tumor diagnosis

Neil J. Farber, MD

Conditions and Diseases

September 15, 2026

An excerpt from Treating a Broken System: A Physician’s Cure For the Healthcare Crisis.

Let me take you back to the Philadelphia suburbs in March 1997. My wife, Terry, and I had been married for almost twenty-one years, and we had three children, all teenagers. Terry had not yet completed her bachelor’s degree when we were married in May 1976. She went on to accomplish that when the kids were …

How physician resilience is built in a busy pain clinic

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

Conditions and Diseases

September 14, 2026

Walk into any busy pain clinic and the weight lands before you sit down. The pages never stop. The waiting room is packed with people who have already been through too many doctors. Chronic suffering hangs in the air. And that is only the visible load.

Beneath it sits a quieter, more relentless set of pressures. Insurance companies keep cutting rates. Staff feel the squeeze of financial hardship and rightly expect …

Palliative care in the ICU: what the metrics never count

Raya E. Kheirbek, MD, MPH

Conditions and Diseases

September 14, 2026

“I called palliative care because I needed to free up the bed. Otherwise, I could have taken care of this dying patient myself.”

The ICU attending said it standing at the nurses’ station, thumbing through a chart on a rolling laptop cart, already moving toward the next name on his list before I could answer. Down the hall, monitors kept their steady rhythm. Somewhere behind him, a family was gathered around …

Abortion bans and intimate partner violence rise together

Meghan Johnston, MPH

Conditions and Diseases

September 14, 2026

Pregnancy is a well-documented risk factor for intimate partner violence (IPV), with homicide reported as a leading cause of death for pregnant and postpartum women in the United States. As abortion policy has shifted in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson (the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade), researchers have begun examining how abortion access intersects with IPV in a post-Roe world. The sudden changes in abortion access have …

Why CDC opioid guidelines get the overdose data wrong

Richard A. Lawhern, PhD

Conditions and Diseases

September 14, 2026

On Wednesday, September 9, 2026, the author spoke briefly at a hybrid conference conducted by the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in Washington, D.C. This was only the most recent such “listening session” conducted over a ten-year period. And from the first government speaker onward, the meeting reflected many of the historical biases and misdirection of U.S. health care agencies with respect to the so-called …

Supplement country-of-origin labels hide the real source

Alisa Sano, MPH

Conditions and Diseases

September 14, 2026

We previously discussed the certificate of analysis myth and economically motivated adulteration in the dietary supplement industry. This article focuses on the basics of how the supply chain of dietary ingredients works and why it is critical for clinicians always to consider the possibility of supplement-induced adverse side effects such as herb-induced liver injury (HILI).

The surging interest in dietary supplements over the past few decades reflects a positive shift …

What sepsis in The Pitt gets right, and what it misses

Dima Romashin

Conditions and Diseases

September 13, 2026

In my free time, I try not to consume too much work-related content. When you’re in a medical business, manufacturing devices used for sepsis and septic shock patients, the last thing you want is to be reminded of sepsis outside of work. So I was very surprised when I found myself binging The Pitt all weekend. I think there’s a reason why it has become the rare medical drama that …

Post-stroke pain management: what the 2026 guidelines say

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

Conditions and Diseases

September 12, 2026

Pain management is rarely a blanket approach. Effective relief depends on the specific type of pain, its underlying mechanism, the patient’s comorbidities, age, functional goals, and overall clinical context. This principle is especially important after stroke, where pain is common, often under-recognized, and can significantly hinder rehabilitation, sleep, mood, and quality of life.

Stroke survivors experience several distinct pain syndromes. Distinguishing them matters because treatments differ.

Central post-stroke pain (CPSP)

Central post-stroke pain …

Opioid red flags mean caution in medicine, guilt in law

Richard A. Lawhern, PhD

Conditions and Diseases

September 11, 2026

Anyone working as a clinician or pharmacist in pain medicine these days has heard the term “red flag” to the point of personal nausea. In everyday practice, the term has multiplied like termites, and with equally destructive effect on the lives of patients and their doctors. It is almost always applied as a reason (actually an excuse) for denying patient access to safe and effective prescription opioid analgesics and/or benzodiazepine …

Patient noncompliance is often a system failure in disguise

Margaret Kyakuwa, PhD, MPhil, RN

Conditions and Diseases

September 11, 2026

At 4:00 p.m. on a Friday, a patient walked out of a community crisis stabilization unit without his medication. On paper, the chart note was predictable: “Patient left against medical advice,” “poor impulse control,” “non-adherent with treatment regimen.” It is a familiar refrain in psychiatric care, one that quietly transfers a systemic failure onto the person in distress.

Look closer at the operational workflow, however, and a very different story emerges. …

Protein-maxxing at the cookout: Skip the eggs and beef

Beth Motley, MD

Conditions and Diseases

September 11, 2026

As a primary care physician, I’m sometimes asked about protein-maxxing, a viral internet trend. Chances are you’re already getting enough protein, but the current trend can be a positive influence if it prompts you to explore plant-based sources of protein. Pecans, black-eyed peas, chickpeas, and many other delicious foods provide you with plenty of protein as well as fiber, iron, and other important nutrients.

If you’re focused on …

Hearing voices in children rarely means schizophrenia

Nitin Gogtay, MD

Conditions and Diseases

September 11, 2026

Tommy, a seven-year-old boy, had started telling his mother that he was hearing voices.

I think about Tommy often now, because the families who come to me are more frightened than ever, and they often arrive already certain. By the time parents reach my office to tell me their child has begun hearing voices, or seeing things, they have usually asked the internet what it means. More recently, and increasingly, they …

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