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.
We live in a digital age. Technology has become an integral part of how we see, learn about, and interact with the world. From computers at the office, to televisions at home, to smartphones on the bus or in the grocery line, many of us spend over half of our waking lives in front of a screen.
Naturally, some of us have begun to worry about the effects this may have …
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How digital media can help parents bond with their children
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians.
A 21-year-old man is evaluated during a medical examination for health insurance. The patient is a weight lifter. He has no medical problems and takes no medications or illicit drugs.
On physical examination, blood pressure is 128/73 mm Hg, pulse rate is 56/min, and respiration rate is 16/min; BMI is 30. Increased skeletal …
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MKSAP: 21-year-old man with a heart murmur
From time immemorial until about 75 years ago or so most babies were born at home. Now it’s around 1% in the USA, although it’s much higher than that in many Western European countries. The shift to hospital births paralleled the growth of hospitals, pediatrics, and obstetrics. With that shift there has been a perceived decrease in women’s autonomy over their healthcare decisions.
There has also been an unsurprising jump in …
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Is it more dangerous for your baby to be born at home?
Last week a patient said to me, “You live your whole life thinking you’re going to have time to enjoy life later on, and then this happens.” Then he started to cry because we had just reviewed his recent CT scans and some of his lab results and he had a new diagnosis of a type and stage of cancer that meant he likely had about eight months to live. …
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Missed opportunities give leverage to cancer
We are civilized people in the United States. We don’t set up leper colonies or concentration camps or psychiatric snake pits to banish people with severe mental illness. Instead we send them to jail or prison — almost 400,000 of them, more than 10 times the number receiving care in hospitals. And we also blithely ignore the fact that additional hundreds of thousands live homeless on the streets or in …
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Society’s mismanagement of the mentally ill is a disgrace
In my pediatric nutrition practice, I often preach about getting more fruits and vegetables into the diets of the children I see. Eating more vegetables is a proven way to fight obesity and promote better health.
Sometimes the question of where and how to find healthy food comes up during my conversations with parents. Many of my clients reside in the Bronx, where sometimes the closest vegetable is the pickle on …
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The dilemma of eating locally-sourced foods
It was with much fanfare that two American aid workers were airlifted from across the world and brought to Emory University Medical Center where they began experimental treatment for Ebola. We hope for a full and speedy recovery for them and others like them who do God’s work.
But it appears to me that lost in this conversation are myriad others who need help but never get it. Right now, humanitarian work …
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The ethical dilemma of saving the American Ebola patients
To be quite blunt about it, Ebola is a very scary disease. Among those infected, the mortality rate is, as is perhaps now widely known, an appallingly high 90%. That would seem a very good reason to keep our borders closed to this scourge — and the consequences to the poor souls who already have it be damned. That, apparently, was just the kind of thinking behind at least Read more…
Ebola in America: Stop with the hyperbole
As doctors we prescribe a lot for our patients — pain relievers, medications for specific ailments, exercise, or vitamins. However, too often we forget the power of vitamin C: human connection. As a therapist and medical doctor for children and adults with ADHD, I don’t underestimate the power of employing a variety of treatments that treat the patient as a whole; this may include medication, recommendations about diet, exercise and lifestyle …
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The other vitamin C: Are you prescribing it?
There’s been an ongoing court battle here in the state of Florida over whether physicians have the right to ask families about gun ownership in their home.
The Florida Privacy of Firearm Owners Act was signed into law by Governor Rick Scott in 2011. This law prevents pediatricians from inquiring about gun ownership and discussing relevant safety information regarding how guns are stored and how to protect children from accidental injury. …
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Educate your children about guns
At the critical time when our nation has made meaningful and measurable progress against colorectal cancer incidence, threats to reimbursement for colonoscopy screening for Medicare beneficiaries are looming, which may jeopardize the effectiveness of public health strategies to increase screening and prevention of colorectal cancer in the U.S.
New data from the American Cancer Society indicate that colorectal cancer has declined by 30% in just the last decade among those aged 50 …
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Cutting the wrong test at the wrong time
“Ultraviolet bad.”
That was the core message that came out of the introduction this morning of the Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent Skin Cancer at a meeting held at the National Press Club in Washington DC.
There were some other messages that now raise skin cancer awareness and prevention high on the public health awareness list, such as …
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Today it’s time to say, “Ultraviolet bad”
At the recent gubernatorial candidates forum on mental health, Martha Coakley repeated the oft-heard phrase that depression is like diabetes. Her motivation was good, the idea being to reduce the stigma of mental illness, and to offer “parity” or equal insurance coverage, for mental and physical illness. However, I am concerned that this phrase, and its companion, “ADHD is like diabetes,” will, in fact, have the exact opposite effect.
A recent New …
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Stop comparing depression to diabetes
The deadly outbreak of Ebola virus in West Africa is the worst on record, with over 603 deaths reported as of July, 2014 (according to the CDC Ebola outbreak update). The virus is confirmed in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — and the crisis appears to be far from over.
The geographical complexity of the current crisis highlights one of the most crucial obstacles to …
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Why is there no cure for Ebola?
