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.

How CDC opioid guidelines harmed chronic pain patients

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

April 18, 2026

The 2016 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain, aggressively promoted by former Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tom Price and CDC Director Tom Frieden, represents one of the most damaging public health missteps in recent U.S. history. Far from curbing the overdose epidemic, CDC guidelines triggered widespread, preventable suffering among legitimate chronic pain patients while leaving illicit fentanyl, the true driver …

Why current solutions to physician burnout are failing

Bill Pressey

Conditions and Diseases

April 18, 2026

After a decade of wellness programs, mindfulness apps, reduced shift lengths, scribes, and employee assistance programs, physician burnout rates are essentially unchanged. The AMA’s 2023 national survey found burnout affecting 45 percent of physicians, nearly identical to where we started. Burnout peaked at 62.8 percent in 2021, the highest ever recorded. Physicians still face double the burnout risk of other American workers. The well-intentioned people running these programs know they …

What to expect at your first gynecologic visit

Callia Georgoulis

Conditions and Diseases

April 17, 2026

For many adolescent girls, the first visit to a gynecologist is surrounded by anxiety, embarrassment, and misinformation. Stories shared among peers, exaggerated portrayals online, and a general lack of education about reproductive health often lead young patients to expect invasive exams or uncomfortable procedures. In reality, the first gynecologic visit is rarely about procedures. Instead, it represents one of the earliest opportunities in medicine to build trust, introduce preventive care, …

The quiet hospital financial crisis threatening health care

Ganesh Asaithambi, MD, MBA

Conditions and Diseases

April 17, 2026

During the first months of COVID-19, the threat was unmistakable. Hospitals were stretched to capacity. ICU beds were made wherever space could be found. Frontline staff worked on adrenaline, obligation, and the unspoken recognition that at any second the whole thing could collapse. It was defined by volume that was relentless, tangible, and measurable. But the crisis today is different. It is much quieter. It does not announce itself with …

Closing the execution reliability gap in health care systems

Katherine Owen, RN

Conditions and Diseases

April 16, 2026

Health care has made extraordinary progress in clinical knowledge. Diagnostic capabilities have advanced, treatments have become more precise, and predictive analytics now help clinicians identify patients at risk for complications or readmissions. Yet despite these advances, health care systems continue to struggle with a familiar challenge: Care plans that look clear inside the hospital often break down once patients return home. Medication instructions are misunderstood. Follow-up steps are delayed. Symptoms …

How pain management solves a refractory headache

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

Conditions and Diseases

April 16, 2026

As a pain management specialist, I see patients every week who feel like they have tried nearly everything. They come to me after months, or even years, of battling chronic or refractory headaches. Their primary care doctor and neurologist have already walked them through the usual first-line options, yet the pain keeps coming back relentlessly. It steals their focus, disrupts their sleep, and robs them of the simple joys in …

The silent patient experience in the exam room

Michele Luckenbaugh

Conditions and Diseases

April 16, 2026

Doctor, you see only the faint visible smile
on my exterior, my hand reaches out to shake yours
as you enter the space.

But you cannot see the “me” within,
the fear, the stress, the anxiety
that circulates inside me.

These emotions swirl within,
poking and prodding,
they hang like a weighted chain
about my heart.

I guess one could say
I am an imposter,
a person in disguise.

But couldn’t the same be said of you?
I guess you were trained
to keep your …

A nurse’s final reflection on life, death, and regrets

Debbie Moore-Black, RN

Conditions and Diseases

April 16, 2026

I sat up on that thin mattress in a nursing home. My earthly possessions were gone. The house I loved so much and worked so hard to buy, built in 1918, was no longer mine. I had taken a second job just to move out of the dilapidated trailer my husband had brought me to. I felt surrounded by poverty and hopelessness while he showed no ambition to leave. My …

Recognizing structural drift and institutional failure in health care

Tiffiny Black, DM, MBA, MPA

Conditions and Diseases

April 16, 2026

Most institutional failures appear sudden. A hospital collapses under regulatory scrutiny. A leadership crisis erupts. A safety breakdown exposes systemic weaknesses that had remained invisible for years. When these moments occur, they are often described as unexpected. But in complex systems like health care, failure rarely arrives without warning. The warning signs are almost always present long before the crisis becomes visible. The challenge is that institutions often learn to …

National Nurses Week needs better nursing recognition

Brian Sutter

Conditions and Diseases

April 15, 2026

I was recently speaking with an intensive care unit (ICU) nurse, and she described a moment that perfectly captures the weight of her profession. She was managing a post-surgical patient whose vitals were quietly deteriorating. Before the monitor alarms even registered the crisis, she had anticipated the drop, prepped the pressors, and calmly updated the attending physician. Through sheer clinical vigilance, she held the fragile line between stabilization and a …

Natural disaster trauma requires mental health planning

Kevin

Conditions and Diseases

April 15, 2026

Super Typhoon Sinlaku got the coverage it deserved, the satellite loops, the wind speed updates, the landfall reports over the Northern Marianas. Every wobble in the eye wall drew a headline. No one was talking about what was happening inside people’s bodies. I have sat with patients days after a storm passed, experiencing blood pressure that will not budge and hands that will not stop shaking, and the sky has …

How imposter syndrome affects high-achieving professionals

Ritu Goel, MD

Conditions and Diseases

April 15, 2026

He had just been named a partner. The youngest in the firm’s history. The first thing he said when he sat down in my office was, “I think they made a mistake.” I have heard some version of this more times than I can count, from physicians, attorneys, founders, and C-suite executives. People whose resumes would make anyone’s jaw drop, yet who live with a persistent, quiet dread that someone …

Finding humanity in medicine after a sudden illness

Salina Mansukhani

Conditions and Diseases

April 15, 2026

The morning my mother passed away began like any other. She was getting ready for work. She finished her morning chai and just stepped out of the shower with the sunlight filling the bedroom. There was nothing unusual about that morning that was particularly alarming. And then, in a moment so small I almost missed it, she paused and pressed a hand to her back. “I don’t feel right,” she …

Coping with a childhood type 1 diabetes diagnosis

Howard Steinberg

Conditions and Diseases

April 14, 2026

An excerpt from Confessions of a Problem Seeker: My Lifetime Journey From Busy Brain To Loving Heart.

In his own intuitive way, with only a second-grade education, my dad knew something was not right. Just hours after peeing in a paper cup at our pediatrician’s office, the doctor called my mom at my father’s butcher shop to inform her I had juvenile diabetes (now referred to as type 1 diabetes). …

Managing food allergy anxiety through diagnostic testing

Tamara Hubbard and Gary Falcetano

Conditions and Diseases

April 14, 2026

Food allergies affect roughly 8 to 10 percent of U.S. children and adults, and prevalence has risen steadily over the past two decades. Beyond the impacts on physical health, families managing food allergies experience persistent stress and vigilance preparing for unknown risks, whether it’s label reading, preparing for school, or going to restaurants or social gatherings. Seasonal allergies, in particular, have also been linked to generalized …

Knee replacement marketing undermines informed consent

Cory Calendine, MD

Conditions and Diseases

April 13, 2026

She came in having done the work. She had watched the clinic videos. Read the website. She knew the name of the proprietary technique for knee replacement that the surgeon’s practice was advertising. She used it correctly in the first sentence of our consultation. What she could not tell me was what the approach actually did differently, which structures it spared, or why it might matter for her specific anatomy …

Lung cancer in nonsmokers: a hidden health disparity

Alice S. Y. Lee, MD

Conditions and Diseases

April 12, 2026

May is AANHPI Month. As we celebrate the heritage, resilience, and contributions of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities, I also think of a poorly recognized health disparity within our community: lung cancer disproportionately affecting women who have never smoked. I was one of these women. Exactly five years ago in May 2021, I underwent major thoracic lung surgery that literally saved my life. The shocking diagnosis made …

The evolving standard of medical weight loss and obesity treatment

Howard Smith, MD

Conditions and Diseases

April 12, 2026

Obesity is an epidemic. Obesity, the predispositions for obesity, and the medical consequences of obesity are a major, if not the major, contributing factors to most medical conditions that plague American society. This is true for everything, including cancers. For instance, how many people smoke in the mistaken belief that smoking controls appetite, and how many cancers have obesity as a risk factor? There are genetic …

Unrecognized depression is a hidden crisis in medicine

Francisco M. Torres, MD

Conditions and Diseases

April 11, 2026

I began my physical medicine and rehabilitation residency in 1986, during the height of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic. Fear shaped every personal interaction. We were still learning how human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) spread, how to protect ourselves, and how to care for patients who were as terrified of the diagnosis as they were of the disease.

Of all the many patients I saw that year, one has particularly stayed …

How weight-loss injections are changing obesity treatment

Mani Habibi, MD

Conditions and Diseases

April 11, 2026

Is science shaping the future of obesity care, or is pharmaceutical marketing now in the driver’s seat? After 15 years in bariatric surgery, I am witnessing a shift that should make us all pause. From the gold standard of laparoscopic results to the “liberal” use of new injections for runway aesthetics, we are at a crossroads. Are we truly treating a disease, or are we building a model of lifelong …

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