Conditions

Navigating the international dentist U.S. pathway

Conditions

March 3, 2026

The moment I decided to become an American-trained dentist, I was holding a textbook in India. I was a first-year dental student in India when it happened. I had just bought my textbooks for the semester, the thick, heavy kind that feel important in your hands, and I started flipping through them.

Page after page, I kept noticing something. The authors. Their names. Their affiliations. Almost all of them were from …

Lessons from 47 years: long-term marriage and palliative care

Richard A. Lawhern, PhD

Conditions

March 2, 2026

My wife is dying.

The day has yet to be determined, but the causes are certain. Stage 4 metastatic pancreatic and liver cancers will allow her a few weeks more in which to say goodbye to a large circle of family and friends. She has decided not to undergo chemotherapy or radiation that at best might extend her life by a few weeks, at the cost of the quality of whatever …

Why buprenorphine prescribing still lags after the X-waiver repeal

S. Hillary Kim-Vences, MD, MPH

Conditions

March 2, 2026

The repeal of the “X-waiver” in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 was widely celebrated as a long-overdue step toward expanding access to buprenorphine for opioid use disorder (OUD). By removing the requirement for supplemental training and a special DEA designation, policymakers hoped to normalize treatment and reduce barriers for clinicians.

Yet nearly two years after, buprenorphine prescribing remains inconsistent across the country. Only one in four Americans …

Philosophy in medicine: Why doctors need to ask “why”

Lauryl Cardoza

Conditions

March 2, 2026

“Why are you studying that? Philosophy won’t help you save lives.” If I had a dime for every time someone said this to me, I could single-handedly fund an entire class’s medical school tuition. Being a pre-medical student who majored in philosophy feels like being the only person asking “why” in a room full of people asking “how.” I have thought to myself many times that there is no balance …

Treating methamphetamine-associated dental disease in safety-net clinics

Charan Teja Bobba, DDS

Conditions

March 1, 2026

He came in wanting to get his smile back. I did not know he was also asking for his life.

He sat down in my chair and did not say much at first.

That happens a lot in a MassHealth practice in Massachusetts. People come in with more than just one problem. They carry shame, years of avoiding problems, and a lifetime of being told by systems, situations, and sometimes even their …

Reproductive care for rare diseases: the missing playbook

Lyndsay Hoy, MD

Conditions

March 1, 2026

In my first week of anesthesiology residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, I learned two things at once: how to keep other people breathing and how it feels to lose your own air. My chest filled with liters of lymphatic fluid. A scan showed lungs that looked like lace. The diagnosis was LAM, lymphangioleiomyomatosis, a rare, estrogen-sensitive lung disease that overwhelmingly strikes women in their reproductive years.

At …

The myth of cancer overdiagnosis: Why screening saves lives

Frederic W. Grannis, Jr., MD

Conditions

March 1, 2026

“Overdiagnosis is a myth that has been created by a handful of individuals who provide no care for women with breast cancer.”

This quote by Dr. Daniel Kopans encapsulates a long-standing and intense debate in the medical community regarding cancer screening.

In the Dec. 9, 2025, issue of the New York Times, Gina Kolata quoted H. Gilbert Welch, MD, on his perspective that “treatments need to be balanced with the consequences …

Beyond BMI: Why weight management must look inside the body

Maureen McBeth, PT

Conditions

February 27, 2026

After more than 25 years in oncology rehabilitation, clinical education, and survivorship care, I’ve learned to be cautious about “good” numbers from common tools like BMI and bathroom scales that don’t match what is actually happening in the body. A recent study confirms it: When used alone, BMI has been found to misclassify up to 34 percent of the general population as obese.

This year, it became more personal when …

The truth about ketamine: an anesthesiologist explains drug safety

Jim Ellwood, MD

Conditions

February 27, 2026

Unfortunately, we’re all too familiar with the tragic headlines:

Matthew Perry, cause of death: ketamine overdose
Michael Jackson, cause of death: propofol overdose
Prince and Tom Petty, cause of death: fentanyl overdose

We can easily conclude from these stories that ketamine, propofol, and fentanyl are inherently dangerous substances. When used irresponsibly or in the wrong hands, they are dangerous. But as an anesthesiologist, I, and many other medical professionals, use these …

Outsourcing patient contact: a solution for multilingual health care

Deepak Gupta, MD

Conditions

February 26, 2026

The fissuring of health care, along the lines of “The Fissured Workplace: Why Work Became So Bad for So Many and What Can Be Done to Improve It” by David Weil (2014), may not be entirely negative after all. Outsourcing patient contact services, perioperative or otherwise, to centralized, multilingual third-party entities with nationwide reach may be the need of the hour in an ever-evolving multilingual society seeking health care. In …

Opt-in vs. opt-out: How defaults shape organ donation rates

Anvit Divekar

Conditions

February 26, 2026

A few weeks ago, I went to the DMV to renew my driver’s license. At the very end of the process, after the routine questions and fine print, a single prompt appeared with a small checkbox next to it: Do you want to register as an organ donor?

I selected “yes,” but then I paused. Not because I was conflicted, but because I realized how easily I could have done nothing. …

Post-holiday heart health: How to reset your cardiovascular habits

Steven Lamm, MD

Conditions

February 26, 2026

The holidays are good for the soul, but often hard on the heart. Weeks of indulgent meals, disrupted sleep, increased alcohol intake, stress, and inconsistent routines can quietly strain cardiovascular health, especially for men. As the calendar turns and routines resume, the post-holiday period presents a valuable opportunity to reset habits, reflect on seasonal excesses, and refocus on heart health before temporary behaviors become lasting risks. Understanding how seasonal habits …

Informed refusal vs. denied care: a dental case study

Aaron S. Rosenberg

Conditions

February 25, 2026

I went in for a routine dental cleaning. It was never provided.

I’ve spent my career on multiple sides of health care, independent practice, hospital-owned systems, and health insurance, which has made me acutely aware of how incentives and operational norms can quietly shape care. Still, what happened during this visit surprised me.

After I was brought back to the exam room, I was told bitewing X-rays would be taken before the …

Insulin resistance is not a disease: a metabolic reframe

Kevin Whitt

Conditions

February 25, 2026

Type 2 diabetes and metabolic disease are now so common that they are treated as an expected part of modern life rather than as a systemic failure. Roughly 90 percent of American adults are now prediabetic or diabetic, and most are unaware of it. This progression quietly opens the door to heart disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, cancer, neurodegeneration, and other chronic illnesses that are then managed downstream.

We are not …

Understanding Moore’s Law and the exponential growth of technology

Richard A. Lawhern, PhD

Conditions

February 25, 2026

When I was a teenager, practical computers did not yet exist. In 1966, my first exposure to a computer in engineering school was a room-sized mainframe whose fast memory consisted of a foot-tall rotating magnetic disc that could store 8,000 “bytes” (each byte containing eight “bits,” which allow for 256 possible values representing alphabetic letters or numbers).

At the time, we could forget about storing the full text of the King …

From glucose to vascular health: the future of diabetes care

Palma Shaw, MD

Conditions

February 25, 2026

Historically, diabetes management focused on blood glucose control and preventing severe complications such as neuropathy and amputation. Over the past two decades, this limited view has proven insufficient for long-term health. Many now emphasize risk factor management, lifestyle changes, and early screening instead of crisis response.

The vascular health risk of a diabetes surge

Diabetes is an epidemic: In the last decade alone, the number of adults living with the disease globally …

The vascular surgeon shortage: Why amputations are rising

Daniel Torrent, MD

Conditions

February 24, 2026

Steven couldn’t remember when he first noticed the spot on his toe, only that it began as a blister a few weeks earlier. He finally saw his doctor, but only when the entire toe had turned black. His doctor referred him to me, but he missed the appointment because the drive was 90 minutes, and he couldn’t take the day off work.

Two weeks later, half of his foot was dead, …

The shadow ledger: Uncovering the financial cost of nursing turnover

Kristen Cline, BSN, RN

Conditions

February 24, 2026

When I told ProPublica that it was too expensive to protect us, I was naming what every number in this piece confirms. The system made a calculation about what our lives were worth, and it got the math catastrophically wrong.

I have been a nurse for almost 20 years, working in emergency departments, intensive care units, and eventually the back of a helicopter as a flight nurse. I have watched the …

Why death certificates fail to capture the reality of aging

Deon Hayley, MD

Conditions

February 23, 2026

What do old people die from?

Ella passed away last week at age 84. I have cared for her since she was admitted to the nursing home two years ago. Her granddaughter called me wanting to know the cause of death. In old age, the cause of death is often the wrong question, as the end is usually not a single cause but a slow convergence of many.

Ella had a list …

Managing celiac disease: Overcoming the hidden social burden

Kamiah Gibson

Conditions

February 23, 2026

After I got diagnosed with celiac disease when I was 19, I faced a difficult choice every time friends invited me out: I could either stay home, or I could risk getting terribly sick.

I was a college volleyball player at West Virginia University when I started experiencing severe migraines and stomach issues. I could not eat anything without getting sick, which resulted in me losing 40 pounds in just two …

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