Grandmother Pat LaColla, 82, was lured by the hype—”get in shape without setting foot in a gym”—when she bought a pair of Skechers last year, wincing at the $100 price tag. Toning shoes like those she bought are the newest craze in athletic footwear, projected to grow 500 percent to become a $1.5 billion market this year.
Although the designs vary, toners typically have strongly curved, thickened soles. From the moment …
Are toning shoes safe or effective?
by Kristina Fiore
Jennifer Goodman Linn, 39, has been through five surgeries and six rounds of chemotherapy since 2004, trying to control the sarcoma that keeps growing in her abdomen.
Goodman Linn has what her doctors call a rare form of a rare cancer — an MFH sarcoma, also known as an undifferentiated high grade pleiomorphic sarcoma. It’s remained confined to her retroperitoneal …
Cycling helps this patient with a sarcoma
An excerpt from Treat Me, Not My Age: A Doctor’s Guide to Getting the Best Care as You or a Loved One Gets Older.
by Mark Lachs, MD
Over my twenty-five-year medical career, the route by which people are admitted to the hospital for an overnight stay has subtly evolved in ways that most patients (and even many doctors) may not realize. Specifically, the proportion of patients who …
Tips for patients during an emergency department visit
My father passed away about two weeks ago after battling a brain tumor for some time.
Initially diagnosed with an extensive inoperable mass one and one-half years ago, upon presenting with a focal seizure, he did well with only one medication for seizure control for about ten months. Around Christmas of 2009, however, he landed in the hospital in status epilepticus that took three days to control. After these days of …
Marginal treatments at a high emotional cost from families
We say we exchange words when we meet. What we exchange is souls.
-Minot J. Savage
It was Monday evening. The shelves in the electronics department overflowed with different styles, prices, and brands of headphones, all displayed in sealed plastic cases. I was in the mood to buy but was baffled by the array of options in front of me. This was not going to be as simple as I had thought.
A young …
When patients are willing to share their stories
Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer diagnosed in the United States.
There are three major types: basal cell, squamous cell and melanoma. Of those, basal cell and squamous cell are most common, accounting for about 3.5 million cases in the United States per year. Although, these types typically do not metastasize, they can be quite disfiguring, particularly after resection when they occur on the face. On a population …
How you can avoid skin cancer risk
You probably saw the July press reports: balmy tropical breezes, azure surf, cerebral plaques and tangles, and new criteria for Alzheimer’s.
Who could deny an opportunity to spend some time at the best non-oil-spoiled beaches for those who toil at the benches and bedsides for Alzheimer’s victims — and on taxpayer money yet.
It seems to me like, just as human hip and knee joints and premolars and molars are not preprogrammed …
Why the expansion of Alzheimer’s may not be helpful
If you’re relatively young and healthy, gynecologic cancers probably aren’t on your radar. But they should be.
This year, more than 80,000 women in the United States will get a gynecologic cancer, such as endometrial (a.k.a. uterine), ovarian or cervical cancer. In general, gynecologic cancers occur more frequently in women after menopause, although they can occur in younger women. While all women …
10 cancer signs women shouldn’t ignore
As part of the new health care legislation, the government has instituted Medicare’s Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) in an attempt to motivate health professionals to do the right thing.
According to the legislation, PQRI asks physicians to report how the care they furnish aligns with evidence-based clinical guidelines for a variety of medical conditions, such as diabetes or heart disease. In 2010, physicians who successfully report these measures will receive …
What motivates health care workers is needed to explain health care costs
Should the public be shielded from medical information that can mislead it?
Many argue against direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising, which is omnipresent in print and on the airwaves. Opponents of this practice argue that it promotes the use of expensive medications when patients ask their doctors if the “drug is right for them,” the tag line that appears at the end of every ad. This phrase is the drug company’s limp disclaimer …
DTC advertising is annoying but should it be banned?
I have a lot of diabetes patients and have been an avid user of the thiazolidinediones (TZD) class. There are many reasons to like the TZD’s:
Switching diabetes patients from Avandia to Actos
An excerpt from The Night Shift: Real Life In The Heart of The E.R. ©2010 by Dr. Brian Goldman. Published with permission from HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Fear and Loathing
12:47 a.m.
Two police detectives were waiting for me near the main triage desk; one was a tall male in a sleek black suit, probably in his early forties. He was ruggedly handsome in the manner of Jean-Paul Belmondo, the French …
The Night Shift: Real life in the heart of the ER, an excerpt
For years, we have heard (and I have often said) that an average of 36,000 Americans die from influenza annually.
This figure is based on data from 1990-1999. Now the CDC is telling us that the range of annual deaths is too wide to continue using that single number. Based on a lot more seasons (1976-2007), the average is closer to 24,000 with a range of about 3,300 to …
Prevention is the best influenza protection
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A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com.
by John Tooker, MD, MBA, MACP
The Annals of Internal Medicine recently published an article by Mullan and colleagues on the social mission of medical schools. In the article, medical schools were ranked on their record of educating and training physicians …
ACP: Primary care education and training: Time for change?
The most visible impact of Affordable Care Act is surely the expansion of health insurance coverage to 30 million uninsured Americans, but a lesser known provision in the overhaul will have far-reaching implications as well.
The provision catapults the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) from an obscure agency that produced unenforceable guidelines about screening and preventive services into one whose recommendations directly impact reimbursement.
According to the terms of the new …
Health reform vaults the USPSTF into prominence
I just don’t understand how someone can live in this day and age and deny the effectiveness of scientifically sound medical treatment when dealing with breast cancer. I was completely flummoxed when I came across the in-depth and thoughtful post “A horrifying breast cancer ‘testimonial’ for ‘holistic’ treatment” on Respectful Insolence, written by a surgeon and scientist who uses the pen name Orac.
Like others who came before and surely will come after …
How can anyone deny scientifically sound treatment for breast cancer?
As a neurosurgeon, I encounter a lot of people who are concerned with ruptured brain aneurysms (blood vessel blisters). Ruptured brain aneurysms typically present with severe headache. I am incessantly asked, “When is a headache more than just a headache? When should I go to the hospital?”
A headache is considered to be pain located anywhere in the region of the upper …
When does a headache need to be seen at the hospital?
Social anxiety refers to the fear of being around people due to the threat of embarrassment.
People who are socially anxious frequently freeze and are unable to seek the very company their hearts desire. They may make adaptations: they may decide that they “hate” being around people; they may isolate and play video games; they may absorb themselves in their work, but no matter what they do, this anxiety always exists …
Social anxiety assumptions and their solutions
Here is an unfortunate, but almost daily not-so-secret occurrence in my practice:
I am in the midst of an intricate follow-up visit with a rather complicated patient with diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure. I am feeling as though I am a CIA agent in a rather mission impossible assignment: she is here for lab results, is complaining of low back pain, and presents with an elevated blood pressure of …
Why answering a cell phone during an office visit is a problem
The individual mandate is the single most controversial feature of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Everyone who can afford coverage—unless an undocumented immigrant or exempted on religious grounds—is required to have it or pay a penalty of $695 or 2.5 percent of income.
The rationale is straightforward: without a mandate, many people would wait until they needed care before buying insurance, driving up premiums for those with ongoing coverage, …
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act individual mandate controversy
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