KevinMD.com

July 6, 2026Jul 6, 2026

Marc Stone, MD served as deputy director for safety in the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research's Division of Psychiatry until 2024. Martha Rosenberg: Recently, in the Cato Institute journal Regulation you and co-authors Andrew Mosholder, MD and Tarek…

Marc Stone, MD served as deputy director for safety in the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research’s Division of Psychiatry until 2024.

Martha Rosenberg: Recently, in the Cato Institute journal Regulation you and co-authors Andrew Mosholder, MD and Tarek Hammad, MD wrote that the FDA’s antidepressant warning did not kill American children through discouraging prescriptions as alleged in an earlier story. What did yours and Dr. Hammad’s earlier research on …

Conditions and diseases

The advance care planning conversation nobody starts

Barbara Sparacino, MD

July 6, 2026Jul 6, 2026

We are exquisitely good at managing the aging emergency and strikingly bad at preventing it. That is a system design choice, not a clinical inevitability. Every physician who cares for older adults knows the pattern. A patient we have seen…

We are exquisitely good at managing the aging emergency and strikingly bad at preventing it. That is a system design choice, not a clinical inevitability.

Every physician who cares for older adults knows the pattern. A patient we have seen for years, stable, independent, managing, arrives one day transformed by a single event: a fall, a hospitalization, a stroke, an acute delirium. And in the seventy-two hours that follow, a family …

Conditions and diseases

Should the law force doctors to prescribe on demand?

M. Bennet Broner, PhD

July 6, 2026Jul 6, 2026

When the president announced that Tylenol caused autism (it does not), he commented that leucovorin, a cancer medication, treated the condition. His remark had an outsized impact on the public, despite counter-statements by autism specialists. I can understand the response. What mother-to-be would take the chance, even if untrue, that Tylenol may cause autism? Or if parents have a child with this condition, would they not be willing to try …

Real physician voices, twice a week

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Conditions and diseases

We prescribe antibiotics for sinusitis without a diagnosis

Franklyn R. Gergits, DO, MBA

July 6, 2026Jul 6, 2026

Here is a question I have never been able to get comfortable with: How did we build an entire prescribing system for one of the most common infections in America without ever confirming what we are treating? Acute sinusitis generates…

Acute sinusitis generates more than 30 million patient encounters a year in the United States. Antibiotics are prescribed at 84 to 91 percent of those visits. And at virtually none of them does …

Physician voices

Good doctors leave medicine when integrity costs them

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

July 6, 2026Jul 6, 2026

Medicine tells itself a reassuring story: Excellence is rewarded, integrity is recognized, and systems ultimately support the clinicians who work to make them better. But anyone who has spent a career inside the machinery knows the truth is more complicated.…

Across decades in developmental-behavioral pediatrics, disability advocacy, and hospital leadership, I have watched a quiet, corrosive pattern repeat …

Conditions and diseases

Type 1 diabetes and the tennis match you cannot see

Andrea Hayes, MD

July 6, 2026Jul 6, 2026

When Alexander Zverev lost to Taylor Fritz in the Halle semifinal tennis tournament, he didn't blame his pancreas. He did the professional thing: He admitted Fritz outplayed him. But Zverev also let slip a detail that deserves more than a…

When Alexander Zverev lost to Taylor Fritz in the Halle semifinal tennis tournament, he didn’t blame his pancreas. He did the professional thing: He admitted Fritz outplayed him. But Zverev also let slip a detail that deserves more than a post-match shrug. Before the match, his glucose sensor decided to go rogue. Based on its creative interpretation of his blood sugar, Zverev injected a dose of insulin better suited for …

Conditions and diseases

Xylitol for cavity prevention belongs in schools

Yasemin Mumay, DMD

July 6, 2026Jul 6, 2026

Tooth decay is one of the most common chronic diseases of childhood, yet it is almost entirely preventable. Despite advances in dental care, millions of children continue to experience cavities that affect their ability to eat, sleep, concentrate in school,…

Much of our current approach focuses on treatment rather than prevention. Even when we promote prevention, we often rely on ideal routines that are not consistently achievable for many …

Physician finance

HIPAA compliance for small practices is not paperwork

GetPracticeHelp

July 6, 2026Jul 6, 2026

Most independent practices treat HIPAA as a documentation exercise. The policy binder sits on a shelf, the privacy notice is posted, the staff training certificate is in the file, and the assumption is that the practice is covered. Enforcement patterns over the last several years suggest a different exposure model. The settlements that reach small practices are rarely about the policies that were missing on paper. They are about the …

Conditions and diseases

How social media affects the brain’s survival wiring

Casey Grover, MD

July 6, 2026Jul 6, 2026

We discuss quite a bit in clinical practice about why we have mental health issues, and how a feeling of anxiety often has significant nuance in terms of diagnosis. Let's start with good old-fashioned anxiety. Anxiety is the feeling of…

We discuss quite a bit in clinical practice about why we have mental health issues, and how a feeling of anxiety often has significant nuance in terms of diagnosis. Let’s start with good old-fashioned anxiety. Anxiety is the feeling of being in danger or there being some sort of threat when one is not present, and this comes down to how our brains are wired for survival.

First and foremost, our …

Physician voices

Medicine and metaphysics belong together again

Neal Taub, MD

July 6, 2026Jul 6, 2026

For most of human history, medicine and metaphysics were inseparable. Physicians sought not only to understand the body but to understand the meaning of illness, the purpose of suffering, and the relationship between healer and patient. Healing was more than…

That began to change in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The remarkable successes of scientific medicine, driven by advances …

Conditions and diseases

How drug marketing shapes what your doctor prescribes

Annika Seem

July 6, 2026Jul 6, 2026

In April 2025, Gilead Sciences paid $202 million to settle allegations that it paid kickbacks to doctors through speaker fees and lavish dinners in return for more written prescriptions for their drugs. This is the illegal version that made the…

And the legal version? It may be sitting in your medicine cabinet.

A recent survey found that nearly 1 in 3 Americans aren’t filling their prescriptions simply due …

Conditions and diseases

When diagnosing rare disease falls to the family

Sarah Whaley

July 5, 2026Jul 5, 2026

Medicine tells a clean story about diagnosis. A set of symptoms appears. A clinician evaluates them. Tests are ordered. Patterns emerge. A name is assigned. Uncertainty resolves. That version is comforting because it suggests order: cause, method, resolution. It also…

Our son started entering hospitals at 8 months old.

Not once or twice, but in …

Health policy

How California can stop underage online gambling

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

July 5, 2026Jul 5, 2026

As California voters decide between Xavier Becerra and Steve Hilton for governor, one growing public health concern needs more focus from both: the surge in underage online gambling. Easy access through phones and apps creates risks that could spiral if left unchecked. AB 2617, the Protecting Kids from Online Gambling Act, provides a practical starting point. Advancing, refining, and enforcing solid measures here should be a priority regardless …

Physician voices

The 3 flight-line lessons operating room safety missed

Colin G. Knight, MD

July 5, 2026Jul 5, 2026

Surgery borrowed the checklist from aviation and stopped there. Three more lessons from the flight line, on distraction, automation, and fixation, are still waiting to be picked up. On September 11, 1974, Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 descended toward Charlotte…

Surgery borrowed the checklist from aviation and stopped there. Three more lessons from the flight line, on distraction, automation, and fixation, are still waiting to be picked up.

On September 11, 1974, Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 descended toward Charlotte in light fog. The cockpit voice recorder captured the crew talking about politics and used cars while the DC-9 sank below its assigned altitude. The airplane hit terrain short of the …

Health policy

How the happiest countries protect mental health

Alyssa Sterner

July 5, 2026Jul 5, 2026

Mental health policy has gained increasingly earned attention in the last decade, and policy solutions are needed now more than ever. According to the 2016 Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey, the United States has the second-highest rate of self-reported emotional distress among high-income nations. Among high-earning adults in these countries, those in the U.S. were the most likely to have been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, or other mental health …

Health technology

Your ambient AI scribe consent checkbox is not consent

Erin J. Silvertooth, MD

July 5, 2026Jul 5, 2026

Every ambient AI scribe demo ends the same way. The visit wraps, the note is already written, and you get an evening back. None show the part at the beginning where you must tell the patient a machine is listening,…

Every ambient AI scribe demo ends the same way. The visit wraps, the note is already written, and you get an evening back.

None show the part at the beginning where you must tell the patient a machine is listening, explain what that means, answer questions, and get their agreement before the visit can begin.

That disclosure is not a ten-second formality. It is a conversation, and in psychiatry, it can …

Conditions and diseases

The cataract surgery waste hiding in the trash bin

Zachary Skurski, DO

July 5, 2026Jul 5, 2026

Gowned and gloved, mask in place, surgical technician Savannah Stanford prepares the operating room. She tears open plastic wrapping with a practiced pop and rip. The sound, sharp as a pistol crack, cuts through the silence before the day’s first case. Blue drapes spill over the table; syringes clatter against stainless steel. “A lot of wrappers,” she said. “A lot of plastic. Some things come in multiple plastic wrappers, not …

Physician voices

A medical board complaint that fueled my burnout

Ryan Kaufman, MD

July 5, 2026Jul 5, 2026

My wife worked as a retail store manager for twelve years. We often joked that her customers were one psychiatric hospitalization away from turning into my patients. As my career progressed, our jokes became a disappointing reality. My meetings with insurance reviewers, outpatient clinics, and even hospital administrators referenced “consumers” and “clients.” The issue with the use of the term “provider” becomes more important if our patients are seen as …

Conditions and diseases

The most dangerous part of a hospital discharge

Richard Brown Jr., MBA

July 4, 2026Jul 4, 2026

Everyone celebrates a successful hospital discharge. The patient is medically stable. The paperwork is complete. The prescriptions have been sent. Transportation has been arranged. Another bed becomes available for the next patient who needs care. On paper, the system worked.…

Yet discharge is not the finish line. It is a transition point. For hospitals, discharge often marks the successful completion of an episode of care. For patients and families, it marks …

Conditions and diseases

Radiofrequency ablation and the young back pain patient

Francisco M. Torres, MD & Emory Hubbard

July 4, 2026Jul 4, 2026

I remember my early years in interventional physiatry with a clarity that only comes from repetition. A young patient, often in their twenties or thirties, would walk in with a single, unremarkable complaint: axial low back pain, non-radiating. The exam told a consistent story: pain reproduced with extension and rotation, no radicular findings, and no neurological deficits. Imaging was equally quiet: maybe a mildly bulging disc, some early facet …

Real physician voices, twice a week

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