Gene Uzawa Dorio is an internal medicine physician who blogs at SCV Physician Report.
I have been a physician for over forty years, with an office practice and providing geriatric house calls in our community. Now, I am also a caregiver.
My partner, Robin, was diagnosed with a rare malignancy in November 2022, known as anaplastic thyroid cancer. She was given six months to live.
Surgery to remove what they could took 9 1/2 hours, and seven weeks of subsequent radiation and chemotherapy helped slow it …
When you are older, you are considered a threat to other drivers. Reflexes are dampened, muscle responses are sluggish, cataracts obscure vision, and inflexible eye lenses slow focus.
Cars are made to drive fast, and many whippersnappers navigate the streets as if they are at the Indianapolis 500. How many times have you been tailgated and honked at from behind when traveling at the posted speed limit?
And should there be an …
Nothing could have prepared me better for my career and life than playing team sports growing up.
It’s hard to imagine someone now in their 70s pitching a fastball 100 miles per hour, bench pressing almost 400 pounds, and running the 100-yard dash in 9.8 seconds. These skills allowed me to play baseball until I was 26 and then move on to medical school.
Professional athletes pride themselves on their speed and …
For decades, many patients, their children, and grandkids have strived to answer, “What is cancer?” As a doctor and scientist, over the past 16 months, I have learned the latest cancer information from experts at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles and MD Anderson in Houston. With that, I have also become aware some patients are either denied state-of-the-art care or just kept in the dark about potential treatment because it is …
My grandfather was forced to immigrate from Japan to Canada in 1910. As I learned, he owned many sake factories in Japan, which were nationalized in a government takeover of certain businesses. Governments do that. The family was heavily burdened, and the government pressured them to move across the Pacific.
Over the next century, our family prospered under the Canadian government, with some family members coming to the United States.
One reflection …
I opened my internal medicine practice almost four decades ago to serve a growing urban community. I gravitated toward the underserved geriatric population as they were vulnerable patients and eventually moved into the bygone realm of house calls for home-bound seniors.
This enhanced my learning curve, as house calls are not taught in medical school or residency yet bridge the continuity gap between hospitalization and patients returning home after an acute …
Forty years ago when I first started in medicine, there were no CT scans or MRIs. In the next forty years, I foresee cancer as an illness of the past, and life expectancy will be over one hundred years old.
Scientific advancements will push medicine ahead, improving quality of life in increments, slowly taking two steps forward and one step back. The pandemic caused us to take one step back, but …
Call it what you want: nursing home, skilled nursing facility, rehab center, convalescent home, or post-acute care. They are all the same and a common destination should you survive a recent hospitalization.
But they all have an existing reputation and can ultimately diminish the dignity of older adults. Never in my four decades of practice has anyone ever said, “Please, Dr. Dorio, send me to a nursing home!”
As a geriatric physician, …
The practice of medicine has been significantly enhanced by advancing technology. However, even with four years of medical school and an MD degree, this only provides the foundation for what is needed to be a good doctor. A critically important skill is the ability to make sound medical decisions.
This is why there is a hierarchy in training that begins after medical school, progressing through internship, residency, fellowship, and eventually leading …
As a medical doctor, I have peered into the lives of many patients who have unique experiences.
When I started practice 40 years ago, some of my patients had parents who lived during the Civil War; a few fought in the Spanish-American War, and more recently, at the Millennium, several of my centenarians could say they lived in three centuries!
One of my first patients in Santa Clarita was a gentleman who …
Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury and I attended Los Angeles High School, separated by 15 years. He once spoke there and quelled the rumor that he failed English: “I got a C!”
His writings extend beyond the realm of reality into a dimension of creativity and hope. Oftentimes, we think mankind has reached the limits of understanding, but in reality, there are things we don’t know regarding the eternity of outer …
In the future, I foresee a world without pandemics, cancer becoming a thing of the past, and advancements that enable bionic adaptations to our bodies, leading to a life expectancy of easily over one hundred years.
While some of these advancements may seem distant, we are on the cusp of making them a reality within the next few decades. However, it’s essential to question whether human greed could hinder technological progress, …
On the first day of class, one of my medical school professors limped in, stopped, and then proceeded to teach us specifically what ailment a patient has that causes their limp.
He went on to explain, “By the time you finish this didactic course in orthopedics, you will be able to diagnose a patient’s problem just by watching them walk!”
At the beginning of each class, the professor would limp in and …
There is an underbelly to every profession, and medicine is no different.
We know physicians are the “best and the brightest,” yet there is a secret lurking in hospitals, clinics, and academic institutes that poses a threat to public safety.
You might expect a cardiac or neurosurgeon to be blessed with great skills and hand-eye coordination. I have worked with doctors who are not only deft with a scalpel, but who can …
Four years ago, as chairman of the hospital ethics committee, I was asked to convene an emergency meeting brought by a distraught family as medical decisions had to be made for their ill loved one. The hospital, HMO lawyers, the family, three adult children, and their mother were at the meeting.
The father had arrived at the hospital unconscious and was admitted to the intensive care unit, where medical care was …
Harriet broke her hip and needed surgery. Post-operatively, the hospital was swift to push her out the door, while Medicare controlled the financial strings. Instead of going home, she went to a nursing home.
During the pandemic, she never saw her family in person, then contracted COVID-19 and died alone.
For over 30 years, I have visited patients in nursing homes, and during this time saw older adults shepherded by the health …
A pediatrician decides a struggling teen with mental illness needs hospitalization to neutralize psychologic demons impacting their personal and social life.
A workers’ compensation doctor requests a neck MRI in a powerline worker with growing right arm numbness and weakness to search for potential paralyzing nerve impingement.
An orthopedist orders special testing to determine if an elder patient with right hip pain which limits walking and driving might need surgery to improve …
I had never heard the term “throughput” before a meeting at our hospital two years ago. It was used to discuss how the emergency department (ED) could yield greater profits by faster patient turnover. Coordinating various duties (including intake, admitting, and cleaning staff; lab and radiology; nurses and doctors) patients could be shuttled into and out of the ED earning the hospital $2 million more per year.
This strategy was implemented …
Hospitals have always served as a lifeline to survival. Whether from pneumonia, heart attack, stroke, or trauma, they have been a community safeguard between life and death.
Today, a cost of care has been added to the patient treatment discussion forcing medical decision-making to look closely at expense. Financial considerations have come to the forefront as preservation of resources will be important to national health care. This can be a threat …
Born in Canada, our mother came to the United States after World War II and blended into the Greatest Generation. Raising a family in the second half of the 20th century saw her contribute to a thriving American society then maintain retirement health on Medicare. But in her early 90s, this tranquility was threatened when her HMO hospital tried to kill her.
She went to the emergency room with symptoms of …
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