Emily Oster has a book coming out entitled Take Back Your Pregnancy. In preparation for the book launch, as most authors do, she wrote a nice piece in the Wall Street Journal about decision-making, risks, and how some of what OB/GYNs recommend during pregnancy isn’t always evidence based.
In particular, she mentions listeria, a bacteria that is a food borne illness with potentially devastating outcomes during pregnancy. Osher quotes the risk …
Osphena (ospemifene) is an oral medication recently approved by the FDA for painful sex (dyspareunia) due to vaginal dryness for menopausal women. As typically happens when a new drug gets FDA approval the PR machine for the company goes into overdrive flooding the media with press releases. Since sex sells, well, Osphena received a fair amount of air time and print space. Headlines like FDA-Approved “Female” Viagra might lead someone to believe that Osphena is freaking amazing. Which, …
With Governor Rick Perry signing the restrictive Texas abortion bill into law many news organizations have shed light on traveling to Mexico for abortion and there has been much talk about the “Mexican abortion pill.”
The medication that people typically call the Mexican abortion pill is misoprostol, marketed under the trade name Cytotec. It is a prostaglandin analogue and is used for prevention of stomach ulcers. It also has many uses in OB/GYN …
Routine screening blood tests for herpes are not recommended by the Centers for Disease Control. When I say routine screening I mean a scenario such as, “I want to get checked for everything, ok?”
Blood tests for herpes do have a place in specific clinical situations, but that’s for another post.
But say you did get a herpes blood test (even though it’s not recommended many people seem to get it done) …
The fact that cunnilingus increases a man’s risk of developing oral cancer has been all over the Internet recently with Michael Douglas’ disclosure that he had an HPV-positive tumor.
To recap: some strains of human papilloma virus (HPV) are oncogenic, meaning they induce changes in a cell’s DNA that can lead to cancer. The same strains of HPV that are oncogenic in the genital tract for women, causing both cervical cancer …
The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) issued a recently regarding legislative interference and health care decisions. Specifically, the release states that: “Government should not interfere with the patient-physician relationship without a substantial public health justification.”
The full Statement of Policy was approved by ACOG’s Executive Board. Some recent examples of government interference include mandatory age requirements for Plan B, transvaginal ultrasounds before abortion, prohibiting doctors from asking about firearms, …
Henry Morgentaler died recently. He was the man who almost single handedly brought down the Canadian abortion law. Sickened by what was happening in filthy, clandestine clinics he began doing safe, albeit illegal, procedures in his office. He was arrested but always maintained that a jury would never find him guilty. And he was right.
Years later when I was in medical school and then residency I marveled at …
The General Medical Council in Britain released new guidelines on social media for medicine. Essentially, if you are a doctor in the United Kingdom the GMC does not believe that you should be able to tweet/blog/post anonymously if you self-identify as a physician. The exact wording is as follows:
“If you identify yourself as a doctor in publicly accessible social media, you should also identify yourself by name. Any material written by …
Kangaroo care (KC) is the practice of skin-to-skin contact with a premature baby and parent. In low and middle-income countries, where there are fewer medical resources, Kangaroo care has been shown to reduce mortality among premature babies and shorten the length of hospital stay.
Kangaroo care is also very beneficial in high-income countries even in the midst of extremely high-tech care.
Holding a premature baby skin-to-skin:
From time to time I get asked about cleanses. What is typically meant by a “cleanse” is only drinking a juice concoction for several days. Some cleanses add things like cider vinegar, cayenne pepper, or other supposedly “healthy” substances.
The most common reasons to “cleanse” that I hear from people who drink these things include:
Let’s start with weight loss. Cleanses are very low calorie and don’t contain protein …
In a word, no (unless you have cancer). So, let’s take cancer out of the picture and discuss hysterectomy for non-cancerous (benign) reasons.
First of all. A hysterectomy (removing the uterus) can be done via one of the 4 methods:
1. Vaginal, a small incision at the top of the vagina and the uterus is removed entirely through the vagina without any incision on the abdomen.
2. Laparoscopic surgery, where incisions are made …
The story of the surrogate offered $10,000 to have an abortion by the couple who were paying her to carry their pregnancy has been making the rounds. If you don’t know the details, let me catch you up
A divorced friend of mine who recently started dating was shocked to find that the complete absence of female pubic hair seemed to be an expectation among her potential partners. I’m not surprised, when I was in the dating pool a couple of years back there were men who actually listed full clamscaping required among the personal attributes they were seeking in a girlfriend (and here I was looking for …
I am sure Oprah had spectacular ratings for her Lance Armstrong interview and so, in the spirit of truth-telling, I have another mea culpa show for Ms. Winfrey to consider: vaccine safety.
Until Jenny McCarthy got major air time the link between vaccines and autism was relatively fringe. But with Oprah in September of 2007 McCarthy, and by extension Andrew Wakefield, the erroneous link …
America consumes 80% of the world opioid supply (99% of the world hydrocodone supply), but has about 5% of the world’s population. If you don’t think America has some kind of opioid problem, then move along because this rational, evidence-based, experience-laden way in which I’m going to discuss opioid use and misuse will not interest you.
To combat our opioidification the Read more…
My membranes ruptured at 22 weeks during my pregnancy. It was the evening of July 5th, 2003. Two days later my first son was born and died. The task before me was bed rest and squeeze as many more days (hopefully weeks) out of the pregnancy as possible to save my other two sons. It was, to put it mildly, a very low time.
To pass the hours I read, slept, …
A common rebuttal to any discussion about of gun control is motor vehicle accident deaths. We don’t blame the car, we blame the driver. Regardless of the object’s intent (the car is for transportation and the gun is shoot people, targets, game, and skeet), neither a car nor a gun can kill or maim without human touch.
And I agree. Comparing guns and cars is fair, after all they kill about …
The Newtown school shooting. It’s a tragedy that a mass shooting requires a qualifier, but this is America so we need to be specific as not to be confused with Aurora, Columbine, Arizona, or Virginia Tech. Colorado massacres require a site specific qualifier.
There are 2 common elements with all these massacres: mental illness and guns (not hunting rifles, but firearms designed to cause maximin human carnage in the shortest amount …
Mothers who deliver prematurely face serious health risks that are often neglected when we talk about prematurity. Today, in honor of Savita Halappanavar’s death from sepsis that was a direct result of her previable premature delivery, I would like to let the world in on the physical perils faced by mothers who deliver prematurely.
Many of us have infections. We rupture our membranes prematurely, and for 40% of us …
When I was the director of undergraduate medical education for OB/GYN at a Midwestern university (a state school), it came to my attention that a medical student was refusing to have anything to do with contraception as it was against her religion.
So I spoke with her. I explained that over the course of her career she would undoubtedly see people from …
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