Originally posted in MedPage Today
by Todd Neale, MedPage Today Staff Writer
Sanofi Pasteur has recalled about 800,000 pediatric doses of its vaccine against pandemic H1N1 influenza because of low potency, the CDC announced, but the agency is not calling for revaccinations.
The recalled doses come from four lots of 0.25-mL prefilled syringes for pediatric use in both 10-packs (lot numbers UT023DA, …
What the H1N1 vaccine recall means for kids
Originally published in MedPage Today
by Emily P. Walker, MedPage Today Washington Correspondent
The notion of a public health insurance plan appears to be evaporating from the Senate’s healthcare reform bill, replaced in part with an expansion of Medicare — an idea that’s meeting resistance from doctor and hospital associations.
A proposal to scrap the public plan to allow people as young …
Why doctors and hospitals oppose expanding Medicare
It’s common knowledge that fewer medical students are entering primary care and that patients are having a hard time finding a primary care doctor. Part of the reason is that insurance companies place little value on much of the work that primary care doctors do.
Even though physicians’ complaints are seen in the medical and lay media, it is rare to see descriptions of a primary care physician’s “typical day” in …
What’s a typical day of a primary care doctor like?
Originally published in MedPage Today
by Todd Neale, MedPage Today Staff Writer
With the amount of research being published in medical journals and presented at meetings, it should not be surprising when a new finding slips by a busy physician.
Nor should it be surprising, then, that some decisions about patient care might be made without benefit of the most recent evidence.
Although experts …
How doctors can stay up to date with current medical information
Originally published in MedPage Today
by Michael Smith, MedPage Today North American Correspondent
Bad boys grow up to be sick men, researchers say.
In a long-running British study of juvenile delinquency in boys, death and disability at age 48 were strongly linked to antisocial behavior in youth, according to Jonathan Shepherd, PhD, of Cardiff University in Wales, and colleagues.
The imbalances in mortality and disability …
Why juvenile delinquency may lead to poor adult health
by Nancy Rappaport, MD
In order to be truly effective in our work, we physicians need to conduct our own personal exploration, take time for introspection, and replenish our personal reserves. Part of our job is to balance the demands of our work (be they finding a cure for cancer, caring for terminally ill patients, solving the problems of healthcare or delivering twins—whatever our calling may be) with caring for ourselves. …
Doctors need to take care of themselves, for their patients’ sake
Originally published in MedPage Today
by Charles Bankhead, MedPage Today Staff Writer
Constipation may represent one of the earliest signs of Parkinson’s disease, preceding the onset of motor symptoms by two decades or more, data from a case-control study suggest.
Patients with Parkinson’s disease were more than twice as likely to report a history of constipation compared with a control population. The …
Is constipation a sign of early Parkinson’s disease?
It’s official. America hates fat people.
Human beings are constantly searching for socially sanctioned reasons to feel superior to others and in 2009, those who are thin feel mighty superior to those who are not. How else could a college dare to make body mass index (BMI) a graduation requirement?
According to James DeBoy, the chair of Lincoln’s Department of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, the point of the new policy is …
Should body mass index (BMI) be used as a college graduation requirement?
Originally published in MedPage Today
by Chris Emery, MedPage Today Contributing Writer
Physicians often misdiagnose bone fractures caused by child abuse as accidental breaks, particularly if the child is male and the doctor is not a pediatrician, a new study found.
Of children who suffered fractures from abuse, about 20% had at least one previous medical visit during which a doctor missed …
How well can doctors diagnose child abuse from bone fractures?
Originally published in MedPage Today
by Crystal Phend, MedPage Today Senior Staff Writer
Gains in life expectancy from lower smoking rates over the next decade will be offset, to some degree, by reductions in life expectancy based on the rise in obesity, researchers estimated.
If obesity and smoking rates had held steady, the average 18-year-old would have seen a 2.98-year increase in …
Does smoking or obesity affect life expectancy more?
Fear is such a powerful emotion, humans will do almost anything to relieve it. The most effective way to control fear is to manage whatever it is we’re afraid of. Night lights against the monsters under the bed; locks on the doors and a handgun under the pillow to fend off intruders; annual mammograms and PSAs to keep us from dying of cancer. Although all these things may relieve fear …
Why the fear of cancer undermines the new mammography guidelines
As the health reform debates continue, I am struck by the lack of attention to what seems to be a critical issue in poor health care delivery.
With the technologizing of medicine (and more recently the hospitalist “movement”), delivery of health care has come to be centralized around acute care hospitals. Over time, patient care has been divided into acute inpatient care and ‘ambulatory’ outpatient care. While transitions of care, hospital-at-home, …
The inpatient, outpatient divide in patient care today
Originally published in HCPLive.com
by Jeff Brown, MD
You might be thinking, “Why should I consider branding or marketing?” And your reasoning might go something like this:
1. As a doctor, I already have a powerful, built-in identity;
2. My practice is full;
3. Even if my practice isn’t full, Congress is in the process of putting 40 million more insured people into the available patient pool over the next few years.
Why it’s important to brand your medical practice
ADVERTISEMENT
by Bruce Goldman
People of a certain age have been known to complain that, while they lucidly recall the details of childhood events, they can’t remember what they ate for breakfast.
As it is with brains, so it may be with immune systems. Older people’s immune responses, while generally somewhat sluggish in revving up after, say, a vaccine against seasonal influenza, seem to retain a knack for fending off the current H1N1 …
Previous influenza exposure can protect against the H1N1 flu
Recently, two groups released new guidelines that may affect breast cancer and cervical screening in women.
The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommended against screening women in their 40s and to screen women every other year starting at age 50. The USPSTF left room for individualized screening, particularly in the presence of risk factors such as family history. Still, it is …
An oncologist takes on the recent breast and cervical cancer screening controversy
Originally posted in MedPage Today
by John Gever, MedPage Today Senior Editor
Almost one-third of doctors in an industry-sponsored survey said they didn’t spend enough time with their diabetic patients and blamed low reimbursement rates for diabetes care, researchers said.
In a survey of 200 primary care physicians and 100 endocrinologists, 32% reported an inability to provide comprehensive diabetes care, Alyssa Pozniak, …
Low pay for diabetes care harms patients
by Felasfa Wodajo, MD
In a recent post, entitled, Why doctors should choose Google Android over the iPhone for medical apps, the author seems to have gone out of his way to make a series of increasingly hyperbolic arguments declaring Motorola Droid superior to the iPhone.
The long trail of negative comments on the site demonstrate that perhaps not all readers were swayed …
iPhone medical apps can be improved by Google Android
Originally published in HCPLive.com
by Alan Berkenwald, MD
The approaching fire storm over the “patient-centered medical home” model reminds me of the destructive powers seen before in HMOs. Once seemingly destined to revolutionize organized medicine, the HMO model nearly destroyed it.
We can learn from past failures. We need to promote best-practice models and make physicians accountable for their actions, both physiologically and …
Specialists should staff the patient centered medical homes, not primary care doctors
Originally published in MedPage Today
by Todd Neale, MedPage Today Staff Writer
As one of the two MedPage Today writers on full-time H1N1 duty since the beginning of the outbreak in April, I feel like I know the issues well enough to help clear up misconceptions when they come up in conversation.
The other day, just such a situation presented itself. An …
Tamiflu kills babies, and other H1N1 flu pandemic misconceptions
by David Rind, MD
A number of the other blogs that have noted the existence of this blog seem to have “Pharma” in their titles in one way or another, and the implication is not that the blogger likes much about Big Pharma.
In the late 1990s, when I was spending much of my clinical time providing HIV care, I was a defender of Pharma on Usenet, at least as it related …
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