Medicine
mikethemadbiologist | December 3, 2009It's between fifteen to twenty one cents of every dollar spent by hospitals. A recent study examined the costs of antibiotic resistant infections in hospitals. The main finding (italics mine):
The total attributable hospital and societal cost ranges for ARI in the expanded sample were as follows: hospital, $3.4-$5.4 million; mortality, $7.0-$9.2 million; lost productivity, $162,624-$322,707; and total, $10.7-$15.0 million. The total medical cost, if distributed to all sample patients, added $2512-$3929 (16.8%-26.3%) to the mean unadjusted hospital cost for all sample patients.
(An aside:…
bioephemera | December 3, 2009Ever wonder what the pilot for "Gray's Anatomy:Uncanny Valley" would be like? Well, you're in luck!
If It Weren't For You (I'd Be Sued) from Justine Cooper on Vimeo.
Yes, that was a . . .
music video in which an unseen clinician serenades the mannequins used in medical simulation with an infectious rock ballad. Emoting on the depth of their relationship, the doctor or nurse apologizes to the mannequins for what they go through in the name of patient safety and the improvement of clinical skills, crooning the chorus "If it weren't for you, I'd be sued."
It turns out the video is just part of…
j7uy5 | December 2, 2009This post is about a journal article that describes mortality rates in
populations of persons with eating disorders. It is sort of
about that. The article is in the APA green journal, which is not
openly accessible. Only the abstract is free. Usually I
don't write about closed-access articles. But this is different,
because I am not going to do a traditional post about a peer-reviewed
article. You don't need to have access to the whole article to
get the point.
href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/166/12/1342">Increased
Mortality in Bulimia Nervosa and Other…
clock | December 1, 2009There are 30 new articles in PLoS ONE published yesterday and another 23 today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Systematic Differences in Impact across Publication Tracks at PNAS:
Citation data can be used to evaluate the editorial policies and procedures of scientific journals.…
oracknows | November 30, 2009A couple of years ago, fellow ScienceBlogger Mark Hoofnagle over at Denialism Blog coined a most excellent term to describe all manners of pseuodscience, quackery, and crankery. The term, "crank magnetism," describes the tendency of cranks not to mind it when they see crankery in others. More specifically, it describes how cranks of one variety (for instance, HIV/AIDS denialists, will be attracted to another form of crankery (for instance, anti-vaccinationism or the 9/11 Truth movement) because, as Mark put it, cranks and pseudoscientists see themselves as iconoclasts, brave mavericks opposed…
clock | November 28, 2009
Continuing with the introductions to the sessions on the Program, here is what will happen on Saturday, January 16th at 2 - 3:05pm:
A. Citizen Science and Students - Sandra Porter, Tara Richerson (science_goddess), and Antony Williams
Description: Students are a great resource for projects that require large numbers of volunteers. We will discuss examples of projects that combine student learning with authentic research and the power of blogs to connect students with projects. Discuss here.
B. Medicine 2.0 and Science 2.0--where do they intersect? - Walter Jessen
Description: Medicine 2.0…
palmd | November 28, 2009I have in front of me a weathered copy of Cecil's Textbook of Medicine from 1947. It belonged to my father, who graduated from medical school in the 1940s. Even then, it was known that pneumoccus, a common bacterium, can live harmlessly in the nose and throat and only sometimes causes disease. Pneumoccocal disease was and is still a leading cause of disease and death*, killing perhaps a million children per year. It causes ear and sinus infections, but also meningitis, and is the most common cause of pneumonia. In the past it was referred to as "the captain of the men of death" for it's…
terrasig | November 26, 2009
Two weeks ago, Canadian Skeptics United published on their Skeptic North site a piece by an Ontario pharmacist criticizing a proposal by the province to grant limited prescribing rights to naturopaths. The essay, which was reprinted in the National Post on Tuesday, outlines the intellectual and practical conundrum presented by allowing those with education that diverges from science-based practices to prescribe drugs.
The naturopath lobby has come out in force and appears to be relatively unopposed in the 54 comments that follow, primarily because the NP closes comments 24 hours after online…
oracknows | November 24, 2009Remember how I nominated a truly execrable local news report about Desiree Jennings as a serious contender for the worst reporting of the year, perhaps even of the decade? It had everything, and I seriously doubted that anything would challenge it for credulous supremacy any time soon.
How wrong I was. Check out this video:
Then read these stories:
'I screamed, but there was nothing to hear': Man trapped in 23-year 'coma' reveals horror of being unable to tell doctors he was conscious
Trapped 'coma' man: How was he misdiagnosed?
What a compelling story! Or is it? Let's find out by first…
dmunger | November 24, 2009Recently a woman had her sick leave benefits based on a diagnosis of clinical depression terminated because of a few pictures she posted on her Facebook page showing her smiling at a birthday party and enjoying a trip to the beach. Was this a fair assessment of her medical condition? Probably not--people with clinical depression can have moments of genuine joy or elation, and even sad people can fake a smile for a photo.
But regardless of whether a few photos posted online are sufficient evidence for a medical diagnosis, there is a larger question: Does a person's online persona match up to…
palmd | November 24, 2009One of the most frightening symptoms of advanced cancer is "cachexia", or severe, unintentional weight-loss and wasting. It's a terrible prognostic sign, and the only truly effective treatment is removal of the cancer. Treatment of this syndrome has the potential to improve quality of life in patients with advanced cancers. Various types of medications, including antidepressants, hormones, and cannabis derivatives have been tried with little effect. Treating the symptoms of incurable cancers is difficult and although we're pretty good at it, we sometimes fail. Cannabis seems a plausible…
pharyngula | November 24, 2009This excellent article in the Chicago Tribune documents the abuses of science by quacks. Legitimate researchers identify certain properties of autism — markers for inflammation in the brain, for instance, or correlations with testosterone — and write up papers that even go out of their way to explain how their observations are interesting, but do not necessarily lead to therapies, and what do you think the medical frauds do? They use them to justify useless or dangerous treatments like injections of testosterone inhibitors or anti-inflammatory agents or loading up patients with intravenous…
palmd | November 19, 2009In November, the citizens of my home state approved a medical marijuana law. The very next day, I started getting calls from patients (often not may own) asking how they could get it. I'm not fan of draconian laws that imprison people for getting stoned, but when it comes to medical interventions (rather than legal ones) I have an informed opinion. The new law allows Michigan residents to grow weed for their own consumption if they have approval. The law does not allow doctors to prescribe marijuana, rather it allows them to certify that the patient has a condition designated by statue as…
palmd | November 19, 2009Basing medical practice on science helps us avoid the pitfalls of relying on our own reasoning and experience. If I want to start a patient on a new medicine, the individual characteristics of the patient are important (Is the drug meant for their condition? Will it interact with other drugs they are on? Are they allergic to it? Can they tolerate it?) but at least as important is how the drug performs when used on large numbers of people. This attenuates the large differences that can be seen among individuals, and allows us to predict how in general the drug will act.
One of the metrics…
revere | November 19, 2009The Director of Loyola University Medical Center's clinical microbiology laboratory is reported as saying that rapid flu tests are a public health risk. Here's some of what he said and then my explanation as to why it is misleading or just plain wrong:
Rapid influenza diagnostic tests used in doctors' offices, hospitals and medical laboratories to detect H1N1 are virtually useless and could pose a significant danger to public health, according to a Loyola University Medical Center researcher.
"At Loyola, we determined four years ago that the rapid tests for influenza detected only 50 percent…
mikethemadbiologist | November 18, 2009Friday, the NY Times described the relatively paltry efforts in cancer prevention, compared to those for heart disease. Not that researchers haven't been busy figuring out how to prevent various cancers:
Then, in 1999, he had a chance to do another breast cancer prevention trial, this time of an osteoporosis drug, raloxifene, or Evista, which did not have the cancer drug taint. It was to be compared with tamoxifen.
The $110 million study, involving 19,000 women, ended in 2006. The two drugs were found to be equally effective in preventing breast cancer, but with raloxifene there was no…
oracknows | November 18, 2009"Early detection saves lives."
Remember how I started a post a year and a half ago saying just this? I did it because that is the default assumption and has been so for quite a while. It's an eminently reasonable-sounding concept that just makes sense. As I pointed out a year and a half ago, though, the question of the benefits of the early detection of cancer is more complicated than you think. Indeed, I've written several posts since then on the topic of mammography and breast cancer, the most recent of which I posted just last week. As studies have been released and my thinking on…
clock | November 16, 2009
As you know you can see everyone who's registered for the conference, but I highlight 4-6 participants every day as this may be an easier way for you to digest the list. You can also look at the Program so see who is doing what.
Stacy Baker has changed schools since last year, but she's coming back nonetheless, again with eight of her students. As you may remember, her session on the use of the Web in middle/high science classroom from the perspective of the Facebook generation was the Big Hit of ScienceOnline09. Miss Baker has developed a classroom website and blog, she tweets and also…
mikethemadbiologist | November 16, 2009I have no doubt that the Catholic ecclesiarchy supports the Stupak-Mills amendment out of a genuine desire to regulate vaginaspreserve the fetus, which they believe is a person. But the financial incentives for Catholic Church-owned hospital systems are enormous:
...consider that there are 60 some Catholic-affiliated hospital systems in all 50 states -- representing 13 percent of the nation's entire in-patient health care system. That's easily tens of billions of dollars flowing through the business arm of the Catholic church that continues to grow through mergers with private and other…
oracknows | November 16, 2009The New York Times has been periodically running a series about the "40 years' war" on cancer, with most articles by Gina Kolata. I've touched on this series before, liking some parts of it, while others not so much. In particular, I criticized an article one article that I thought to be so misguided about how the NIH grant system leads researchers to "play it safe" and how we could cure cancer if we could just fund "riskier" research that I had to write an extended screed about the misconceptions in the article. The latest installment, Medicines to Deter Some Cancers Are Not Taken, also by…