health care
retrospectacle | August 15, 2007A fantastic, and open-access, review paper just came out on the subject of surgical solutions to obesity which answered a lot of my questions regarding this growing area of treatment. Written by Kral and Naslund, who are both professors of surgery, it begins with the terse opener "Obesity is very prevalent." Well, in America at least, you can say that again. Obesity is often the result of many different factors, but eventually it becomes clear that our bodies did not evolve in an environment of constant, abundant, and caloric-rich food. Human bodies are designed to want to eat, to love to eat…
retrospectacle | August 1, 2007There's an interesting article up at CNN today regarding families who have "lost" loved ones in mental institutions over the years. One in particular is making a movie about the little sister he thought was gone.
One day in 1957, when Jeff Daly was 6 years old, his little sister, Molly, disappeared.
Jeff Daly's efforts to find his sister, Molly, led to a new Oregon law about records for institutions for the disabled.
Every night at dinner, he would ask his parents the same question, "Where's Molly?"
Every night, he says, he received the same answer: "Stop asking about Molly."
Decades…
revere | July 26, 2007You can't count on defenders of US health care for much, but you can always count on them to allege that in Canada and other "socialized health care" systems there are long waits for elective surgery. Wait times for a hip replacement in Canada have been alleged as long as 6 months, although I don't know if that is generally true or not. Whatever the wait times, most Canadians seem satisfied. From Statistics Canada:
The results for 2005 indicate that waiting for care remains the number one barrier for those having difficulties accessing care. Median waiting times for all specialized services…
revere | July 25, 2007The cliché that when life hands you a lemon, make lemonade wasn't meant to cover the case where a nation's politicians refuse to deal with the lemon that is its health system. There are now a lot of stories in the news media about the catastrophe that is US health care, but few of them get beyond the superficial. So the story of 12 year old Wesley Arnold is typical. Instead of the dismaying and pathetic story it is it is written to be heartwarming:
There's really not much a 12-year-old can do when he finds out his dad has cancer - or is there?
Wesley Arnold decided he was going to help out…
revere | July 16, 2007Many Republicans and most Democrats in Congress seem to agree on at least one thing: President Bush is full of crap. Not about Iraq. Virtually all Republicans disagree with the rest of us on that. No, what they agree on is that the federal government should expand, not deep six, the Children's Health Insurance Program. 7.4 million children were covered at one time or another last year but it will expire on September 30. For 6 months a bipartisan group in the Senate Finance Committee has been crafting a compromise bill to cover the 8 million children in the US with no health insurance at all.…
revere | July 13, 2007Michael Moore, whose movie on US health care, Sicko, is said to be a devastating indictment of said system (haven't seen it yet), had a bit of dust up recently with CNN's health correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. You can see it on the video linked below. Here's the scenario. With Moore as an upcoming guest of Wolf Blitzer (one of the least bright of the low wattage dimbulbs the network barfs up nightly), CNN runs a Gupta "fact check" of the movie which largely confirms Moore's facts but alleges minor discrepancies which Gupta characterizes as "fudging the facts." The odd thing is that Moore is…
revere | June 19, 2007It's a myth that's hard to bust. The one that says the United States, the country that spends more on health care than any other, has the best medical care in the world to go with it. It hasn't been true for a long time. It doesn't. But it is part of the core belief of most Americans. I wonder who benefits most from that falsehood? But to the facts:
As early as 2000, the World Health Organization made the first attempt at ranking all the world's healthcare systems. The U.S. came in 37th out of 190 nations in the provision of healthcare. (France, according to the June 2000 report, was first.)…
retrospectacle | May 25, 2007Surgeons may have a new tool at their disposal to aid in planning surgeries: an interactive "4-dimensional" model of the human body called CAVEman which describes in live-sized detail over 3000 distinct human parts. CAVEman is really just a huge computer image which can be viewed in a booth (giving the image height, width, and depth) and changes over time to reflect age, disease state, etc. This progression of time is the "fourth dimension."
CAVEman has the potential to help patients better understand their diagnosis and treatment by having it visually represented to them in layman's terms.…
retrospectacle | May 15, 2007It really was only a matter of time until a longitudinal study on a massive scale, such as this one in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, came out to back up what common sense told us was unhealthy. That being, that artificial, gross manipulations of diet aren't great for you. In fact, they may just shorten your life span a bit. This study was published online in advance at the end of 2006, but didn't come to my attention until right this minute (its now free online).
The study, a collaboration between researchers in Greece and at Harvard, attempts to evaluate the effects of a low…
terrasig | May 12, 2007Via my colleague, PharmCanuck, comes news of an in-depth radio program on dichloroacetate (DCA) that aired this past Tuesday on CBC's, "The Current." As a reminder to readers who aren't already bored senseless of my discussion of this chemical, DCA is a small molecule freely-available in the public domain that was shown to slow the growth of human lung tumors implanted in rats by researchers at the University of Alberta. I've posted on this issue a number of times and have been well outposted by my surgical oncology blogging colleague, Orac at Respectful Insolence.
(Real Audio segment: 21:…
retrospectacle | March 27, 2007UM Hospital has an excellent cancer facility, and as breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in women, many cases of breast cancer are treated here at UM. However, many post-operative women choose not to go through breast reconstruction. Why?
A study here at UM (Comprehensive Cancer Center) discovered that 44% of surgeons (n = 365) do not refer the majority of their patients to a plastic surgeon for breast reconstruction. Only 24% of surgeons reported referring 3/4 or more of their patients for reconstruction.
Furthermore, less than 20% of women who could qualify for breast…
retrospectacle | March 23, 2007 Sooooo, turns out that pop/soda/Coke *does* rot your teeth. Um, now they listen? Where was this press release during the 1989 school year when a burgeoning nerdlet conducted (not so) scientific examinations into THIS VERY FACT?? Its a conspiracy I tell you!
Interestingly, the high-falutin' eggheads found that root beer products don't corrode teeth as they don't contain the acidic effervescence in carbonated sodas. And while sugared varieties are worse, the diet versions are quite bad for your teeth too.
I wish I had a picture of my old 3-fold cardboard display with my 'Abstract' and '…
retrospectacle | March 22, 2007I've probably had dozens of sinus infections. This is partially related to my genes; I got some good ones, but sinus problems and severe allergies run in my family. I ended up with both, with the result being a cycle of allergies triggering infections. In fact, I've got one now (receding thanks to Zithromax), which got me to thinking about what they were and what caused them.
First, its important to understand the anatomy of human sinus cavities. The term "sinus" is a general one meaning "pocket" or "cavity," but in this case refers to a number of air-filled spaces in the skull (shown in the…
retrospectacle | March 7, 2007In a recent head-to-head test of four fad diets, apparently the Atkins diet resulted in the participants losing the most weight. The Atkins diet relies on the elimination of carbs in your diet, and encourages intake of protein and fats instead. However, there's more to the story:
Women on the low-carb Atkins diet lost more weight than those on three other popular plans, but the dieters on all four programs dropped only modest amounts of weight and regained some of it within a year, a new study shows.
Women ages 20 to 50 lost an average of 10.4 pounds on Atkins during a year-long period,…
retrospectacle | March 2, 2007Well, nothing good thats for sure. But my SciBling Dr. Charles has a interesting (if disgusting) post up on the inner life of a Twinkie.
I was most interested in the notorious "is it a liquid or solid?" filling:
*The Filling - primarily made of shortening (partially hydrogenated vegetable oil and beef fat). Also contains Polysorbate 60, a gooey chemical derived from corn, palm oil, and petroleum that substitutes for cream and eggs at a fraction of the cost. Cellulose gum gives the creme a "creamy" feel. Artificial vanillin is made in petroleum plants, avoiding the labor needed to hand-…
retrospectacle | February 23, 2007
Its that time of the year again---when cute little girls ply you with unhealthy, delicious cookies. But this year, the makers of Girl Scout cookies are cutting out the transfat, which is a solid move. Hopefully they still taste the same, which they should, as I didn't hear mention of removing the crack. Man, I love me some Thin Mints!
"The Girl Scouts have marked their 90th year in the cookie business by getting most of the artificial fat out of all varieties of their iconic treats, which had been under attack by a few health-focused consumer groups.
This year, about half of all Girl Scout…
revere | January 27, 2007Whenever the topic of sick leave comes up, employers are quick to raise the specter of malingering to get out of work. But a recent report on CNN suggests that showing up when sick may be costing plenty, too. "Presenteeism" is not just a financial problem but a public health one particularly germane to influenza:
Practically every workplace has one - the employee who comes to the job aching, coughing and sneezing.
So-called "presenteeism," or going to work when sick, is a persistent problem at more than half of U.S. workplaces and costs U.S. business a whopping $180 billion a year, research…
retrospectacle | January 21, 2007Previously I've blogged about transfat (see this for a summary of the fat), trying to consider whether a ban on the fat in New York was a question of liberty. Also I attempted to highlight just how awful this food-additive really is for your health. Another serious health concern tied to transfat consumption had now been linked to reduced fertility in women seeking to become pregnant.
In the study, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston looked at 18,500 women trying to conceive and found 438 cases of ovulatory problems.
The scientists found that those who took two per…
terrasig | January 17, 2007While I wait for my copy of Dan Hurley's book, "Natural Causes: Death, Lies and Politics in America's Vitamin and Herbal Supplement Industry," it is interesting to read the media reports on his interviews and the responses from the dietary supplement industry.
While the Natural Products Association has simply responded with a measured, educational piece that does not mention Hurley by name, the Council for Responsible Nutrition was all over the wires today dismissing the book as, "not credible."
Some of the most thoughtful discussion today came from CBS News's Public Eye site and a post by…
retrospectacle | January 17, 2007Some things, like Hollywood plotlines and political speeches, come in tidy little packages. But what's more tidy than nature's own package--the egg? The same researchers who brought you Dolly the Sheep (TM) bring you genetically-modified chickens whose eggs (specifically, the whites) carry anti-cancer proteins within them.
"One of the characteristics of lots of medical treatments these days is that they're very expensive.
"The idea of producing the proteins involved in treatments in flocks of laying hens means they can produce in bulk, they can produce cheaply and indeed the raw material for…