Dr. Elaine Schattner's notes on becoming educated as a patient
Dr. Elaine Schattner's notes on becoming educated as a patient
© Elaine Schattner, 2009, 2022 By : Template Sell.
The cover of the November print edition of Wired features large, unnatural-appearing cleavage. Inside and toward the back of the issue, a curious article ties together stem cells and the future of breast reconstruction. It got my attention. The detailed and admittedly interesting piece, by Sharon Begley, describes what’s science or science fiction: first humans, […]
Dr. John Snow, an anesthesiologist and founder of public health, recognized the mode of cholera’s spread more than 150 years ago in London, where he became famous for mandating the closure of the Broad Street Pump. Snow died at the age of 45, of what was said to be apoplexy, old jargon for a stroke.
In 2009, there were 221,226 cholera cases reported and 4,946 cholera deaths in 45 countries, according to the CDC. Based on information put together by the World Health Organization,
This week the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published results of a large study with significant implications for women who consider taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT). The new findings are based on careful examination over 16,000 individuals, part of the larger Women’s Health Initiative, who were randomly assigned to take either a placebo, […]
The 33 Chilean miners – mainly middle-aged and of modest means – zoomed up in high-tech capsules from the deep, would-be tomb where they’d been waiting for 69 days underground…
The amazing and nearly-too-good-to-be true news is that a top-notch team of engineers, doctors including the NASA/Johnson Space Center Deputy
Last October, the U.S. Senate (on 10/13/09) and House (retroactively, on 10/28/09) voted to support the designation of October 13, 2009, as a National Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day. The point was to draw public attention to the distinct needs of metastatic BC patients: women who live every day with this condition but, for the most part, are not heralded in pink.
Expertise can make a huge difference in clinical outcomes.
Over 400 Nigerian children have died from lead poisoning this year…lead poisoning is sometimes called plumbism, stemming from plumbum, the Latin term for lead (Pb, atomic number 82), a metal used by plumber. A rarer term is Saturnism, based on the metal’s association with that planet and ancient Roman god.
I was afraid to get a mammogram because I didn’t want to learn I had cancer….I feared having a “false positive,” and undergoing multiple tests to evaluate abnormal images that would turn out to be nothing…I didn’t have time for all that…
The Swedish study with its positive findings should be scrutinized, yes, but no more or less than the other papers on the same subject that have been highlighted, selectively, in the media. How journalists cover mammography studies, and that they do so with an open mind, matters a lot.
If physicians’ potential profit motives cloud the mammography debate, as the authors contend, that doesn’t mean that mammography is ineffective. Rather it signifies that doctors and scientists should analyze data and make clinical decisions in the absence of financial or other conflicts of interest.
What is comparative effectiveness research and why does it matter? The idea, basically, is to inform medical decisions with relevant data derived from well-designed clinical trials. This sort of research will provide the foundation for evidence-based medicine (EBM).
I’d say the opposite is true: It’s precisely because there are effective treatments for early-stage disease that it’s worth finding breast cancer early. Otherwise, what would be the point?
Metastatic breast cancer is quite costly to treat and, even with some available targeted therapies, remains
A question central to today’s discussion – which does at least acknowledge the decline in breast cancer mortality – is the extent to which mammography is responsible for this trend, as opposed to other factors such as increased awareness about cancer, better cancer treatments and other variables.
“This caught my interest because it doesn’t diminish physicians’ autonomy,” Blumenthal said. It just enables them to make decisions for their patients in the context of additional, current information. “The end goal is not to adopt technology, but to improve care.”
Unabashedly, Sacks details his own mishaps in recognizing people he’s met and finding his way; it’s a life-long, inherited affliction that requires he remember individuals by things other than
“You can get discomboobulated in this place,” a NYC police officer told me today.
This morning, some 25,000 or so men, women and children converged on Central Park for the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s 20th annual Race for the Cure. It was my first time witnessing the event:
In some ways this seems like a pro-active, well-intentioned policy that could save lives. On the other hand, as discussed in the NEJM piece, the new screening policy raises a host of challenging issues:
* how will colleges inform minor players’ parents about results?
* how will the schools handle players’ privacy?…
For two days I’ve been traveling on a short road-trip with my family in Upstate New York. As far as this turning to a medical lesson, all I can say is that for the first time in my life I witnessed, first-hand, the vaguely digital, elongate and eponymous geography of the fine Finger Lakes…
As a patient who’s been there, under anesthesia more times than I care to remember, I can’t imagine anything much worse than knowing while I’m unconscious my doctor might be on-line or even just dictating tweets instead of concentrating on me, my arteries and veins and spine and…
…I think the answer is inherent in the goal of being engaged, and that has to do with the concept of patient autonomy – what’s essentially the capacity of a person to live and make decisions according to one’s own set of knowledge, goals and values.
Autonomy in medicine, which borders on the empowerment idea, can be an aim in itself, and therefore valuable regardless of any measured outcome.
