Ah, the joys of January 2! Bleary eyed employees return to work, holiday cards fill waste baskets, and everyone contracts influenza.
This year’s flu season has started earlier than expected and has already reached high numbers of flu cases in 36 states. California is not one of them, but that likely means we’re a couple of weeks behind the East Coast, not that we’ll be spared. In fact, this week I saw my first patient of the season who had a positive test for the flu, and More
Retrievable Stents Offer Improved Outcomes for Stroke Patients
There are few illnesses as disabling as a stroke. A stroke is the cessation of blood flow to part of the brain. It can cause sudden difficulty speaking, difficulty moving a limb, facial drooping, or the loss of vision in a fragment of the field of view. In many stroke patients the loss of function never improves and the patients remain permanently disabled.
Before the 1980s there was no effective treatment for this devastating illness. Stroke patients were simply observed and given physic...
More
Brain Dysfunction Persists Long After a Serious Illness
A sudden life-threatening illness is every family’s nightmare. A loved-one suddenly develops an overwhelming infection or is in a terrible accident. She is rushed to the intensive care unit (ICU) and is put on a ventilator (breathing machine). Many medications are started or she is rushed to surgery for her traumatic injuries. To the family, the first day or two is a blur of life-saving treatments, painfully waiting for the next update. The patient is on strong sedatives and non-communicativ...
More
Healthcare That You Should Avoid, part 2
16% of all spending in the US is on healthcare. About half of that is spent by federal, state, and local governments, and the other half is spent by the private sector. In 1970 about 7% of all spending was for healthcare. Total annual spending on healthcare per person has increased from less than $1,000 in 1970 to about $8,000 now.
Defenders of our current healthcare spending are q...
More
Curing Clostridium difficile with, um, Feces
[This post is grosser than most. You may not want to read it over lunch.]
Last year I warned that Clostridium difficile (C. dif.) infections are becoming more common.
More
C. dif. is a bacterium that infects the colon causing severe, sometimes life-threatening, diarrhea. C. dif. infection is frequently a complication of antibiotic use. Antibiotics can kill...
On the Passage of Time
The sun will come up tomorrow.
-- Little Orphan Annie
But in a trillion tomorrows the sun will become a red giant and extinguish all life on earth. -- astronomers
If you’re reading this...Flu Season Hits Earlier than in Recent Years
This year’s flu season seems to be starting earlier than usual and is getting more intense by the week. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports in its weekly summary of flu surveillance that flu cases are increasing across the country. California still is showing only sporadic flu activity, but 8 other states report widespread activity and 15 others report regional activity.
The More
Primary Care Doctors Want a Raise from Medicare
Imagine that you manufacture and sell ottomans. You are very proud of the excellent ottomans that you make. You trained for many years at great expense to become an expert ottoman maker. But as your career progresses, you find yourself generally dissatisfied with how many ottomans you have to make every day to make a living, and you think that your ottomans are worth more than you’re getting paid for them.
But what really annoys you are coffee table makers. They get a lot higher prices for coff...
More
Armadillos Transmit Leprosy to Humans
Command the children of Israel that they put out of the camp every leper, and every one that hath an issue, and whosoever is unclean by a dead armadillo. -- A horrible misquote of Numbers 5:2
Leprosy, now also called Hansen’s disease, is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium leprae, a cousin of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. Leprosy causes a rash and nerve damage that causes skin numbness. Before the age of antibiotics patients were isolated in...Study Linking Vaccines to Autism not Just Wrong, Intentionally Fraudulent
In 1998 the British medical journal Lancet published a study led by Dr. Andrew Wakefield that changed public opinion about vaccination ever since. The study described twelve children with autism and colitis whose symptoms began shortly after they received the MMR vaccine. Public panic was immediate and sustained. Vaccination rates plummeted in England and measles incidence climbed thereafter. Measles is now endemic in England, meaning that there are enough unvaccinated children that the infectio...
More