Medical mistakes have been receiving a lot of attention in the last few years. The number of patients injured due to medical mistakes, especially in hospitals, has caused pressure at every level of health care to reexamine how patients can be protected. Many of these error prevention measures are technical -- computerized drug interaction checking, pharmacy algorithms to prevent dispensing medications to which the patient is allergic, redundant verification of critical pieces of information li...
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Steroids Help for Bell’s Palsy, Antivirals Don’t
Bell's palsy is a fairly common condition that causes the sudden paralysis of half of the face. Effected people can't fully close the effected eye and have an asymmetric smile, since only one side of the mouth moves well. The cause is unknown and has always assumed to be viral. The symptoms slowly resolve over a few months.
The accepted treatment has always been steroids and acyclovir (an anti-viral medication), each for about 10 days. More
Statins Have Long-Lasting Benefits
The West of Scotland Study was a landmark in preventive medicine. It was published in the early 1990s and was the first study to definitively show that statins (a family of cholesterol-lowering medicines) could prevent a first heart attack in people with high cholesterol. It randomized over 6,000 middle-aged men with high cholesterol who had never had a heart attack to either pravastatin (Pravachol) or placebo. In about 5 years of follow up, pravastatin clearly prevented heart attacks and sav...
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Chronic Lyme Disease Still on the Fiction Bookshelf
At any given time thousands of people feel unwell and are dissatisfied with the diagnoses offered them by their doctors. They struggle to understand their illness and frequently form patient groups for mutual support. Every few years a new diagnosis captures their attention and becomes the latest vogue illness, usually without any scientific evidence. Even worse, unscrupulous doctors latch on to these fad diagnoses to promise cures to patients who are desperate for relief. A few years ago th...
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