I haven’t made it a secret in these posts that I’m a big fan of electronic health records (EHRs). I think they improve patient care, and I think that paper medical charts will eventually go the way of the vinyl LP. (For those of you born after 1980, I’m referring to an archaic music recording medium. Yes, even more archaic than the CD.)
I’ve also written before about the very slow rate of adoption of EHRs by physicians. Well, it turns out hospitals are no better. A study in this week’s
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Screening for Prostate Cancer May Harm More than Help
About 20 years ago a blood test called prostate specific antigen (PSA) was developed with the hope that it would help in the diagnosis of prostate cancer. Since then, countless healthy men have been tested for prostate cancer with a PSA and a digital rectal exam despite the fact that there has never been convincing evidence that diagnosing prostate cancer saves lives.
The reason for the controversy about prostate cancer screening is that prostate cancer is a very slowly growing cancer which us...
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The Challenge of Sobriety
Three weeks ago I wrote about the difficulty of quitting smoking. This week I’m writing about an even harder habit to break – problem drinking.
Our understanding of alcohol use and abuse is evolving. Alcoholism or alcohol abuse is defined as continued alcohol drinking despite negative consequences, whether those negative consequences are to one’s work, relationships or health. Alcohol abuse happens to different people at different quantities of drinking, so the amount of drinking was never t...
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Everyone March to Your Colonoscopy
I don’t know about you, but whenever I think of March, the first thought that springs to mind is National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month.
Patients frequently ask me to be tested for whichever cancer they are particularly anxious about. “Is there a test to make sure I don’t have early ovarian cancer?” “Pancreatic cancer?” “Lymphoma?” I have to explain that for healthy people without any symptoms, there is no test that has been proven to find these malignancies early or save lives by findi...
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