Pertussis or whooping cough is a bacterial respiratory disease marked by a runny nose for a week or two followed by a severe persistent cough. In adults it rarely causes severe illness, and usually resolves even without treatment, but in infants the disease can be life-threatening.
California is currently experiencing a whooping cough epidemic. Over 4,000 cases have been reported this year, the most since 1955. Nine have died, all babies. Three quarters of the patients that required hospita...
More
Is There a Patient Educator in the House?
… or, An Angioplasty Also Won’t Make You Taller
Over a million coronary angioplasties are performed in the US each year. In this procedure a thin tube is threaded into a narrowed coronary artery. Through this tube a balloon is inflated to open the narrowed artery, and then a stent (a metal mesh tube) is placed to keep the newly expanded artery open.
Some large well-designed studies in the last few years have taught us that angioplasty is a life-saving procedure in the setting of an a...
More
Salmonella Sunny Side Up
This summer a Salmonella outbreak traced to contaminated eggs has sickened over 1,000 people and led to the recall of over 500 million eggs.
Eggs are particularly susceptible to Salmonella contamination. The outsides of egg shells can be contaminated by bacteria if they come into contact with chicken droppings or with dirt. That’s why you should discard cracked or dirty eggs. The shell itself is fairly resistant to bacteria, but if the chicken is infected with Salmonell...
More