Thank you for all the feedback you’ve given me about my posts. You let me know that I’m not just writing to myself.
Thank you for all the links to interesting articles you send me. You help keep me informed and give me great ideas for posts.
Thank you for praising Jaymes, our receptionist, Nancy, our medical assistant, and Angela, our biller, when they help you. They’re very good at what they do and I couldn’t do what I do without them.
Thank you for understanding my unusual practice model...
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Apathy about Anacetrapib
The new cholesterol medication generating hubbub this week is anacetrapib.
Why is the world holding its breath for another cholesterol medicine in an already crowded field? Well, the most successful family of cholesterol medications is statins. Statins have solid evidence for stroke and heart attack prevention. Statins lower LDL, the “bad cholesterol” that you hear about whenever your doctor discusses your cholesterol results. But another important risk factor for heart disease is low HDL. ...
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Safety: It’s not Just for Airlines Anymore
Preventing medical errors is a subject that is belatedly attracting a lot of attention. The way in which hospitals prevent errors and manage them after they happen is undergoing a major transformation. (See the links below to my prior posts on medial errors.)
The traditional plan for error prevention in medicine can be summarized as “we should all be more careful”. Physician autonomy and diversity of practice styles were thought to be sacrosanct and it was thought that errors could be minimi...
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A Screening Test for Lung Cancer
This week brings very exciting news, but everybody seems worried that we’ll misunderstand and read too much into it.
There are very few cancers for which we have a good screening test. A good screening test is a test that is done on people without any signs or symptoms of cancer and that diagnoses the cancer accurately enough at an early enough stage so that lives are saved. Mammograms save lives from breast cancer. Pap smears save lives from cervical cancer. Screening for colon cancer save...
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