retired doc's thoughts

I previously posted about the notion of " disease mongering " . Ads are recently appearing alerting the public and/or the medica...

The Dec. 20, 2005 issue of the Annals of Internal medicine published an article evaluating various implementation strategies for pneumonia ...

One of the operational rules of the medical-quality "thought leaders" is that "variation is bad" and it must be mitigate...

Medscape has a good summary on the current Blood pressure measurement advice. Home mesurements are important and may be a better indicator ...

The FDA has recently issued an advisory saying that LABAs may increase the chance of severe asthma episodes and death when those episodes o...

For a number of years I have told type 2 diabetics that it is important to control the blood sugar to decrease the risk of damage to the eye...

Dr. H. Brody et al authored an interesting article in a recent issue of Perspective in Biology and Medicine which point out problems pose...

Dr.RW in his increasing prolific and useful blog recently referenced an article by Dr. Norman Laton, a professor of neurology at Cornell.L...

One of the gurus of the medical aspects of endurance exercise, Dr. T.D. Noakes, of Cape Town has published a detailed study of 2,135 enduran...

Almost everyone involved in the Vioxx matter is either accusing someone of something and/or is being accused of something.The editors of NEJ...

In a turn of events more typical of John Grisham novel than a real trial in a federal court, editors of the NEJM announced in their online j...

Dr. Andy comments on a tragic situation at a pediatric ICU resulting from the institution of a computerized physician order entry system(CP...

Thoughts plucked for the insightful editorial ( for which I do not seem able to set up a hyper-link) by Dr. Philip R. Alper (Internal Medica...

What good could possibly be derived from publishing misleading medical information in main line journals? I'll admit this may be carryin...

Eric Topol,chief of cardiology at Cleveland Clinic has little good to say in his deposition about Merck's actions in the Vioxx matter a...

In discussing tiotropium (a recent posting)I mentioned that the best we have seen so far with medication in COPD is alleviating symptoms and...

The 2005 guidelines are available.Full text downloads can be found here .The 15:2 compression-ventilation ratio has morphed into a 30:2 rat...

Three times in the last 4 months I have attended the typical drug company sponsored evening CME held at nice restaurants at which the subjec...

The not-very-easy-to-fool Cochrane Review group has published a meta-analysis of nine RCT's of COPD patients treated with the anticholin...

Years, before I would actually become a physician I had my first personal encounter with the promise,prestige,respect,authority, and the awe...