There are approximately one million cases of herpes zoster (HZ) every year in the US. HZ is the re-emergence of latent childhood varicella-zoster in the form of a painful outbreak of vesicles that track along a peripheral dermatome. Shingles, the term Continue reading
Category Archives: Prevention
To prophylax or not to prophylax – that is and remains the question for total joint patients
Physicians pride themselves on taking a scientific, evidence-based approach to therapeutic questions. Unfortunately, in many clinical situations the evidence is scant or limited. One common and thorny situation is whether to give antibiotic prophylaxis to total joint Continue reading
What preventive services does my patient really need?
Thank goodness for the steady march of technology. Do you remember how hard it was to find a BMI calculator in the good old days? You’d actually have to go to Google or Bing and enter “BMI calculator” to find one. How arcane is that? Ditto to find Continue reading
Choosing even more wisely
Many clinicians may recall the Choosing Wisely campaign launched a year and a half ago by the American Board of Internal Medicine in conjunction with Consumer Reports magazine. The product of 42 medical professional societies, Choosing Wisely presented Continue reading
Screening for domestic violence
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recently revised its recommendations on screening for domestic violence (DV). In a change from 2004, they now advocate that women of child-bearing age be screened for this problem, and referred to an Continue reading
Trapped between a rock (calcium carbonate) and a hard place (endovascular plaque)
Once again the issue of too much calcium intake rears its ugly head. This time it comes up in a prospective cohort study looking at all-cause, cardiovascular, ischemic heart disease, and stroke mortality. High intake of calcium in women was associated with Continue reading
Cigarettes – still the most serious health risk
Two recent studies in the NEJM (January 24, 2013) highlight some good news and some bad news on cigarette smoking. Let’s start with the bad news – cigarette smoking remains the single biggest risk to people’s health. A survey of 200,000 smokers showed Continue reading
“I had a little bird, it’s name was enza, I opened the window and influenza.”
ABC World News (1/9/13, lead story, 2:40, Sawyer) reported, “The flu sweeping the country has hospitals reeling and searching for new ways to cope with the flood of patients.” The World News featured hospitals and cities around the country, Continue reading
Osteoporosis: tips on screening and treatment
I don’t know about you, but I find osteoporosis frustrating. So many questions. When and who should I screen? When and who should I re-screen? How concerned should I be about possible side effects of various bisphosphonates? Are calcium Continue reading
“If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?”
Okay, this quote from Milton Berle is only tangentially related to today’s blog post, but I couldn’t pass it up. My last contribution to our blog was on rising mortality due to Clostridia difficile (C.diff) and its fomite- and hand-related transmission. Continue reading