November 19th, 2010
Podcast 109: An overview of the American Heart Association meeting, with cardiologist Harlan Krumholz
We’ve got Dr. Harlan Krumholz, editor of Journal Watch Cardiology and CardioExchange, to guide us through a week’s worth of the top research presented at the American Heart Association in Chicago. Interview-related links (in the order we discuss them in the interview): CardioExchange (worth checking out — it’s an experiment in the clinical use of social media) […]
November 9th, 2010
Podcast 108: CT screening for lung cancer
We talk with Dr. Denise Aberle, a principal investigator on the CT-for-lung-cancer-screening trial that the National Cancer Institute stopped last week. NCI stopped the trial when the trial’s monitoring committee found a 20% decrease in lung cancer deaths among those randomized to CT screening. Listen in for a fascinating look at what happens when trials stop […]
November 5th, 2010
Podcast 107: Hospital falls and how to reduce them
Our conversation is with Dr. Patricia Dykes of Boston’s Partners HealthCare. She’s first author on a paper published in JAMA earlier this week. In her study of fall prevention in hospitals, she and her team randomized eight medical units in four Boston-area hospitals either to their usual standards of fall prevention or to use of […]
November 2nd, 2010
Podcast 106: The barbershop and hypertension — a little off the top
OK, now what can be done to control hypertension among African American men? What about recruiting barbershops to put a shoulder to the wheel? They’re community centers, trusted sources of gossip and advice, and places of relaxation. In Texas, a group of researchers undertook a randomized trial in black-owned barbershops in which barbers took blood […]