Clinical Conversations

September 17th, 2010

Podcast 101: Osteoarthritis, chondroitin, and glucosamine — one of these things doesn’t belong.

Answer: Osteoarthritis. Two are nostrums and the other is a disease, but the nostrums have no appreciable effect — on osteoarthritis at least. We discuss a BMJ meta-analysis that uses novel methods to prove the point. The good news is that neither chondroitin nor glucosamine is dangerous, but the bad news is that we spend so […]

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August 14th, 2010

Podcast 97: What happens when vena cava filters break?

Vena cava filters, often meant to be permanent, can actually lose a strut or two. And it’s not as rare an occurrence as you might think. Our conversationalist found it happens about 15% of the time with a certain brand of filter. The FDA has announced that it’s starting its own studies of the problem. […]

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