October 14th, 2011
Podcast 134: How (and why) surveillance in Barrett’s esophagus should change
Barrett’s esophagus no longer carries the promise of esophageal cancer that it seemed to, but it bears watching, especially in the first year after the finding, when most cancers are found. The first author of this week’s New England Journal of Medicine study tracking the progression of a finding of Barrett’s over a median 5-year period […]
October 8th, 2011
Podcast 133: Over 50 years later, DES’s adverse effects continue
A cluster of clear-cell adenocarcinomas of the vagina in young women led to the realization some 40 years ago that almost all their mothers had taken diethylstilbestrol during pregnancy — a drug in wide use in the early 1950s. In a follow-up to that drug disaster, researchers (including one of the authors of the original reports […]
September 30th, 2011
Podcast 132: In discussing a child’s overweight with parents, words matter
Words really do matter, and for clinicians discussing a child’s overweight with parents, words can hurt, stigmatize, and discourage parents from taking the right actions. In a brief interview, the author of a Pediatrics study talks about the best approach to take in these discussions. There are no “magic words,” rather the approach should involve asking […]
September 16th, 2011
Podcast 130: If you’re a clinician concerned about health costs, wash your hands — don’t just wring them
Health Affairs has a study in which a few simple, but rigorously followed patient-care procedures in a pediatric ICU dropped infection rates, mortality, lengths of hospital stay, and total costs. Sound too good to be true? Well, it wasn’t exactly easy, but the results were real and measurable. Listen in and see whether this could […]
September 10th, 2011
Podcast 129: Non-aspirin NSAIDs are associated, as a class, with spontaneous abortion in a Quebec study
Last week the Canadian Medical Association Journal published an analysis of data from the Quebec Pregnancy Registry showing that the use of any non-aspirin NSAID during pregnancy was associated with an increased risk for spontaneous abortion before the 20th week of gestation. There was no apparent dose-response effect. We discuss the research with the paper’s senior […]
August 12th, 2011
Podcast 128: Bleeding patients, inadvertently, into anemia happens more often than you might think
An article in Archives of Internal Medicine examines what’s called “diagnostic blood loss” — the loss of blood through phlebotomy and not hemorrhage. The effect is the same, however. According to a study conducted in 57 medical centers among some 18,000 patients with myocardial infarction, one in five became moderately or severely anemic (hemoglobin level under […]
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