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 […]
July 16th, 2011
Podcast 126: Placebos and Medical ‘Meaning’
Last week’s New England Journal of Medicine paper on the placebo effect in evaluating asthma treatments was fascinating in itself. The editorial that accompanied it, however, was a delight. It asks clinicians to think less about laboratory measures of cure, and more about the patient’s satisfaction with treatment — whether the treatment was “real” or not. […]
April 22nd, 2011
Podcast 119: Calcium supplements and risk
Most clinicians, when asked, say they will routinely recommend calcium supplements for their postmenopausal patients. A meta-analysis from BMJ shows that this well-intentioned advice seems to lead to a moderate increase in cardiovascular risk in these women. We talk with Prof. Ian Reid, whose re-analysis of Women’s Health Initiative data confirms earlier work he’d done. Listen in. […]
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 […]
July 9th, 2010
Podcast 95: What if hypertensive patients titrated their own drug dosages?
This week’s interview is with the editorialist commenting on an exciting Lancet paper. The writer, Dr. Gbenga Ogedegbe, says that the work, in which patients with uncontrolled hypertension titrated their own medications according to prespecified rules, could change how clinicians manage uncomplicated hypertension. From his base at New York University School of Medicine, Dr. Ogedegbe […]
April 2nd, 2010
Podcast 81: When should you start screening for type 2 diabetes?
A large-scale computer simulation based on NHANES data plotted the most cost-effective strategy, which turns out to be to start screening before middle age and to repeat every 3 to 5 years. We talk with the first author of a Lancet paper that details the findings. Interview-related link: Physician’s First Watch summary of the Lancet paper News-related links: […]
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