June 11th, 2010
Podcast 91: What risks do NSAIDs hold for healthy people? They’re not trivial.
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We talk with a Danish researcher, Emil Fosbøl, whose team estimated the risks of cardiovascular events caused by NSAID use in healthy people.
Your feedback is always welcomed and encouraged. Please drop me a note (jelia@jwatch.org) or call in a comment to 1-617-440-4374. I’m eager to act on your suggestions.
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June 5th, 2010
Podcast 90: Preventing type 2 diabetes with low-dose metformin and rosiglitazone seems possible, but clinical use has to await results of another study.
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Here’s a question wrapped in mist: How to prevent diabetes? Well, lifestyle changes for sure, but that’s hard. Drug therapy? Easier, but side effects can take away that advantage pretty quickly. Rosiglitazone offers some benefits, but its side effects — most notably increased risks for heart failure and death — have some people wondering whether it should stay on the market.
Canadian researchers took the approach of using low doses of rosiglitazone and metformin in combination. They compared that treatment with placebo in a small group of 200 patients with impaired glucose tolerance. Those receiving treatment had a much lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes over the ensuing 4 years of follow-up.
The results aren’t anywhere near ready for allowing clinical use, but they at least move us a bit through the fog. Our conversation this week is with Bernard Zinman, the principal author of the study, just published in the Lancet.
News-related link: First Watch coverage of BMJ study on hormone-replacement therapy
May 28th, 2010
Podcast 89: Glasses aren’t just for reading any more. Listen in to how they can help the elderly avoid falls.
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Glasses — when did you start wearing them? They serve to help us do more than just read the newspaper, according to our conversational guest today. Prof. Stephen Lord of Sydney’s Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute and his coauthors write in BMJ this week about trying to encourage elderly wearers of multifocal lenses to use single-focus lenses when they walk outside, where the terrain is unfamiliar. The results are practical, and the discussion about them (Prof. Lord’s side of it, that is) enlightening.
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May 21st, 2010
Podcast 88: Weighing the benefits of endovascular versus open repair in abdominal aortic aneurysm.
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The New England Journal of Medicine carries several studies comparing the long-term outcomes of endovascular versus open repair of abdominal aortic aneurysms. Tying all those studies together is an editorial by Dr. K. Craig Kent of the University of Wisconsin. We’ve got him as our guest this week. Have a listen.
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May 16th, 2010
Podcast 87: After this week’s news, we reprise an interview from last December on pharyngitis in adolescents and young adults.
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Dr. Robert Centor of the University of Alabama at Birmingham believes that the paradigm for treating pharyngitis in adolescents and young adults must change. Listen to our conversation and hear why.
Here are this week’s links:
Interview-related links:
- Commentary Urges ‘Expanding the Diagnostic Paradigm of Pharyngitis’ in Young People
- Robert Centor’s blog — “Medrants”
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May 7th, 2010
Podcast 86: Prompt follow-up after discharge for heart failure reduces early-readmission rates.
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Why wouldn’t you want your hospital to lower its rate of early readmissions for heart failure by 15%? We talk with Dr. Adrian Hernandez about his examination of Medicare data from over 200 hospitals, how the hospitals vary widely in the rates at which their patients are followed up within a week of discharge for heart failure, and what that means for readmission rates. Hint: hospitals with more efficient follow-up have lower readmission rates. Listen in to our conversation.
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