August 20th, 2017
Podcast 211: On (not) staying the (antibiotic) course
Sometimes — but not all the time — patients can be advised to stop a course of antibiotics if they feel better. Traditionally, the advice has been to complete the entire course, regardless. Why? Because it was thought that stopping early might lead to more antibiotic resistance. That’s changing now, as the WHO and the […]
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 […]
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. […]