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 […]
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 […]
December 5th, 2009
Podcast 68: Change your approach to pharyngitis in adolescents and young adults.
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: Commentary Urges ‘Expanding the Diagnostic Paradigm of Pharyngitis’ in Young People Robert Centor’s blog — “Medrants” News stories: Chronic Pain Linked […]
November 22nd, 2009
Podcast 66: Niacin versus ezetimibe in the face of high cardiovascular risk — a conversation with the ARBITER 6-HALTS trialist Allen Taylor
One of the more intriguing pieces of research presented at the American Heart Association this week (and simultaneously released online in the New England Journal of Medicine) shows that extended-release niacin outperforms ezetimibe in high-risk patients. We talk with Dr. Allen J. Taylor, the study’s first author. Contact us at 1-617-440-4374 or write jelia@jwatch.org. This edition’s links: […]
July 19th, 2009
Podcast 50: A re-podcast of an interview from February regarding the FDA’s plans for tightening regulations on opioid use.
This week the FDA approved a form of fentanyl that can be administered through the buccal mucosa — but its label carries boxed warnings. And two weeks ago, the opioid propoxyphene got boxed warnings on its Darvon and Darvocet formulations. The FDA is trying to regulate the opioids more closely, reminding prescribers and users of […]
May 17th, 2009
Podcast 43: An interview with Martha Gulati on her research into the cardiovascular risks faced by symptomatic women who have normal angiograms.
Northwestern’s Martha Gulati has just published a paper in Archives of Internal Medicine about the hazards of treating symptomatic women with normal angiograms as if they had a benign prognosis. We’ll talk with her after a look at the news, and a reminder that you can really help Clinical Conversations with your feedback. The place […]