Viewing profile — aladoc99

In general it's true that being on a ventilator for two weeks carries a high mortality, but that's largely due to being sick enough to require ventilation for that duration. Presum…

I have to say, this sounds to me like trying to market an expert system for experienced woodworkers to choose the best chisel for a particular task based on the type of wood, size …

Impressive utility of the single-lead ECG recording, but I have to say that if I'm in charge, that patient's headed for bypass surgery, not stenting.

Drug reps in the US quit giving away pens and coffee mugs in the US in 2008, in accord with PhRMA rules (that's the drug manufacturers' association/lobby). They got to say it was i…

Headline is imprecise. The study is saying that higher doses of vit D do not strengthen bone more than lower doses, not that they don't strengthen bone at all, which is suggested b…

He rejoined the pulse-bearing mass of humanity when he received a heart transplant in 2012.

My experience with such a system has been that it would quote ridiculously high prices for generic medications, so I'd simply tell patients their drug is on the $4 list at WalMart.…

Sorry for being obtuse. The point is that it doesn't take a physician to tell EVERY clinician calling with a patient for possible admission to send them to the ER. If the hospitali…

Not a risk, a certainty. Until this ruling, not having a physician-patient relationship was an absolute safe harbor against professional liability. It was understood that the clini…

Whether or not Merck "did some fraudulent science," I'd need a better source than RFKJr to believe it. Preferably a scientific source. Here's some scientific sources on Gardasil, m…

It's worth pointing out that CT is extremely sensitive for calcium and hence bone, so that bones could be scanned at a lower Xray dose than soft tissue. 30 seconds of Googling show…

One of the truisms of medicine is that ultimately every disease and every treatment has a 100% mortality, so we can never truly save a life. What we can do is promote the quality a…

Any patient who tells me they've got to have my private number will be told that they've got to get a different doctor. It is vitally important for me to be able to disconnect from…

I have to point out the obvious confounder here. The kids who get their tonsils and adenoids out are the ones with recurrent respiratory infections to begin with. Really the only w…

Although off-label marketing is inappropriate and possibly illegal, in this case I believe patients probably benefited from it.

Cost-effectiveness guidelines somewhat arbitrarily state that an expense of $50,000 per year of life is reasonable, since this is the estimated average annual cost of dialysis ther…

digital signalling

'The simplest definition of a "mass casualty incident" is when you need more resources than you have.' This definition is an example of the logical fallacy called begging the quest…

Not a surgeon or robot-user, but just by way of example, conventional wisdom in the medical world is that the best niche for robotically-assisted surgery is radical prostatectomy f…

It seems as though people are getting the idea that this was a randomized trial, where people were assigned to receive units of blood from various types of donors. However, it was …

Traditionally, cancer was considered "cured" when the patient survived 5 years without evidence of disease. We now know that quite a few cancers, including breast, have a significa…

Looking at the article in BMJ Open, I don't see that they controlled for obesity, either by BMI or any other measure. This is a huge confounder, making reflux symptoms worse and be…

It's important to recognize that capitation provides a powerful economic incentive to provide as little care as possible. Every pill, X-ray, MRI, or surgery comes straight out of t…

I think the 5% includes the administrative cost of the third-party administrators as well as HHS itself. The 95% is payments to hospitals, doctors, pharmacies, etc.

Not that the author of the linked piece will see this thread, but my experience has been that those patients who leave for personal reasons, as opposed to logistical reasons, e.g.,…