Women with menstrual cramps are often offered either non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or oral contraceptives. Some women find that this treatment does not work or they can not take the drugs or…

Patients have on average a 71 percent lower chance of dying at the nation’s top-rated hospitals compared with the lowest-rated hospitals across 18 procedures and conditions analyzed in the tenth…

Central venous catheters are commonly used to provide permanent hemodialysis for patients with serious kidney disease. One technique, inserting a catheter through large vessels, has been commonly…

Jane Jacobs tells a story about a handed-down meatloaf recipe: After the loaf is made, the end is cut off. “Why?” she asked. “We’ve always done it that way,” she was told. The original recipe was for…

French surgeons successfully removed a woman’s gall bladder through her vagina, according to a report in the September issue of Archives of Surgery. The history of surgery has moved toward less…

Robin Hanson’s excellent essay in Cato Unbound is a proposal to cut medical spending in half. The evidence suggests that this would do little harm and it would help us focus on more helpful…

Here's a reminder for our second SciFoo Lives On session in Second Life tomorrow Monday August 27, 2007 16:00 GMT/12:00 ET. Berci and I will be the moderators. I've put up a one page poster to…

One of the greatest medical mysteries of our time has taken a leap forward in medical understanding with new study results announced by Dr. Daniel D. Rubens of Children’s Hospital and Regional…

Researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center have identified a genetically-transmitted metabolic defect that can lead to obesity in some individuals. The defect involves decreased production of…

People who spent more time in the sun as children may have a lower risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS) than people who had less sun exposure during childhood, according to a study published in…