Medicine

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 they would prefer a non-drug alternative. Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) has been used for centuries in China, being used in public hospitals to treat unexplained cramps that occur during menstruation (primary dysmenorhoea). A team of Cochrane Researchers has found evidence that CHM may provide one possible form of treatment. This evidence came from studying 39 randomised controlled trials that…

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 annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study, issued today by HealthGrades, the healthcare ratings company. The study, which documents a wide variation in the quality of care between the highest-performing hospitals and all others, also found that if all hospitals performed at the level of hospitals rated with five stars by HealthGrades, 266,604 Medicare lives could potentially have been…

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 used worldwide in recent years. A new study published in Hemodialysis International finds that this treatment may block the blood flow in the vessel, leading to superior vena cava syndrome (SVC syndrome), a highly serious complication caused by the obstruction of blood coming to the heart from the upper body. The warning signs of SVC syndrome include shortness of breath, swelling of the upper limbs…

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 a smaller oven, it turned out; the end was cut off to make the loaf fit in the oven. I thought of this story when I read a recent study in the Annals of Internal Medicine that compared three treatments for back pain: acupuncture, “sham acupuncture,” and “conventional therapy.” Sham acupuncture was like acupuncture except that the needles were put in “wrong” places, inserted less deeply, and not…

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 invasive procedures, according to background information in the article. “Whenever it was possible, patients would ask for a surgical procedure that left no outer scarring and resulted in no postoperative pain,” the authors write. “Patients, both male and female, independent of age and body shape, dislike scars, not only for cosmetic reasons but because scars indicate they have undergone treatment…

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 activities. I like the way this article summarizes the RAND experiment, searches for the right metaphor, and answers objections. One question Robin answers is “How could we be this wrong about medicine?” My answer is different than Robin’s. I point to the way many scholarly and scientific disciplines start off useful and become useless. In the case of medicine, the lack of benefit is easier to measure.…

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 briefly discuss our drug development efforts with our collaborators using Web 2.0 tools. Everyone is welcome to attend. There is still time to put up a poster - just contact me or Berci to do that. Like last time, it will be held on Nature Island (SLURL)

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 Medical Center in Seattle. Rubens’ study found all babies in a Rhode Island study group who died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) universally shared the same distinctive difference in their newborn hearing test results for the right inner ear, when compared to infants who did not have SIDS. This is the first time doctors might be able to identify newborns at risk for SIDS by a simple, affordable…

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 liver enzymes needed to burn fat and may help to explain why some people become obese while others remain thin. The global obesity epidemic is thought to be caused in part by the increased availability and intake of high calorie foods rich in fat and carbohydrates. These foods promote weight gain in humans and other animals, leading to a diet-induced obesity. The propensity to gain weight and…

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 the July 24, 2007, issue of Neurology®. For the study, researchers surveyed 79 pairs of identical twins with the same genetic risk for MS in which only one twin had MS. The twins were asked to specify whether they or their twin spent more time outdoors during hot days, cold days, and summer, and which one spent more time sun tanning, going to the beach and playing team sports as a child. The…