Quest Diagnostics Is Named ‘Best Employer For Healthy Lifestyles’
Quest Diagnostics Incorporated (NYSE: DGX), the leading provider of diagnostic testing, information and services, announced today that the National Business Group on Health (NBGH), an association of more than 300 large U.S. employers, has presented its 2008 Best Employers for Healthy Lifestyles Gold Award to the company for its HealthyQuest employee wellness program. In its […]
Surgeon Sews for Fun, Sutures for a Living
Surgeons are known for the knots they tie. For Ramona Bates, that is doubly true: Not only is she a plastic surgeon, but she also has a passion for quilting. Lately she's been sharing her personal and professional interests at her Web site, Suture for a Living. I had the chance to correspond with Dr. […]
Concurrent Epidural and IV Opioids Safe for Pain in Children
Postoperative pain in children with cancer can be safely managed with simultaneous epidural and intravenous opioids, according to researchers at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
Perspective: Carotid Stenting and the History of Disruptive Technology in Vascular Surgery
Introduction A disruptive technology can be defined as one that displaces a standard old method for performing certain functions because the new one is so clearly better. Examples of disruptive technologies would be the electric light displacing candle light, steam power displacing sail power for ships, jet engines displacing piston engines for long distance aircraft, […]
Review Addresses Strategies for Patient Adherence to Medications
A review published in the April 16 Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews provides various methods of encouraging patients to adhere to their medications, but the reviewers suggest that there are significant limitations and that more research is needed.
Study Launched to Uncover the Mysteries of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta recently launched the most comprehensive population-based clinical study to date of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). The study includes about 90 patients from Atlanta who will participate in the three-day in-patient clinical trial. Researchers hope results […]
Announcing the Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Section of The Medscape Journal of Medicine
I am proud to introduce the Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery (OTO-HNS) section of The Medscape Journal of Medicine. This is the first exclusively online, open access, MEDLINE-indexed journal dedicated to otolaryngology-head and neck surgery. Not to be mislabeled as "just another Web site" or an "online textbook," the OTO-HNS section of The Medscape Journal of […]
New Data Will Help Guide Prescribing of Celecoxib
A new meta-analysis of six randomized trials involving the cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) inhibitor celecoxib (Celebrex, Pfizer) should help direct physicians who still want to prescribe this drug [1]. Dr Scott D Solomon (Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA) presented the findings of the cross-trial safety analysis at a late-breaking trials session here at the American College […]
Blood Substitutes Linked to Deaths, MI; FDA Should Have Acted Sooner to Stop Trials, Researchers Say
People treated with blood substitutes in clinical trials over the past two decades were 30% more likely to die and had almost a threefold higher rate of myocardial infarction (MI) than patients in control groups, a new meta-analysis suggests [1]. Even more damning, the authors of the study say that the US Food and Drug […]
AHA Statement Takes Aim at Hypertension Resistant to Triple-Drug Therapy
News Author: Steve StilesCME Author: Charles Vega, MD A new statement from the American Heart Association zeroes in on a group it says may make up 20% to 30% of patients with hypertension but has received only limited attention in formal guidelines, probably because they have been targeted in few clinical trials [1]. The document […]