August 31, 2004

Interesting JAMA Articles

JAMA articles in the 9/1/04 issue.

Complete citations:

Carney, Patricia A., Nierenberg, David W., Pipas, Catherine F., Brooks, W. Blair, Stukel, Therese A., Keller, Adam M. Educational Epidemiology: Applying Population-Based Design and Analytic Approaches to Study Medical Education JAMA 2004 292: 1044-1050

Brennan, Troyen A., Horwitz, Ralph I., Duffy, F. Daniel, Cassel, Christine K., Goode, Leslie D., Lipner, Rebecca S. The Role of Physician Specialty Board Certification Status in the Quality Movement JAMA 2004 292: 1038-1043

U of M students, faculty, and staff can access the articles by using this link!

Posted by gruwell at 11:46 PM

August 30, 2004

MedlinePlus: Understanding Medical Research

A *NEW* website with information and links on the topic of Understanding Medical Research.

Posted by gruwell at 1:35 PM

August 25, 2004

Nation's Medical Students Resist Pharmaceutical Industry Temptations

8/23/2004 3:00:00 PM


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To: National Desk

Contact: Kim Becker of the American Medical Student Association, 703-620-6600 ext. 207; prel@www.amsa.org

RESTON, Va., Aug. 23 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The American Medical Student Association (AMSA), the nation's largest, independent medical student organization, with nearly 50,000 members, today announces a national campaign, The Amnesty Campaign, which will collect pharmaceutical marketing paraphernalia, including pens, post-it notes, mugs, calendars and more from medical students across the country. The campaign is the first in a number of events leading up to National PharmFree Day, which will be recognized on December 8, 2004.

National PharmFree Day will serve as a day of action where medical students, residents and physicians alike to speak out against the pharmaceutical industry's biased marketing practices.

AMSA developed the PharmFree Campaign in collaboration with No Free Lunch and Dr. Bob Goodman two years ago to educate and train medical students to professionally and ethically interact with the pharmaceutical industry. AMSA is the only medical organization to ban all pharmaceutical advertising in its publications and events.

Article from US Newswire

Posted by gruwell at 9:33 AM

August 19, 2004

Medical organizations attack disparities on many fronts

Recruitment of minorities into health care professions and improving patient-physician communications are among the goals aimed at reducing such barriers.

By Andis Robeznieks, AMNews staff. Aug. 23/30, 2004.
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Working independently on some projects and collaboratively on others, organized medicine is putting its full force behind eliminating health care disparities among racial and ethnic minorities in the United States.

At both the leadership and grassroots levels, programs and studies are being undertaken to publicize the issue of disparities while seeking the best way to reduce and eventually eliminate them.

Articel from amednews.com

Posted by gruwell at 6:04 PM

August 18, 2004

MedlinePlus tour

Usted puede optar por hacer el tour en forma continua o seleccionar sólo las secciones que son de su interés. En este último caso usted podrá navegar la sección elegida y familiarizase con todas sus características.

Link: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/spanish/tour/tour.html

Posted by gruwell at 11:15 AM

New colon cancer guidelines

Posted By: News-Medical in Medical Procedure News
Published: Tuesday, 17-Aug-2004

The American Society of Clinical Oncology has developed a set of recommendations to address whether patients who have had successful surgery for Stage II colon cancer should be offered adjuvant chemotherapy in routine clinical practice.

The guideline, published in the August 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, states that the routine use of adjuvant chemotherapy for medically fit, average-risk patients with Stage II colon cancer is not recommended. Clinical trials have not established with certainty a significant degree of clinical benefit for adjuvant chemotherapy in patients with Stage II colon cancer, although most trials show a small benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy.

Specifically, patients who receive adjuvant chemotherapy have about a 4% to 5% greater chance of survival five years after surgery, compared with patients who had surgery alone. The exact benefit is not known with certainty because not enough Stage II patients have been included in clinical trials involving this group of patients only.

Article from News-Medical.Net

Posted by gruwell at 7:41 AM

August 12, 2004

Post-Trauma Therapy Helps Children

Wed Aug 11, 2004 04:59 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Treating children for traumatic stress appears to be more effective than routine care or no treatment, according to results of a new study.

"Despite the expenditure of large sums of public monies to ameliorate the consequences of childhood trauma, little is known about the efficacy of treatment for traumatized children and their families," say Drs. Claude M. Chemtob and Tisha L. Taylor of Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in New York.

From Reuters

Posted by gruwell at 9:07 AM

August 11, 2004

Protecting women's hearts: An interview with a Mayo Clinic specialist

By Mayo Clinic staff

For years, women have lagged behind men when it comes to prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease. But the gender gap has been widening. The number of men dying of cardiovascular disease has decreased while women's death rates have remained the same or even increased for some heart conditions.

An essay in the respected journal Circulation attributed the disparity in part to the "bikini approach" to medicine — a focus on women's disorders of the breast and reproductive system. Even women themselves have brushed off the dangers of heart disease.

Article from MayoClinic.com

Posted by gruwell at 2:48 PM

August 5, 2004

Funding Boost for Medical School Research

Government funding of Med School R&D in Great Britain

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH News Release (2004/0298) issued by the Government News Network on 4 August 2004

A new boost for research in medical schools was announced today by Health Minister, Lord Warner. The new funding is part of the government’s drive to strengthen research and innovation, and make sure that the NHS gets the benefit of the latest scientific developments.

Article from News.scotsman.com

Posted by gruwell at 7:59 AM

August 4, 2004

45% of specialists report a recent medical error

Otolaryngologist Dr. David Roberson has first-hand experience with medical errors. He remembers one near-miss in a patient about to receive a cochlear implant -- and says it typifies the kinds of mistakes he and his colleagues have turned up in a national survey. ''I looked at the CT scan carefully to determine if the cochlea would accept the implant,'' recalls Roberson, from the Department of Otolaryngology and Communication Disorders at Children's Hospital Boston. ''I asked a colleague to look at it also, and he commented that the auditory nerves looked small. I then ordered an MRI which showed the patient had no auditory nerves on either side. I came close to performing surgery and putting a major device in a child's head when there was no possibility of benefit, since she had no auditory nerve. I didn't look carefully enough at the entire scan.''

Link through ScienceBlog

Posted by gruwell at 8:21 AM

August 3, 2004

Celiac disease under diagnosed NIH consensus panel finds

02 Aug 2004

Celiac disease is considerably under-diagnosed, according to an independent consensus panel convened last month by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The panel, charged with assessing all of the available scientific evidence on celiac disease, announced recommendations for the appropriate diagnosis and management of this disease, which was previously believed to be rare. Celiac disease may affect 3 million Americans. The disease is present in 0.5 to 1% of the U.S. population, ten times higher than previous estimates.

Columbus Children's Reserach Institute Physician Participates in Panel, Which Recommends Six Key Strategies for Disease Management

From Medical News Today

Posted by gruwell at 4:18 PM

Recommendation Against Chemotherapy Sensitivity, Resistance Assays

Medical News - Keywords: CANCER, CHEMOTHERAPY, ASSAYS

A new technology assessment from ASCO states that the use of chemotherapy sensitivity and resistance assays (CSRAs) to select chemotherapeutic agents for cancer patients should not be undertaken outside of the clinical trial setting.

Article from newswise

Posted by gruwell at 4:16 PM

CIMER Key Source for Complementary, Integrative Medicine Information

More than 600 million people surf the Internet, and an estimated 36% to 55% of them use it to gather medical information, according to an article published in the April 14 issue of the Annals of Oncology.

Authors of this article, based at the Peninsula Medical School at the Universities of Exeter & Plymouth, Institute of Health & Social Care in Exeter, the United Kingdom, set out to evaluate the quality of information on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) available on the Internet and identify the most frequently discussed treatments.

Article from CancerWise

Posted by gruwell at 4:13 PM