“Man may be the captain of his fate, but he is also the victim of his blood sugar.” —Wilfrid Oakley, MB BChir, an early pioneer in diabetes care Perusing the list of the most notable medical achievements in the 20th century, a reader may conclude that the discovery of insulin should rank in a category…
Your home & your health: Does geography impact medicine? Does it matter whether a region is surrounded by large bodies of water, encircled by towering mountain peaks or that its residents share a common ancestry? Consider Switzerland, a nation with a highly developed economy replete with advanced technological and medical infrastructure. Despite these advantages, less…
Here’s a trivia question: Where were the big ideas for the field of biotechnology first discussed? Answer: At a since-demolished delicatessen in Waikiki Beach, Hawaii. Go figure. The year was 1972, and Stanley Cohen, MD, professor of medicine at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., and Herbert Boyer, PhD, a former professor and biochemist at the…
Pathologists are legendary for blending their work product with the culinary arts. Through the years, their use of delectable foods as descriptors has created a clever way to indelibly link in the minds of clinicians the histopathologic observations of disease with an assortment of these tasty foods: There is the depiction of an apple green…
As clinicians, we are familiar with pain, stiffness and soreness—subjective nouns that define our métier. These helpful words serve as signposts that direct us along the path to the proper diagnosis. Consider the young man with a stiff, sore back (a case of ankylosing spondylitis?) or the postpartum woman experiencing newly painful, stiff and sore…
The Phone Call A phone call in the middle of the night can rattle one’s nerves. The rush of adrenaline sets the heart pounding as our ears brace for what we are about to hear next. A distress call from an elderly parent or a child away at college? Is everyone safe? Or may this…
As you probably know, the ACR is one of several organizations that has been advocating against the UnitedHealthcare (UHC) Laboratory Benefit Management Program, which was launched in Florida in 2014 and was due to expand to Texas on March 1. The program requires use of certain laboratories and online physician decision support for certain tests,…
Wash your hands. This most basic tenet of proper hygiene has been drummed into our heads for years. It’s an obvious infection prevention activity, yet for years, compliance among physicians and other caregivers has been lackluster. To rectify this matter, regulatory agencies began auditing hospital staff adherence to this axiom of infection prevention. Not only…
A storm has been brewing down the street from my office. It is a David & Goliath dispute, pitting young children and their families against a renowned pediatric institution, Boston Children’s Hospital. It concerns the fate of a half-acre swath of green space, the Prouty Garden, replete with meandering paths, fountains and a towering redwood…
Which came first? The infectious microorganism or a host’s immune resistance against it? Through the millennia, a raging battle has pitted the hordes of infectious agents surrounding us against, arguably, the most complex biologic structure ever created, the finely tuned human immune system. The stakes are high for both sides. For the infectious agent, an…