An ounce of prevention might be worth a pound of cure, but applying that proverb too broadly is just bad medicine. Look before you leap is a much wiser approach to mobile medical screenings, as shown earlier this month in a story by Kaiser Health News and the Washington Post. Health-care facilities (mainly hospitals) seeking….
Continue ReadingHeart Disease
Hospital’s Unnecessary Heart Procedures Were Routine
The honor system is a fine thing when people are honorable. Not so much if they’re not. A medical example of the latter unfolded recently in Kentucky, where unnecessary heart procedures failed to help the patients, but certainly boosted the bank accounts of the hospital and the surgeons. As reported last month by the Courier-Journal,….
Continue ReadingShould Mehmet Oz Operate on You?
If you’re a patient facing serious heart surgery — a transplant or a valve replacement, say, anything that requires surgeons to stop the heart from beating while they repair it — you want the most skilled, experienced hands working inside your chest. All other things being equal, nobody wants a part-time doctor working on them…..
Continue ReadingFDA Supports Pradaxa, But Many Doctors Don’t
The blood-thinning drug Pradaxa has starred in a long-running drama with hundreds of adverse event reports, scores of lawsuits and more than 500 deaths. Introduced in 2010 as an option to Coumadin (warfarin), Pradaxa is under fire for dire side effects including hemorrhage and internal bleeding, as we wrote earlier this year. Unlike older anti-clotting….
Continue ReadingThe Effects of Aspirin on Heart Health
In antiquity, people chewed willow bark for its analgesic properties. Willow is rich in salicylate, the precursor to acetylsalicylic acid, the compound delivered today by common aspirin. It not only relieves pain, it reduces inflammation and fever. And within the last generation, aspirin has become the only over-the-counter analgesic that some health professionals have recommended….
Continue ReadingDisclosure May Affect Who Gets a Heart Procedure
Some states require health-care providers to report outcomes about certain heart procedures, and some states don’t. A recent study in Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) of nearly 100,000 Medicare patients in 10 states showed that doctors in mandatory reporting states perform the procedures less often than doctors in states with no reporting requirement…..
Continue ReadingDrug Treatment for Mild High Blood Pressure Is Often a Bad Idea
One of the strongest risks for heart attack and stroke is hypertension, or high blood pressure, which is a measure of how hard the heart is working to pump blood. The medical establishment has been aggressive in addressing hypertension with prescription drugs. But a new study in BMJ (British Medical Journal) concludes that treating patients….
Continue ReadingHow Not to Promote a Heart Association Fund-Raising Event
Heart disease is the No. 1 killer in the U.S. for both men and women-more than 600,000 deaths every year. The estimated annual cost of heart disease in the U.S. is more than $316 billion for health-care services, medications and lost productivity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). You’d have to….
Continue ReadingSupplement Alert—Don’t Take Reumofan!
Our August newsletter about dietary supplements included some cautionary advice about some so-called “natural” supplements that can cause significant harm. One was Reumofan, a product manufactured in Mexico and marketed as a remedy for pain. The FDA had issued a warning earlier this year about it after receiving several adverse event reports, including stroke, gastrointestinal….
Continue ReadingHospitals’ Profit Soars on Wings of Unnecessary Heart Procedures
A disturbing story published last week in the New York Times raised anew questions about how profit sometimes is the primary consideration in performing medical procedures. Following a major hospital chain’s paper trail, The Times told a story of widespread overuse of cardiology resources with serious implications for patient safety. In 2010, Stephen Johnson, the….
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