Monthly Archive for March, 2009
How Strong is Your Evidence?
If you’ve had heart problems, chances are you’ve received some advice from your doctor on how best to care for your condition. Maybe you were advised to take an aspirin daily, exercise regularly, or cut down on the salt in your diet. Maybe you were handed a sheaf of prescriptions bearing foreign-sounding medication names with the assurances that they would help stave off future problems. And if you’re like many patients, you took the doctor at his or her word, assuming he or she was acting based on sound medical evidence. Unfortunately, that assumption may have been false.
Timing of Hospital Discharge a Predictor of Readmission
Patients and their families often do not want to be hospitalized over a weekend; Hospital staff does not want to keep patients over a weekend. But, could the push out the hospital door have serious implications for patient morbidity and mortality? Several studies have shown that the timing of hospital discharge is an indicator of death or readmission in many patients.Several studies have found that patients discharged from intensive care units (ICU) at night or on weekends fare worse than those discharged during daytime hours.
Relying on a Peripheral Brain
In the old days, medical students used to walk around with pockets bursting at the seams. Why? Because they were carrying around hand-written notes, cards, and mini textbooks to help them remember all the information they were trying to learn. Many people have described the medical school experience as “drinking out of a fire hydrant.” The volume of information is so great that our limited brains quickly get saturated with information and we’re unable to retain any more data.
Essential Tremor and Parkinson’s Disease
Parkinson’s disease (PD) and essential tremor are both primarily movement disorders. The symptoms are commonly confused with each other, mainly because essential tremor is not as well known as PD even though essential tremor is more prevalent. High-profile people like Michael J. Fox and Muhammad Ali raised our awareness of PD in the 1990s just like Pres. Ronald Reagan did with Alzheimer’s disease in the 1980s. Because of this, essential tremor is not as well-known to the general public even though more people suffer from it than from PD.
Popular Posts
- The Love Drug
- Women After Sex
- Fatty Acids and Suicide Risk
- Mind Games - Science's Attempts at Thought Control
- Risks of Personalized Medicine
- Mental Health Disorders Prevalent Among Youth Worldwide
- Is Giftedness Nothing More than Good Genes?
- The Many Emerging Roles of Astrocytes
- Behind the Masks - The Mysteries of Dissociative Identity Disorder
- The NeuroSocial Network
Future Posts
- The Brain’s Buying Power
Latest Posts
- Aging Intelligently
- A Nicotine Patch a Day Keeps the Cognitive Impairment Away
- The Many Emerging Roles of Astrocytes
- Diabetes Impairs Cognition
- Media Violence Leads to Real Violence
- Intelligence – Are You Holding Back Your Brain?
- Childhood Aggression Predicts Health Care Use Later in Life
- The Brain’s Border Patrol – Blood Brain Barrier
- Risks of Personalized Medicine
- BED-head and Obesity – Food for Thought
Comments
- Sandi Sarabia: Definitely, what a splendid we
- : This article had great info on
- peter: I also see things the same way
- Scapadas Amorosas: Lets patent it, package, marke
- Emily Haines, MSc, PhD student: Thanks for your comments, Matt
- Emily Haines, MSc, PhD student: Thanks for your comments and s
- Alex: While we have our eyes glued t
- Richard Kensinger, MSW: Carla,You are absolutely c
- Soraya L. Valles: I'm interested in astrocytes.
- Raymond Tallis: Dear Kitty, I have come to you
- Steven: After smoking for 17 years dai
- Matt: I'm just interested in hearing
