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
- Mind Games - Science's Attempts at Thought Control
- The Science of Stuttering
- Risks of Personalized Medicine
- Intelligence - Are You Holding Back Your Brain?
- Is Grief a Mental Illness?
- The Brain's Buying Power
- The Cost of a Good Night's Sleep
- Risk Factors for Recurrence of Depression
- Salvia Divinorum - DEA Control over Magic in the Mint
- The Many Emerging Roles of Astrocytes
Future Posts
Latest Posts
- Thinking Fast Equals Risky Business
- A Gateway to Weight Loss?
- Intelligence – Do You Need it to be Successful?
- A Trip for Terminal Patients
- Memory Ain’t What It Used to Be – And That’s Good for Psychotherapy
- The Science of Stuttering
- Are Your Friends Making You Fat?
- Beer – The Smarter Drink
- Macroeconomics and Suicide
- From Nymphomania to Hypersexuality
Comments
- Ryan: Great post! I agree with the p
- : I have used heroin for 20 year
- Lino Baine: I am not aware that people wit
- Lulu Jones: Hmm....this is interesting. I
- Robert A. Yourell, MA: Hi Stephanie...OR they tried a
- Stephnie: Based on the facts in the arti
- Sammy: I was a test subject for one o
- Veronica Pamoukaghlian, MA: Thank you for your insightful
- Richard Kensinger, MSW: I agree w/ Howard Gardner's pe
- Melbzi: Muso's and smoked pot.I q
- Melbzi: I am 36 and from Melbourne Aus
- CODER: When we get sick, really sick
