Editorials

On April 20, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released the report, “Strategies to Reduce Sodium Intake in the United States.” Like all IOM reports, it is the result of exhaustive research and provides recommendations based on consensus of an expert panel. The report starts with what we know already: High sodium intake can lead to […]

Women don’t fare as well as men in most U.S. hospitals, according to a new report from HealthGrades, an independent health-care ratings organization. For the report, The Seventh Annual HealthGrades Women’s Health in American Hospitals Study, HealthGrades researchers used Medicare inpatient data from the MedPAR database (purchased from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services)

Considering that I’m senior editor here at YourMedicalSource.com, I read with great interest a recent news release titled “Patients Shouldn’t Navigate the Internet without Physician Guide.” Oh my… does that mean you need to have a physician sitting at your shoulder while you surf? I wonder what the fees would be? My interest piqued and

Today, after more than a year of proposals, negotiations, setbacks, forward progress, and rancor, the U. S. Congress will finally vote on the largest-ever effort to overhaul the U.S. health-care system. Health-care reform, it’s popularly called, and it’s a vote that is being hailed by media pundits and President Obama alike as an historic moment,

“Total knee replacement? And when did you have yours?” Forget the Jane Austen- or Edith Wharton-style banter. There’s a whole new topic for dinner conversations, and it’s total knee replacement (also known as total knee arthroplasty). Last Monday, researchers from the Mayo clinic released results of a study that showed that, at least in the

An intriguing new study published in the journal Pediatrics suggests that messages about SIDS prevention might not be getting to parents, despite millions of “back to sleep” and stop-smoking brochures. SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) is the unexplained death, usually during sleep, of a seemingly healthy infant, most frequently between two and four months of

On Tuesday, Michelle Obama took on the traditional First Lady supporting role and announced that while her hubby is focusing on the heady and heated arguments surrounding health-care reform (not to mention a few other minor details like wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an economic meltdown, and a deficit-to-shame-all-deficits), she’ll be starting a new initiative

Two recent news stories have propelled the proposed U.S. health-care overhaul back into the mainstream media spotlight. One, a study from Mercer LLC in New York, estimates that the cost of health-care coverage rose by 5.5 percent in 2009, reaching a whopping $8,945 per employee in 2009 (Mercer [http://www.mercer.com/ushealthplansurvey] will be glad to provide you

I breathe a sigh of relief when I read headlines like the one at the top of The Lancet’s home page this week: “Retraction—Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children.” In (somewhat) plain English, that means the editors of The Lancet, a leading medical journal, have retracted an article published in 1998

February is the month of hearts. You only have to walk into a store to be bombarded with a veritable avalanche of chocolate candy hearts, heart-shaped cards, tiny little pastel candies imprinted with “be mine” messages, heart-shaped cookies, and more. But despite all the attention to hearts, few people take the time to send an

The healthcare reform debate has begun. Years too late. One is struck by the acrimonious nature of the healthcare debate. At its heart must be the noble ideal to provide each and every American with medical treatment if they fall ill or if they are ill. But the heart of this debate it seems is