Stephen C Schimpff's Blog Posts Tagged 'of' (25)

Nanotechnology is making fast advances in medicine. I have written about it before here and in "The Future of Medicine - Megatrends in Healthcare." A nanometer is one billionth of a meter. New science and technology based on the nanometer refers to the ability to manipulate individual atoms and molecules to build machines on a scale of nanometers or to create materials and structures from the bottom up with novel properties.…

There are just a few key reasons why Medicare has become inordinately expensive. There is no end in sight for cost escalation. But there are some obvious solutions and they all begin with chronic illnesses. 

Chronic illness – diabetes, heart failure, cancer, chronic lung disease, etc. – are increasing at exponential rates; are caused largely by lifestyle behaviors; and…

Imagine a person that develops an acute problem that requires hospitalization and even a time in the ICU. Serious but something that modern medical care can deal with and cure. Until …the patient now develops an unexpected serious infection and despite excellent and appropriate medical care, dies. Unfortunately this scenario is all too common in today’s hospitals.

More than 100,000 Americans die each year from hospital acquired infections; that is the infection developed only…

Stress is with us all the time. Issues at work or at home, getting a traffic ticket, the grocery store out of your favorite yogurt. Life has stresses. We can go to the doctor and ask for a pill or we can learn to deal with our stresses effectively without much medication. 

Acute stress is normal and can even be lifesaving – seeing a truck barreling down the road at us. But when stress is chronic it becomes a major cause of ill health. 

Chronic stress builds up when the demands…

Have you ever thought that the doctor wasn’t listening to you? Didn’t seem to understand what was important to you? Was talking in medical speak but not in a language you could understand? That he or she gave bad news to you and left you hanging as to what to do next? Unfortunately, these are all too common. 

Medical advances such as new drugs, imaging devices, operating room technology and others are coming rapidly and greatly expanding what can be done for patients. But concurrently…

Our children (and grandchildren) are the future and we are responsible for their growth and development. As responsible parties, we are clearly failing. 

That is my interpretation of the report issued a few days ago by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey on seven criteria known to the associate with ideal cardiovascular health. They are defined, briefly, as 1) a diet with…

It is often difficult to appreciate that improving the care of patients can actually reduce the costs of care. Last year Dr H Brody wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine (vol 362, p283-5) about “Medicine’s ethical responsibility for health care reform – the top five list.”  In essence he challenged physicians to be first to find ways to rationally reduce health care costs by identifying the top five tests or treatments in any given specialty or subspecialty that could be markedly…

It is currently popular for government officials to single out the insurance companies for the rising cost of healthcare. Not that the insurers are without fault but the real reasons for cost increases are rarely addressed and therefore not appreciated. We are a country with an aging population (“old parts wear out”) and of many adverse behaviors (e.g., overweight, sedentary lifestyle, stress and 20% still smoke.) Combined, these are driving a rapid increase in chronic diseases such as…

During the healthcare reform debate there was the unfortunate reference to “death panels.” No such thing was ever in the proposals but it meant that an important part of medical care was set aside as too “toxic” to discuss. But end of life counseling is very important. Indeed it is good to have realistic discussions at the beginning of a serious illness; indeed it is only fair to the patient and the patient’s family.

            Palliative care (I don’t like the term; it seems to…

We hear that doctors do not like “protocol medicine” – they do not want to follow a “cookbook” when every patient is different. It is not a good understanding of the issues.

Some years ago when I worked in a branch of he National Cancer Institute and then the University of Maryland Cancer Center, we admitted many patients with acute leukemia. The treatment approach including the necessary special tests to obtain, chemotherapy drugs, steps to prevent infection, prevent kidney…

Diabetes mellitus is the most common cause of kidney failure that progresses to end stage renal disease (ESRD,) meaning that the person requires dialysis or kidney transplant. ESRD is chronic and life long, is complicated to treat, has a major negative effect on quality of life and the costs are high.

So it was good news when the Centers of Disease Control reported that the incidence of ESRD among diabetics had declined by…

Herpes zoster (or shingles) is caused by the same virus that causes chicken pox. Zoster increases in incidence with advancing age. It is estimated that over 1 million Americans get shingles annually with the resulting acute discomfort and often chronic pain thereafter. A vaccine was introduced by Merck in 2006; the initial studies of 38,546 patients indicated that it reduced the incidence by about 50% and for those who still got shingles, the severity was lessened substantially. But…