There is increasing concern amongst medical bloggers about the health of one of the most admired non-medical bloggers, the Devil’s Kitchen. It started with sofas. The DK has taken to sitting on sofas at 18 Doughty Street and regailing all who will listen with his right-wing political views. Now, no longer the anonymous blogger of yesteryear, the […]

This new law is straight out of the Nazi handbook. This law is not about the wellbeing or care of the patient, this is about saving money, just as the German law was to begin with, and then used to remove the physically impaired from society altogether - legalised murder. PJC looks at the Mental Capacity […]

In an unexpected statement made earlier this morning, too late for the Sunday newspapers, the Secretary of State for Health, Patricia Hewitt, announced that she was stepping down from office for personal reasons. After the usual exchange of letters, the Prime Minister said: I know that all who have worked in the NHS will be grateful […]

The Plain Dealer is the major newspaper in Cleveland and we are lucky to have Pulitzer-winning journalists writing for it. I especially enjoy the Friday section which lists many “things to do” for the weekend: festivals, museums, etc. On Thursday, The Plain Dealer featured AskDrWiki, a medical wiki created by 4 cardiology fellows at the Cleveland […]

These are the latest additions to the travel series Hit the Road - See America and the World. Enjoy. Key West, Florida Key West, Florida Ivan - one of the polydactyl cats at the Hemingway House Sanibel Island, Florida Sanibel Island, Florida Sunset on Sanibel Island Published by Clinical CasesContinue reading: Key West and Sanibel Island, Florida

Mr R and Mrs D live within five hundred yards of each other. They have never met, but they have much in common. They both have lung cancer with secondary spread. They were both treated at the respiratory medicine department of the local District General Hospital, and they were both referred to the same radiation oncologist Dr […]

Happy Doctors Day to us and all our doctor readers! Here’s the holiday’s history from our earlier post (some of us, being anesthesiologists, are particularly proud of this story): Doctors Day marks the date that Crawford W. Long, M.D., of Jefferson, GA, administered the first ether anesthetic for surgery on March 30, 1842. On that day, Dr. […]

One of the many, many drawbacks to a life-sustaining dialysis is the energy-draining side effects that plaque the patients. But Dr. Van Geertruyden thinks he has found the answer in a very unlikely place . . . ceramic. William Van Geertruyden, who holds three degrees in materials science and engineering from Lehigh, has developed a […]

Unless iPods and music go out of style in the near future, the market for hearing aids and hearing aid accessories will be extremely profitable. Thats why the Sound Leaf phone-microphone-thingy was debuted at CTIA 2007. Although details are in Japanese sketchy, it does seem like it could be a very useful […]

The makers of the CardioSen’C are light years ahead of their competition in the development of advanced cardiac monitoring devices. The CardioPocket™ is an elegant leather wallet suitable for carrying bills, credit cards, identification cards and the like. In addition, it serves as a 1-lead (rhythm strip) ECG transmitter for diagnosing heart rhythm disturbances. The […]

Neurobiologist Katerina Akassoglou, at the University of California, has made a breakthrough in understanding the regenerative properties of the human liver. Cirrhotic livers everywhere raise their glasses to her in appreciation. Researchers may have identified a master switch that activates the liver’s ability to heal itself, suggesting a route to better treatments for liver […]

The population of Japan is aging quickly and soon there may not be enough young folk left to care to their needs. This sounds like a job for some good old fashioned Japanese ingenuity. In a public demonstration held in Tokyo on March 28, a human-sized android showed off its weightlifting skills by successfully […]

Previously, we’ve reported about CardioMems’ implantable device for the monitoring of blood pressure inside aortic aneurysms. Well, now the company is building on that technology and have successfully implanted a similar device into the wrists of three patients to wirelessly monitor their blood pressure. CardioMems says its wireless pressure sensor was successfully surgically implanted […]

What, you have never heard about generic medical devices? Welcome to a new, hitherto unknown territory that is now being bravely explored by a company, appropriately called Generic Medical Devices Inc. Medgadget editors got a chance to interview Richard Kuntz, the company’s President and CEO. 1. How long has the company been around? I founded Generic Medical […]

NovoTTF-100A is an experimental portable, battery operated device by an Israeli company NovoCure. It is currently in Phase III of US clinical trial for chronic treatment of patients with recurrent or progressive glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). The device is thought to function by producing alternating electric fields (i.e. TTFields) that are thought to disrupt cancer replication. […]

Every blogger hits a “writing block” every now and then. Most good bloggers overcome it and just go on, stronger and better than ever. Some other good bloggers get stuck in the “writing block” and their web sites join the virtual cemetery of dead blogs respectfully maintained by GruntDoc. Below are a few links which should […]

A bug in Google Maps directed a driver to make more than 200 U-turns in order to get from Pennsylvania to New Jersey (click the image on the right). Google quickly fixed the error and now the same search points to the correct driving directions. 200 U-turns?! That driver’s head is still spinning… In both real and […]

Thanks to the editors of Medgadget for inviting me to visit and contribute as a guest blogger. As an introduction, I am an Ob Gyn Fertility Specialist with a special interest in the development of surgical tools and procedures and the translation of new technology to medicine. My blog, docinthemachine, focuses on the […]

Doctors may soon have researchers Vincent Fischetti and Jonathan McCullers to thank for being able to offer parents an alternative treatment to traditional antibiotics for ear infections. Every year, millions of children suffer painful earache caused by the bacterium Streptococcus pneumoniae. Tests on mice now suggest that a nasal spray containing viral enzymes called lysins […]

Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Magnetic Source Imaging Laboratory are studying the magnetic fields of neurons, using MEG (magneto-encephalography) scanners to learn more about the intricacies of brain pathology. While other types of brain scans detail the geography of the brain or detect blood flow, the MEG scanners track the magnetic signals […]

Field Gilmore Professor Steve Field is, by all accounts, an ambitious medical politician. He may have some bridges to build with the Royal College of Physicians. Yesterday we saw that Steve was fully in favour of MMC and MTAS and he made no secret of his pleasure that they would remove power from the Royal Colleges. Both […]

With the extremely lopsided ratio of organ donors and patients on organ waiting lists, we can’t afford to lose any available organs. Enter Lifeblood Medical’s LIFOR®: Lifeblood Medical has announced that it has received a Notice of Allowance from the U.S. Patent Office for its patent application titled, “Composition for Maintaining Organ and Cell Viability.” The […]

When Doctors Write[Freakonomics Blog] Take a Stand for the Rights of Physicians[On The Fence Films] Now, Price-shop Before Going to the Hospital[Health Decisions] Salvador Dali DNA Paintings[Genetics and Health] DNA Bank of Talented Athletes[Genetics and Health] Homeless guys leg is covered in Maggots[Flicklife.com] Wal-Mart, U of AR, BCBS AR partner on health care IT[Health Business Blog] New Genetic Pap Smear Can Easily […]

We already know that googling can prevent unnecessary blood transfusions but this is something else - “Google, M.D.” diagnosed the puzzling combination of “rash, adult, fever” without a flinch - with the first hit. Otherwise it is the same old story again: 1. A patient googles a constellation of symptoms and asks her doctor what are the […]

Two parents of a preterm baby found the answer for their son’s anemia on Google Mobile before their doctor did… “Armed with only a cell phone - and a very low battery - I was able to Google [hemoglobin “premature infant”] and found a medical journal article claiming that it’s perfectly normal for preemies to have […]

Kevin, M.D. shares his experience using Google during a typical work day at the outpatient clinic. It is fascinating to see how incorporated in our daily life Google has become (for some people at least). Can you imagine the day before the search engines? If you had a medical question, you’d had to go to the […]

We posted before that patients trust Google almost as much as their physician, now let’s take a look at how doctors themselves use Google. Not surprisingly, they too, find the search giant results very useful. Kevin MD and California Medicine Man have good summaries on Google use by doctors, and I will add a little bit […]

It was very interesting to see the blogosphere activity after several medical bloggers (including me) wrote about how they use Google for medical searches. As of today, “how doctors use Google” returns 255 websites linking to the article. The story was reported by the search industry watchdogs (Google Blogoscoped, SearchEngineWatch, and SearchEngineLowdown), then it was […]

According to a BMJ study, Google searches revealed the correct diagnosis in 58% of cases published in the case records of the New England Journal of Medicine in 2005. In each of the 26 cases studied, researchers selected 3-5 terms from each case and did a Google search without knowing the correct diagnoses. In conclusion, “the […]

“Build Google Medicine. The benefits to human health would be immeasurable.” British Medical Journal Editorial by Dean Giustini, BMJ 2005;331:1487-1488 (24 December) The article is very interesting and I would tell you, just like Instapundit, “read the whole thing”, not just the title. User-created content Our information world is changing and becoming broader every day. Anybody who has […]