Transplant Chief Was an Organ Recipient Herself
Though it wasn’t so long ago that Sara Kathryn Smith, MD, was a liver transplant patient herself, last year she became the medical director for pediatric liver transplantation at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore. Smith’s unique perspective on patient care has primed her for the role, and for advocating for the importance of organ […]
Surgery No Help for the Kidneys in Older Folks With Primary Hyperparathyroidism
Parathyroidectomy within the first year after a primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT) diagnosis wasn’t much help for preserving kidney function in older adults, an observational study suggested. Looking at over 43,000 patients with PHPT, there was no difference in the risk for estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) decline between patients managed surgically with early parathyroidectomy compared with […]
How Can Public Health Officials Increase Trust in Their Agencies?
Why do some people no longer trust public health agencies? Is it because COVID-19 wasn’t quickly eliminated? Not necessarily, according to researchers. “In a crisis of this scale, the U.S. public’s trust in public health agencies for information is not strongly related to organizations’ ability to eliminate the outbreak,” wrote Gillian SteelFisher, PhD, deputy director […]
Daily Thiazide No Help in Preventing Recurrent Kidney Stones
A common diuretic wasn’t much help for staving off recurrent kidney stones, the NOSTONE trial showed. Over a median follow-up of 2.9 years, symptomatic or radiologic recurrence of kidney stones occurred in 59% of patients who received hydrochlorothiazide (12.5 mg once daily) and 59% of those assigned placebo (rate ratio [RR] 1.33, 95% CI 0.92-1.93), […]
Opinion | Winners & Losers of the Mass Exodus From U.S. News’ Med School Rankings
It wasn’t long ago that the U.S. News & World Report rankings were the agreed-upon arbiter of prestige and quality in medical schools. Sure, you might quibble with their results or their methodology, but at the end of the day we all begrudgingly conceded that only U.S. News could decide which schools were better than […]
Monoclonals for COVID in Pregnancy Pass Safety Test, Efficacy on the Other Hand …
Monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID-19 was safe to use in pregnancy, but wasn’t all that effective, according to a single-center study. Among pregnant patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 who received monoclonal antibody treatment, infusion reactions were rare, with 1.4% of patients experiencing mild, drug-related adverse events (AEs), reported Erin McCreary, PharmD, of University of Pittsburgh Medical […]
The Invisible Cost Of Caring For A Child With A Health Condition
When Brittany Martinez’s son was 1 year old, she and her husband noticed that he wasn’t meeting some developmental milestones. They had him evaluated, and he was diagnosed with autism. The diagnosis, Martinez told HuffPost, “has impacted every aspect of his life, and our life as a family, as my son is now 14 years […]
Opinion | We’re Reacting to Medical Errors the Wrong Way
Medical mistakes are as old as the practice of medicine itself, but it wasn’t until 1999 that the United States started paying more attention to them. Over 20 years later, we may be reducing medical errors — a recent study published in JAMA found significant decreases in mistakes in cases of pneumonia, acute myocardial infarction, […]
Why What Simone Biles Just Did Matters So Much To Black Women Like Me
Full disclosure, I wasn’t even going to watch the Olympics this year. I’d considered watching Track and Field just to see Sha’Carri Richardson literally run circles around her competition. But when she was disqualified for having THC in her system, it felt as though watching the Olympics wouldn’t be worth my time. Until earlier this […]