People Drop the Ball When It Comes to Safe Sex on New Year’s Eve
A new study in the annual BMJ Christmas issue suggests high levels of unprotected sex during New Year’s Eve celebrations in the U.S., with an increase in sales of levonorgestrel (Plan B) in the week after that surpasses other holidays. In this video interview, study author Brandon Wagner, PhD, of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, […]
Less-Frequent Surveillance Mammo Feasible in Older Breast Cancer Survivors
SAN ANTONIO — Women ages >50 who de-escalated to less-frequent mammography 3 years after curative surgery for early-stage breast cancer had similar outcomes to women who received annual mammography, according to a phase III study. In the Mammo-50 trial, after a median follow-up of 5.7 years for alive patients, breast cancer-specific survival was 98.1% and […]
Very Young Children in HIV Treatment More Likely to Die
Children younger than age 5 years with HIV who received antiretroviral treatment (ART) died globally at percentages two to nine times higher than older children, a CDC study found. Among children receiving ART for HIV through the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), 4.9% of those under age 1 and 2.5% of those […]
12 Statistics That Will Completely Change How You Think About HIV
Illustration: Kim Salt for HuffPost; Photos: Getty In the last 10 years, new HIV diagnosis rates have declined, but the virus still infects tens of thousands of people every year in the U.S. Certain ideas probably come to mind when you hear the word HIV — like what groups of people are most impacted and […]
Hashimoto’s Patients Felt Better for 5 Years After Thyroidectomy
Total thyroidectomy boosted patient-reported general health in euthyroid Hashimoto’s thyroiditis for up to 5 years, an extension of a randomized trial showed. Measured via the Short Form-36 Health Survey, the big bump in quality of life right after thyroidectomy was fully maintained among 65 patients who were tracked for 60 months post-surgery, Geir Hoff, MD, […]
Opinion | I Love Being the ‘ER Dad’
Edwin Leap is a board-certified emergency physician who has been practicing for 30 years since finishing residency. He currently works as an emergency physician for WVU Hospitals in Princeton, West Virginia. Follow Not long ago our charge nurse, Shawn, wrote my name on our emergency department dry erase board. Next to it she jokingly wrote, […]
A Medical Student, a Dying JFK, and ‘Destiny’: What a Young Doctor Saw 60 Years Ago
Sixty years ago, at the age of just 25, a fourth-year medical student named Joe Goldstrich helped colleagues treat the stricken president of the U.S. in a Dallas emergency department. Then he kept quiet for 3 decades. “I was afraid,” Goldstrich recalled. He finally spoke up in a 1993 book and opened up even more […]
Clinical Challenges: Sequencing in Metastatic, HER2-Positive Breast Cancer
In the last few years there has been tremendous progress in the treatment of metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer. “We are getting a lot of therapeutic options coming into this space,” said Shridar Ganesan, MD, PhD, a physician-scientist at the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey. “Trastuzumab [Herceptin] was the first, but we now have a […]
Should Older Prostate Cancer Patients Jump Off the Active Surveillance Train?
Come December, as I observe my “pros-mitzvah” — 13 years on active surveillance (AS) for very low-risk prostate cancer — I feel I’m at a tipping point. Should I stay the course and keep monitoring my lesion — a single Gleason 6 of less than 1 mm seen back in 2010 and never again in […]
Your Garlic Press Might Be The Reason You Have Garlic Breath
ZenShui/Laurence Mouton via Getty Images After years in the culinary backwaters, the garlic press could be due for a reconsideration. Once upon a time, garlic presses were a hot property. They were the perfect accessory for a cook who bought low-fat everything, loaded up on carbs and had a fresh pasta maker in the pantry. […]