Specialties

BRCA1: should you be tested?

Upon hearing about Angelina Jolie’s decision to undergo surgery to avoid her genetic predisposition to breast cancer, my wife asked, “Should I be tested? I had a great aunt who had breast cancer.” I suspect many women wonder the same thing. Here's what you need to know.[read more]

spinal indicators

The shape of an individual’s spinal column may predict his or her risk for nursing home admission or need of home assistance in old age, according to a new article published online in the Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences.[read more]

ADHD

What exactly is ADHD? ADHD stands for Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. According to recent studies, 1 out of 5 children suffer from some sort of mental disease such as ADHD. To convert this figure in terms of healthcare costs, this equates to almost $250 billion.[read more]

With 130 million visits, 28% of all acute-care visits, and accounting for nearly half of all admissions, emergency medicine should be expected to represent a large share of health care spending….More attention should be devoted to quantifying the value of specific aspects of emergency care.[read more]

Preventative cancer surgery / People.com

Actress Angelina Jolie is making news because she chose to have both breasts removed, with reconstruction with breast implants following. She made that aggressive cancer prevention choice because she tested positive for the “breast and ovarian cancer genes": BRCA1 and BRACA2.[read more]

Person-centered healthcare

This is a story about the jacket painting of Tom Evans, MD. If you read Tom’s biography you’ll see many accomplishments in his long career. He has succeeded at so many things. He has a BA, MA and MD to his name. But today we are going to hear about Tom’s failure.[read more]

H7N9 & public health (Photo: AFP)

Over the last few months, H7N9 has been making headlines around the world. As of May 9, there have been 130 identified cases. There are four things we should learn from responses to H7N9, which have so far led to effective control of the disease.[read more]

Parkinson's Disease

While the progression of Parkinson's disease is different for everyone, five main stages have been identified. The Hoehn and Yahr Scale helps define the various stages of PD. Here's a look at what to expect in each stage.[read more]

nursing homes: skyrocketing costs

The Genworth 2013 Cost of Care Survey shows that the cost of receiving care in a setting such as an assisted living facility or nursing home is dramatically increasing, while the cost to receive care at home through homemaker services or a home health aide is rising at a much more gradual pace.[read more]

Jean-Philippe Masson -- Chairman, Forcomed

Forcomed has retained Carestream’s Vue Cloud solution as the technical architecture for its new digital mammography e-learning programme. Jean-Philippe Masson, Chairman of Forcomed, was happy to answer our questions.[read more]

skin cancer / shutterstock

Older people with short life expectancies often receive aggressive, expensive treatment for non-threatening skin cancers, receive little benefit from the treatments, and experience inconvenience, side effects and complications. This news is hardly surprising, but it’s disturbing.[read more]

lung cancer / shutterstock

Meeting with the surgeon, radiation oncologist and medical oncologist together and regularly to receive a single, unified approach is an important and critical element to receiving the best possible outcomes, as is working with a palliative care team beginning shortly after diagnosis.[read more]