November 1st, 2011 by John Di Saia, M.D. in Opinion
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Tummy Tuck surgery is almost invariably greatly appreciated by the proper patient. These top ten facts might help you figure if you are such a person. 
(1) Tummy Tuck surgery is one of the largest scale operations a plastic surgeon can offer a patient.
(2) Patients who have lost a good deal of weight or completed child bearing involving large weight gain and loss are the most common candidates. Patients do not lose much weight from the operation itself in most cases….maybe a few pounds on average.
(3) Post-operative pain used to make it necessary to admit the patient to a hospital for narcotics.
(4) Pain pumps when properly utilized can Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Truth in Cosmetic Surgery*
July 7th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Research
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Obesity is filling in for smoking as a cause of death in working class women, concluded researchers after reviewing mortality rates from a nearly 30-year study in Scotland.
In Europe, wealthier people either aren’t starting to smoke or are finding it easier to quit, which accounts for up to 85% of the observed differences in mortality between population groups, researchers noted.
Their analysis showed higher rates of being overweight or obese among those who’d never smoked in all occupational classes, with the highest rates in women from lower occupational classes. Almost 70% of the women in the lower occupational classes who had never smoked were overweight or obese, and severe obesity was seven times more prevalent than among smokers in higher social positions. Among women who had never smoked, lower social position was associated with higher mortality rates from cardiovascular disease but not cancer.
To investigate the relations between causes of death, social position and obesity in women who had never smoked, Scottish researchers conducted a prospective cohort study. They drew from the Renfrew and Paisley Study, a long term prospective community based cohort named for two neighboring towns in west central Scotland from which all residents then aged between 45 and 64 were invited to participate from 1972 to 1976.
Researchers reported their results online Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
February 16th, 2011 by Elaine Schattner, M.D. in Better Health Network, Opinion
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Over the weekend I went to see “The King’s Speech.” So far the film, featuring Colin Firth as a soon-to-be-king-of-England with a speech impediment, and Geoffrey Rush as his ill-credentialed but trusted speech therapist, has earned top critics’ awards and 12 Oscar nominations. This is a movie that’s hard not to like for one reason or another, at least most of the way through. It uplifts, it draws on history, it depends on solid acting.
What I liked best, though, is the work’s rare depiction of a complex relationship between two imperfect, brave, and dedicated men. At some level, this is a movie about guys who communicate without fixating on cars, football (either kind), or women’s physical features. Great! (Dear Hollywood moguls: Can we have more like this, please?)
The film’s medical aspects are four, at least: The stuttering, the attitude of physicians toward smoking, a closeted sibling who had epilepsy and died at an early age (just mentioned in passing), and the king’s trusted practitioner’s lack of credentials.
At the start, Prince Albert (young King George VI) has a severe speech impediment. It’s said that he stutters, and on film Firth does so in an embarrassingly, seemingly extreme and compromising degree. He’s the second of George V’s sons, and might or might not succeed to the throne depending on events in history, his older brother’s behavior, and his capacity to serve the Empire at the brink of war. Being effective as the king of England in 1936, and especially at the start of war in 1939, entails speaking confidently.
Prince Albert’s been through the mill with doctors who’ve tried to help him talk. Some recommend he smoke cigarettes — these, they advise, would help him to relax because they’re good for the nerves, they say. One asks him to speak with a mouthful of marbles, on which this doctor watching the film worried he might choke. Eventually Albert’s wife, Elizabeth (Queen Mother to be), finds a speech therapist in London, Lionel Logue, who uses unorthodox approaches with, by rumor, exceptional results. Eventually Prince Albert — or “Bertie” as the therapist insists on calling him — trusts and accepts help from this peculiar Australian who, it turns out, developed his methods of assisting stutterers through his work with shell-shocked soldiers in WWI. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medical Lessons*
November 12th, 2010 by Happy Hospitalist in Better Health Network, Health Tips, Opinion, True Stories
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I had a fascinating discussion with an ex-tobacco farming expert. He’s an expert because he used to grow tobacco, but not anymore. If you’re a smoker, or user of any tobacco leaf product, what he said should shock you. I take that back — you’re a smoker: “shocked” is never going to happen to you.
What did he say that was so striking? I’m not a farmer, so it became a little difficult to understand all the science behind the conversation. Needless to say, he said they used to farm vegetables and tobacco side by side. He said something about potato farming being timed with tobacco crops, and when the potato market went south he got out of the tobacco farming business for good and went with just vegetables. Now he’s a full-time vegetable farmer.
While he was a tobacco farmer, how did he run his tobacco farm? Like I said, he grew vegetables and tobacco side-by-side. He used different pesticides for the vegetables than he did for the tobacco farming. He farmed based on the concept that people who ate vegetables were looking for a healthy food. So he used pesticides in their lowest recommended concentration and applied them at the longest recommended time frame between applications and used the safest formulations available. None of his chemicals carried the skull-and-crossbones warning. And what about the tobacco farming? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist*
September 7th, 2010 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network, Health Tips, News, Research
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Doctors may want their patients to stick with a smoking cessation regimen even if it’s not initially working, report researchers who found that “delayed quitters” accounted for a third of former smokers who went a year without cigarettes.
Quit rates may be significantly increased by just continuing in motivated but initially unsuccessful patients during the first eight weeks of treatment, according to research published online in the journal Addiction. There’s actually two types of successful quitters: Those who quit immediately and those who are “delayed” but eventually successful. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
