Andrew Griffith's Blog, page 12

The Death of “Near Death”: Even If Heaven Is Real, You Aren’t Seeing It

Further to my earlier post on Dr. Eben Alexander’s near-death experience (Dr. Eben Alexander’s Tells of Near Death in ‘Proof of Heaven), a longer article on the science involved, reminding us of the complexity of the brain and our shut-down mechanisms. Quote: Sitting atop clouds fluffy and white, Heaven may be waiting. We can’t prove [...]

Healthy patients always make the same error

A reminder that doing ‘all the right things’ doesn’t guarantee health. Where I disagree is the lack of nuance on screening; recent evidence on breast and prostate cancer screening, for example, is fairly convincing that this leads to many cases of unnecessary treatment. Quote: Healthy patients think that they are not at risk for serious [...]

Technology will replace 80% of what doctors do – Fortune Tech

More from Vinod Khosla on the future of health care (see previous posts Vinod Khosla: Technology Will Replace 80 Percent of Docs and AI will eventually drive healthcare, but not anytime soon), as well as Software Programs Help Doctors Diagnose, but Can’t Replace Them on how doctors and software can work better together. I think he underestimates both the [...]

Treatment Considerations in MCL – Oncology – Clinical Care Options

A good piece comparing some of the recent evidence for more or less intensive treatment regimes for older MCL patients (between 60 and 70). Treatment intensity (and toxicity) ranges from R Hyper CVAD and auto SCT (which I had), R-CHOP with auto SCT, to lesser intensity regimes such as R-CHOP and Rituximab maintenance and new [...]

Business Innovation In Healthcare – Business Insider

Good interview with the Dr. Toby Cosgrove, head of the Cleveland Clinic, on what they do differently. Main areas highlighted: changing the incentives (salary rather than fee-based compensation), better data and analysis, ending separate departments of surgery and medicine (i.e., more interdisciplinary teams), and cost information available to all. Quote: “Two years ago, I was [...]

Holding on for the Wedding – NYTimes.com

A touching vignette about the importance of family milestones and ‘lasting’ until them for cancer patients. One of the ‘benefits’ of cancer is that, unlike strokes or heart attacks, one knows that the end is coming and can plan around it to some degree, in addition to the motivating effect of being there for a [...]

Wrangling bad pop-science journalism

One of the side benefits of the Leveson Inquiry (UK phone hacking scandal) is the following guidelines for responsible science and health reporting. Also a good list for readers to use in assessing health and science journalism. The list: State the source of the story – eg interview, conference, journal article, a survey from a [...]

Software Programs Help Doctors Diagnose, but Can’t Replace Them – NYTimes.com

A good piece on how doctors and software can work together to improve diagnosis and treatment recommendations: While computers are good at crunching numbers, people are naturally good at matching patterns. To make a decision, physicians must combine logic and knowledge with their pattern-matching instincts…. Thousands of diseases are known, and many are rare. “Low-frequency [...]

Taking on Six Areas of Unmet Medical Need: The … | The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Community

The list of areas for research proposals from the LLS. From my narrow (and self-interested) perspective, nice to see mantle cell lymphoma on the list: Novel therapeutics for patients with non-cutaneous T-cell malignancies; Introduction of novel agents in the treatment of patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and mantle cell lymphoma; Therapies for patients with [...]

Are you ready? Massive Ontario Health Study begins second phase – The Globe and Mail

I referred to this study in one of my weekly updates about 8-9 months ago (Week 28: Staying the Course) and found this update on the next phase interesting. Quote: More than 225,000 Ontario residents, or 2.4 per cent of the province’s population, have signed up to participate in the Ontario Health Study. It is a [...]