Prognoses are more of an art than a science. Maybe it’s better not to know. Starrett Kreissman, a trim 59-year-old, was hiking with her husband, David Dolan, when the coughing started. She brushed it off, but Mr. Dolan suggested she get checked out. An exam turned up more questions, so …
LIBREVILLE (Reuters) – For 28 years, Gabonese Dorothee Adjakidjie suffered embarrassment and shame from not knowing whether she was male or female after being born with genitals of both sexes. When she decided this year to be a woman and undergo gender reassignment surgery so she could seek a male …
A defining symbol of a profession may also be teeming with harmful bacteria and not washed as often as patients might hope. A recent study of patients at 10 academic hospitals in the United States found that just over half care about what their doctors wear, most of them preferring the traditional …
In 1969, volunteer teams of doctors and nurses from a U.S. charity called Interplast began flying to poor countries to do reconstructive surgery. They operated on children with cleft lips, cleft palates or burn scars so thick their limbs were immobilized. It sounded like a great idea. The team members …
The growing use of electronic consultations can save time, expense and headaches. The kind of thing we have done instinctively in our workplaces for two decades — sending a quick email instead of setting up a meeting — has until recently eluded many doctors. Electronic consultations, or eConsults (sometimes called …
New York and Washington allow parents to refuse vaccinations for non-medical reasons. Both states are experiencing major measles outbreaks. This is not a coincidence. To be a parent in the 1950s was to know that your child would at some point contract measles, a highly contagious virus characterized by fever …
“Dr. Chan, please, please keep me alive a little longer and God will surely bless you.” I am watching a 68-year-old man fall apart. He has been through five different types of chemotherapies, yet his kidney cancer continues to grow and metastasize, spreading to different organs. He now sits hunched …
WEDNESDAY, July 25, 2018 — Eleven seconds. That’s how long you typically have to tell your doctor what’s wrong with you before he or she interrupts you and possibly sidetracks the conversation, a new study shows. “These findings are obviously concerning. We would like our physicians to listen for more …
TUESDAY, June 19, 2018 — New research suggests that a single blood test could confirm type 2 diabetes, saving patients time and health care costs. Currently, it’s recommended that a blood test focused on elevated fasting levels of blood sugar (glucose) or a blood component called glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) be …
June 4 (UPI) — A prototype device about the size of a grain of rice — that can receive power and communicate wirelessly from inside the body — for drug delivery, disease treatment or just health monitoring has been developed by researchers. MIT researchers and scientists from Brigham and Women’s Hospital …
Medical researchers, normally a genteel lot, disagree sharply on the extent to which side effects from statin drugs are a problem. Q. Are there studies concerning the number of people who cannot tolerate statins? A. Yes. Studies show that about 5 percent to 10 percent of people are unable to tolerate statins, largely because …
DANBURY, Conn. (AP) — Doctors at a Connecticut hospital say they removed a 132-pound tumor from a woman’s abdomen, and she is expected to recover fully. The ovarian tumor was diagnosed after the 38-year-old woman reported rapid weight gain of about 10 pounds per week over a two-month period. The …