Why I no longer speak frankly to Doctors

Early stage dementia patients referred to specialists are institutionalized twice as often

The study's results indicate that participants who were referred to a specialist early in the disease course presented a twice higher risk of being institutionalized but did not report any further decline in bADL ( basic activities of daily living).  The associations were consistent even after controlling for several variables that could have fostered care referral and influenced prognosis.

Because they have an overwhelming urge to do anything to appear efficacious.   Whether it is or not.
And mine have always made it worse.

Welcome to the Hotel California.

A couple for you

US approves new weight-loss device for obese people

Patients are surgically implanted with electrodes in the abdomen, and an externally-controlled electrical pulse generator sends signals to the abdominal vagus nerve, which helps signal to the brain if the stomach feels empty or full.

"We have come to realize just how vital the neurohormonal system is to the regulation of food intake and body weight, and therapies that alter signaling within this system are almost certainly the wave of the future."

Funny, you haven't realized how food or surgery itself affects the neuroendocrine system.
Mainline the matrix, everyone.

Does screening asymptomatic adults for disease save lives? 
Apparently not- or the headline would say so emphatically, amirite?
Screening tests make money whether people are sick or not, that's the reason this practice is widely promoted in the medical industry.  Period.

Frozen Elsa Brain Surgery Game
Because it's awesome.   Way better than the 900 page book on endotoxin.

Interesting

Medical Mysteries: What was causing a woman’s chronic digestive distress?

Small intestine bacterial overgrowth can apparently be detected by breath tests.

Maybe that's what those narcolepsy diagnosing dogs are smelling...

Messed Up

Study Finds $10 To $10,000 Price Range For Same Blood Test At Different California Hospitals

That's just outrageous.

Testing for Testing's Sake

Could a blood test gauge your risk of suicide?

Yes, maybe, but not this one.

This gene test might determine some kind of overall lifetime risk, but it won't be sensitive enough for immediate assessment.  
Psychologists are already perfectly capable of guessing wrong.

If they really want to check blood for acute suicidal tendencies, they should try testing for bacteremia.  Bacteria in the blood drastically reduces orexin levels while raising cortisol levels- which can cause depressive panic attacks.

Cheaper than a Brain Scan

Predicting which teenagers will be binge drinkers may be possible

I'm guessing this will also get 70% accurate results:
Put your hungry teenager at the kitchen table. Give them a choice between meat or candy.
The ones who choose candy will most likely enjoy binge drinking too.

Oh, there'$ a rea$on

Doctors Are Examining Your Genitals for No Reason

Nevertheless, ACOG reupped its endorsement of the exam, writing that it “seems logical.”

Seem$ logical to doctor$.
That'$ all that matter$.

Evidence based medicine is a lot less common than you would like to believe.

Testing Testing 1,2,3

Facebook conducted secret psychology experiment on users' emotions 

Users of the social media platform consented to be experimented on by developers and researchers when they signed the Terms and Conditions necessary to open a Facebook account.

Yeah, I knew they were evil.  The Social Manipulation Network.
.
I've got enough random shit silently skewing my emotional inputs, I don't need fcking Facebook to pile on.

My Two Cents

That tormented young man apparently had a lot of doctors, but he really needed a urine culture that actually detected infection.

And so it goes.

Up All Night

Bacterial differences found in urine of healthy women and women with overactive bladder

This study evaluated urine specimens of 90 women with and without OAB symptoms. Urine samples were collected through a catheter and analyzed using an expanded quantitative urine culture (EQUC) technique. This EQUC technique was able to find bacteria that are not identified by the standard urine culture techniques typically used to diagnose urinary tract syndromes.
"While traditional urine cultures have been the gold standard to identify urine disorders in the past, they do not detect most bacteria and have limited utility as a result," said Paul Schreckenberger, PhD, director, clinical microbiology laboratory, Loyola University Health System. "They are not as comprehensive as the EQUC protocol used in this study."

Pardon me? Then what do those urine cultures detect?

Overactive Bladder Linked to Sleep Apnea in Women

Money for Nothing

Many people with gluten sensitivity have not had proper tests, study says

So what? If they don't eat gluten, then what's the difference?

This is one of my major pet peeves. Doctors assuming they know better than we do.
I went to a presentation by a "celiac" doctor here a few months ago, and she said it at least 8 times- The gluten free diet is not enough, you Must have a biopsy.
Actually she required two, one before and one after gluten free. Convenient.

Why?   If you do have celiac they just tell you to go on a gluten free diet.
And if you have non celiac gluten sensitivity the biopsy will be irrelevant and you will need to try the diet anyway

If the diet DOESN"T resolve symptoms then I can understand a biopsy to see what's going on.
Testing is standard protocol because it makes money whether you are sick or not.

I do not need any test to know that gluten was making me sick. Removing gluten from my diet changed my life, reversed my rapid deterioration.
One of the hardest things I have had to do is learn to trust my experience in the face of bullshit like this.  
Giving up gluten is not easy or fun. Yet people do it voluntarily. Because the benefits outweigh the costs.
Period.

Too Much Information

Thyroid cancer epidemic? No. Overdiagnosis epidemic? Yes.

The findings, published in JAMA Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, has revealed that the reported number of cases of thyroid cancer rose from 4.9 to 14.2 for every 100,000 people. The increase was greater in women than in men, although the death rate for thyroid cancer for the period covering 1975 through 2009 remained stable at 0.5 deaths per 100,000 individuals.
The study has also found that the increase of incidence in thyroid cancer diagnoses can be attributed to the detection of small papillary cancer, which is a less aggressive form of cancer, and not likely to cause death or disease. For the researchers, this translates to an epidemic of over-diagnosis, which in turn raises the question of whether all cancers, regardless of gravity, required aggressive treatment.

Yes, screening tests seem to be in everyone's best interest- except the patients.

Raising Awareness

Your health is not the primary goal of the health care industry.

Vast Study Casts Doubts on Value of Mammograms

It found that the death rates from breast cancer and from all causes were the same in women who got mammograms and those who did not. And the screening had harms: One in five cancers found with mammography and treated was not a threat to the woman’s health and did not need treatment such as chemotherapy, surgery or radiation.
The study, published Tuesday in The British Medical Journal, is one of the few rigorous evaluations of mammograms conducted in the modern era of more effective breast cancer treatments. It randomly assigned Canadian women to have regular mammograms and breast exams by trained nurses or to have breast exams alone.
Researchers sought to determine whether there was any advantage to finding breast cancers when they were too small to feel. The answer is no, the researchers report.

But yearly mammograms do add lots of value to the testing centers and pink charities, now don't they?

'Prostate cancer test has been misused for money'
Pathologist Richard Ablin discovered the PSA antigen 40 years ago. He says it should never have been used as a cancer screening tool for all men.

Your book condemns the use of PSA for cancer screening. What do you hope to accomplish?
I hope to expose how the urology community and drug industry misused the PSA test, putting money over the best interests of patients. I also want to show how the US Food and Drug Administration failed in its duty to the public: its advisers warned that routine PSA screening would cause a public health disaster, but it was approved under pressure from advocacy groups and drug companies.

The great thing about testing is the labs make money whether you're sick or not...

Where Medical and Legal Theater Meet

Glitch in widely used polygraph can skew results

The LX4000 measures sweat in two ways. One method, known as the manual mode, directly measures the secretions from sweat glands, as scientists traditionally have done. The other, known as the automatic mode, electronically filters the measurements and is designed to smooth out the sometimes erratic graphic representations and make them easier to interpret.
David Reisinger, a veteran federal polygrapher, said he first witnessed a problem with the LX4000 in 2005, while discussing a test with a Lafayette employee by phone. When he switched between the two modes, he noticed a difference in the measurements.
Reisinger pressed the company to look into it because he saw it could change the outcome of a test depending on the setting. Polygraphers assign numbers to sweat measurements and add them up for a final score that’s supposed to show whether someone is lying. In a test where one point can make a difference, Reisinger documented up to a 16-point difference between the two modes.
He notified his supervisors, and Lafayette pledged to fix it. Years and dozens of examples later, the company still hadn’t, he said.
“What troubled me is that they couldn’t tell me which measurement was accurate,” he said.

Another fine classification scheme:  random results.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/05/20/191542/glitch-in-widely-used-polygraph.html#storylink=cpy

Another Brick in the Wall

I mean matrix.  Oops, no I meant free market.

The GOP's Drug-Testing Dragnet 

This may sound overzealous, but Republican lawmakers around the country are already enthusiastically embracing the idea of making clean urine a condition of receiving public benefits. Since 2011, seven states have passed laws mandating drug tests for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) applicants and recipients, and in 2012 at least twenty-five other states considered proposals to tie welfare cash assistance, and in some cases also food stamps, to drug tests. In February 2012, Congress passed a law paving the way for states to urine-test the recipients of unemployment benefits seeking work in sectors where such screenings are required. Since then, sixteen states have considered laws tying unemployment insurance benefits to drug tests.

... By 2006, 84 percent of American employers were reporting that they drug-tested their workers. Today, drug testing is a multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry. DATIA represents more than 1,200 companies and employs a DC-based lobbying firm, Washington Policy Associates. Hoffmann-La Roche’s former consultant, David Evans, now runs his own lobbying firm and has ghostwritten several state laws to expand drug testing. Most significant, in the 1990s Evans crafted the Workplace Drug Testing Act for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), of which Hoffmann-La Roche was a paying member. Laying out protocols for workplace drug testing, the bill—which has been enacted into law in several states—upheld the rights of employers to fire employees who do not comply with their companies’ drug-free workplace program.
Over the past decade, lobbyists like Evans have focused on what a DATIA newsletter recently dubbed “the next frontier”—schoolchildren. In 2002, a representative from the influential drug-testing management firm Besinger, DuPont & Associates heralded schools as “potentially a much bigger market than the workplace.” That year, the Supreme Court upheld the right of schools to drug-test any student involved in extracurricular activities, from the football team to the chess club. (Many in the drug-testing industry advocate testing all school kids ages 12 and up, but they have failed thus far to convince the courts.)

The great thing about the testing business is you get to make money whether people test positive or not...

You Don't Say

Missed diagnoses common in the doctor's office

"We have every reason to believe that diagnostic errors are a major, major public health problem," Newman-Toker told Reuters Health.

"You're really talking about at least 150,000 people per year, deaths or disabilities that are resulting from this problem."

The Guinea Pig Generation

Doctors question routine tests and treatments

Now there are 135.
That's how many medical tests, treatments and other procedures - many used for decades- physicians have now identified as almost always unnecessary and often harmful, and which doctors and patients should therefore avoid or at least seriously question.

Kitchen Table Medicine

Testing for cervical cancer with vinegar

As I was saying

Are The Recommendations For Kids' Cholesterol Tests Safe?

According to three UCSF researchers, recent guidelines that recommend children to be tested for cholesterol levels fail to weigh health benefits against potential harms and costs. The researchers highlight the fact that the recommendations, published in Pediatrics, are not based on solid evidence, but on expert opinion, which raises the issue of potential conflict of interest due disclosure of the guidelines' authors.

This group believes the original authors have conflicts of interest-  will benefit from this recommendation.
And guess what-  serum cholesterol levels do not predict heart disease.  So the kids won't.

Heads they win, tails you lose.

If you build it, they will come

Use of surgical robots booming despite hefty cost

Washington hospitals now have at least 37 surgical robots, and robotic surgeries — most to remove a uterus or prostate — have skyrocketed in recent years. Swedish Medical Center has seven robots, Sacred Heart in Spokane has three. Even tiny Pullman Regional Hospital, with 25 beds, bought one. It cost twice as much as the hospital netted in 2010.
This headlong proliferation, with uneven safeguards and significant costs that may ultimately push insurance costs higher, has raised alarms even among surgeons.

Just owning one of those things means they have to pay the bill.  And that means they have to do a lot of surgeries.   And that skews treatment recommendations.

It reminds me of the sleep lab I went to for my MSLT.  They had a whole wing- at least 15 rooms completely wired for sound and video and remote control EEG and PSG and a control center in the middle with lots of whiz bang electronics and computers.  And a bunch of technicians who monitored it all night long.  And there were only three other patients besides me.   The  place was creepy.  And there's several other sleep labs in this city.
Not to mention- after 40 years of hypersomnia and 10 of obesity, the test still failed to identify my illness.   Many people are tested numerous times.  The surgery robot may skew priorities, but at least it provides a tangible service.