Opera Music Improves Heart Transplant Survival

Sara Maines of The MaineStudio Not kidding... This research  was actually published in the Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery in 2012. I should add that the research was done in mice rather than humans and won the 2013 Ig Prize in Medicine. To quote from the abstract : "recipients of a B6 cardiac graft that were exposed to opera music and Mozart had significantly prolonged allograft [transplant] survival... whereas those exposed to a single sound frequency (100, 500, 1000, 5000, 10,…

9/14/2013 0

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What do Earthquakes Have to do with Thyroid Masses?

I'm not sure what is going on within the Italian Court system, but in October 2012, the Italian Court convicted 7 scientists to jail terms for not accurately predicting the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake  that ended up killing over 300 people. Also in October 2012, the Italian Supreme Court ruled that cell phones caused one man's brain tumor . Since when does the Court decide on matters of scientific validity? And even more importantly, what does this have to do with ENT??? I&…

10/23/2012 0

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Azithromycin Increases Risk of Death Slightly... Well, So Does Tylenol and Ibuprofen

The media has made much fuss about a NEJM study suggesting a slight increased risk of death from taking azithromycin or z-pack. The more unhealthy you are, the higher the risk... no duh... (I would think the sicker you are, the greater the risk of death PERIOD... a sick person by definition is closer to death than a healthy person). How slight? Compared to amoxicillin, about 47 additional cardiovascular deaths per one million courses of therapy. Never mind the blatant biases found in th…

5/20/2012 0

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Mind Over Body Treatment

24 years old female presents with several week history of progressive stomach pains, substernal chest discomfort, heart palpitations, loss of appetite, headache, insomnia, and growing lump sensation in her throat. Physical exam was essentially normal. Can this previously healthy female have suddenly developed reflux , globus , paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia, brain tumor, and throat cancer with possible overlying thyroid disorder? Or perhaps has she contracted some other horrifi…

10/22/2011 0

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The Four Types of Patients Seen in a Surgeon's Clinic

Over the years, I have found that patients can be loosely grouped into 4 different types. Nothing particularly wrong with any type, but it does help me to approach patients appropriately if I can get a sense of what type they are. The four types are: Type A:  If a surgery can "fix" or "cure" me such that I won't have to take medications every day of my life, than let's do it. Type B: I will never consider surgery unless it is a life-threatening situation. I…

10/07/2011 1

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Has Evidence-Based Medicine Gone Too Far?

Although there is no question that evidence-based medicine is a very important development in the evolution towards higher quality healthcare, the demand for evidence for a given treatment can go too far. The following abstract is an ACTUAL published article in the British Medical Journal describing the lack of evidence that parachutes are effective when falling out of a plane. Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomi…

12/12/2010 0

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Making Twitter Work for a Specialty Medical Practice (Like ENT)

I've been asked by a few ENT colleagues how I got Twitter to work for my practice and how in the world I managed to get more than a few dozen followers. I've been at it for about 1 year now (up to 355 followers @FauquierENT ) and here are a few tips to making it work for a medical practice... Just an opinion... And it may not apply to everyone... • When you tweet something, always back it up with a useful link to a webpage using a link shortner like bit.ly or goo.gl . • Tweet a…

11/23/2010 0

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New Non-Addictive Sleep Drug to Help People Sleep!!!

It was with great interest that I read a recent report that a new drug, Silenor, was approved by the FDA this month (March 18, 2010) to help people who have trouble sleeping. Although there are already prescription medications to help with sleep (Ambien and Lunesta being the most common ones), Silenor is very interesting in that there was no suggestion of any addictive properties or withdrawal with this medication in over 1000 patients during clinical trials. In fact, Silenor has not been …

3/22/2010 0

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RANDOM: Benford's Law Applied to Health?

Today, I listened to an amazing NPR RadioLab episode titled " Numbers ." In one of the stories in this episode, Jad and Robert Krulwich educated me on an interesting mathematical phenomenon called Benford's Law . Simply stated, Benford's Law states that in lists of numbers from many (but not all) real-life sources of data, the leading digit is distributed in a specific, non-uniform way. According to this law, the first digit of a number is "1" almost one third of …

1/03/2010 0

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