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American Medicine
Monthly Archives: March 2013
The articles and news coverage of problems in how to access American medical care are described as health-care disparities. This is the policy-makers way of talking about poverty, joblessness, or racial/gender/age discrimination. These are all difficult problems to overcome if one is to get good medical care.
It is often stated that many of those conditions occur in a setting of less access to care. But more often, the feeling of less access is more a…
A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine (http://nej.md/TRTJQ1) has indicated that over 30 years, the number of early stage breast cancers detected has increased dramatically, but the number of advanced stage cancers detected has reduced only slightly. The implication of this article is that woman should not have mammograms as frequently, since there is “over diagnosis” of breast cancer due to mammograms. The same arguments have been made for PSA screening…
In America we face periodic shortages – of different foods, gasoline, jobs, loans, and controversially either taxes or spending cuts. but now we are experiencing shortages of drugs because of poor reimbursement of inexpensive generic drugs (which does not provide manufacturers with enough profit to promote production) and limits on factories and importation. Now we know that these shortages can…
Oral and throat cancers are serious and life-threatening, and adequate treatment often produces disfiguring scarring, loss of teeth (due to radiation side effects), and dramatic reduction in quality of life.
Prevention of these terrible conditions is effective. Since the disease is caused by smoking and excess drinking, as well as HPV (human papilloma virus, the same virus that causes cervix cancer, vaginal cancer and penis cancer), you can reduce your risk of these serious cancers….