Tag Archives: communicating with your doctor

30 Jun

Your Chances of Surviving Cancer are Improving

carypresant Cancer, Medical Tips, Prevention 0 0

We are all afraid of getting cancer. and everyone is feeling that cancer is becoming much more common. 1 of every 6 men and 1 of every 8 women will get cancer at sometime in their lives.

But now we have a progress report from the American Association for Cancer Research http://bit.ly/mYEfwr that shows great progress in the fight against the second leading cause of death in Americans. Between 1990 and 2008, the death…

10 Jun

Know What to Expect from Your Treatments

carypresant elderly patients, Health Care, Physician Communication 1 0

You can develop potentially serious health conditions or illnesses. Good doctors develop excellent treatment plans for their patients, and you may get lots of information about tests, treatments and drugs you may need. But there is a possible problem in how you understand what the doctors and nurses tell you. In an excellent study http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1204410 J. Weeks and coauthors evaluated over 1100 patients with serious diagnoses of cancer. Between 69% and 81% of the patients…

03 Jun

You May Need More Sleep to Stay Healthy

carypresant Health Care, illness, Medical Tips 0 0

Getting enough sleep is very important. Reduced sleep can lead to diabetes and obesity. Sleep also helps learning and memory.

A recent study shows how the benefits of sleep occur. In a study by J. Broussard and coauthors http://bit.ly/QKf7b1 people were allowed either 4.5 or 8.5 hours of sleep. In people with shorter sleep, biopsies of fat cells from the area around the navel showed resistance to insulin compared to people with more sleep.

…

31 May

How You Can Avoid Delays in Treatment After Breast Cancer Diagnosis

carypresant Breast Cancer, Health Care, Medical Tips, Uncategorized 0 0

After a woman gets a diagnosis of breast cancer, she has anxiety, depression and fear until she gets her treatment plan from her doctors, and begins therapy (surgery possibly followed by radiation, chemotherapy and/or hormonal treatment). This delay from diagnosis to treatment with surgery has been growing (according to Dr. Richard Bleicher and coauthors, J. Clin. Oncol. 30: 4485, 2013). The delay averaging 21 days in 1992 has grown to 32 days in 2005 (the…

20 May

Using an Online Patient Portal Can Increase Your Healthcare

carypresant Electronic Medical Records, Physician Communication 9 0

Electronic medical records are becoming more common in doctor’s offices. One part of these software programs in some but not all electronic records is the online patient portal. These portals allow people to send messages to the doctor, get messages from the office, and review their tests and records.

It has been felt that use of these portals might make healthcare more efficient and reduce office visits, ultimately decreasing the costs of health care.

But…

29 Apr

Do You Want to Email Your Physician?

carypresant Electronic Medical Records, Physician Communication 0 0

The ease of using email communications is increasing the efficiency of many businesses, and our social lives as well. Many patients are emailing their physicians and the doctors are sending back answers.

But new regulations implementing 2 of our laws, HIPAA and HITECH privacy statutes, have now been finalized by the Department of Health and Human Services in January 2013.

These new rules indicate that it is a violation of the law for a physician…

22 Apr

Increasing Your Voice in Medical Decision Making

carypresant Doctors, Medical Tips 0 0

Doctors have been talking about shared decision-making by patients with physicians for over a decade, at least since the Institute of Medicine reported “Crossing the Quality Chasm” in 2001. But for you to have your voice heard in making decisions about your own health care, doctors must be giving you honest and complete background information about your condition, and be discussing the pros and cons of proposed treatments.

In a recent analysis, authors concluded that less…

15 Apr

Tell Your Doctor About Alternative or Complementary Medicines You Use

carypresant alternative medicine, Drug Side Effects, Medicines 0 0

In America, use of vitamins, nutritional supplements, and herbs is common, ranging from 10 to 95%. In my practice it is about 50%. But shockingly, a new study http://bit.ly/YVzEAx shows that between 20% to 77% of people who were using complementary or alternative medicines did NOT tell their doctor about which complementary or alternative therapies they were taking. People said they kept this a secret because the doctor never asked, or they were afraid of…

08 Apr

Gastric Bypass Surgery – Good Benefits, Some Problems

carypresant bariatric surery, Health Care, Obesity 2 0

Obesity is an epidemic in America. The frequency of gastric bypass surgery is increasing. Insurance companies are more frequently paying for gastric bypass surgery, since the insurance companies recognize that treating the American epidemic of obesity is very important.

In an important article, T. Adams and co-workers (JAMA 2012; 308:1122) evaluated over 1,000 severely obese patients who had either received gastric bypass surgery, or did not have the surgery. Patients who had gastric bypass surgery…

04 Mar

You Can Prevent Oral and Throat Cancer

carypresant Cancer, Medical Tips, Prevention 0 0

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….

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