June 2nd
Radiation after an operation is often recommended when it is either suspected or definitely known that cancer cells have been left behind. You will remember from the chapter on surgery that the chances of not being able to completely remove the cancer can be reduced by careful assessment before the operation. Postoperative radiation is more [...]
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June 1st
Radiation treatment is often recommended before or after surgical removal of a primary cancer. It is important that you understand what can be gained by doing this.Firstly, as I mentioned in the previous section, the addition of radiation to surgical removal of a primary cancer very rarely makes any difference to the chance of complete [...]
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July 22nd
Beastie Boy Adam Yauch, who also goes by the name “MCA,” has announced that he’s about to undergo treatment for a cancerous tumor in his left parotid gland, which has caused the Beastie Boys to cancel their upcoming concert tour and postpone their new album release. The news has left many people with questions about [...]
July 20th
pAll the recent talk about health care reform has me thinking about an article I read last year about who pays for health care. So let’s begin with a question; namely, who do you think pays for health care? Is it employers? The government? Insurance companies? Individuals? If you’re like most Americans, you probably believe [...]
July 9th
Although Diprivan is widely used every day in hospitals and surgery centers across the United States, very few people, outside of medical personnel, were familiar with it or had even heard of it prior to its being found in Michael Jackson’s home after his untimely death. And while we still don’t yet know if it [...]
July 6th
Not really, but I’d imagine that headline caught your eye and grabbed your attention, which is what it was supposed to do. The study on which that claim is based was widely and often quite misleadingly trumpeted across the Internet yesterday (July 6, 2009). Although some responsible sites included in the headline that the tests [...]
Read more of Caffeine Cures Alzheimer’s! And Other Misleading Headlines.…
July 2nd
Depending on which headlines you’ve seen recently, you may think that some pain relievers are being recalled because they’re dangerous and you might be wondering if you need to clean out the medicine cabinet and throw out any number of these products. I’m going to try to explain this highly complex situation, but the bottom [...]
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June 30th
On Friday morning, before the first autopsy on Michael Jackson had been completed, I wrote an article in these pages to explain just what an autopsy is, why it’s done, and what we could expect from it (I’m a former medical examiner and a board-certified forensic pathologist). As I predicted, the initial examination of his [...]
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June 25th
When any person dies suddenly or unexpectedly it becomes the responsibility of the medical examiner to determine the cause of death. Such is the case in the tragic death of Michael Jackson at the all too young age of 50. When I worked as a medical examiner in Washington, D.C., in the early 1980s, our [...]
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June 25th
The other day I was listening to an interview on National Public Radio with Dean Oshler who has just written a book called From Square One: A Meditation, with Digressions, on Crosswords. During the interview I was surprised to hear Mr. Oshler challenge the widely held belief that regularly doing crossword puzzles is good for [...]
Read more of Keeping Your Brain Active: 10 Tips For Improving Your Brain…