Category Archives: Medicine
Mammography Should Start at Age 40 Says Task Force
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 2nd May 2024The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) just released a new breast cancer mammography screening recommendation. It advised that mammography should start at age 40, though the report nowhere mentions this new start. The Task Force’s full report is appended below. Here are some direct quotations from the report which presumably contain the evidence for…
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Screening for Colon Cancer in Older Adults
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 7th April 2024Screening for disease is not as straightforward as it may seem on cursory examination. Sometimes it does not influence the course of the screened for disease and other times it may cause more harm than good as early intervention may result in more morbidity than if the disease had been undiagnosed. Then there is the…
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FDA Approves First Treatment for NASH
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 25th March 2024Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is an advanced form of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). NAFLD is caused by a buildup of fat in the liver and is the most common form of liver disease in the United States. It affects patients who drink little to no alcohol. The fatty deposits occur when the liver can no…
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Stroke Risk After COVID-19 Vaccination Among Older Adults
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 22nd March 2024Stroke Risk After COVID-19 Bivalent Vaccination Among US Older Adults is a study just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It examined the risk of stroke in a time period immediately after administration of either brand of a COVID-19 bivalent vaccine compared with a later time period among adults aged 65 years…
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A Shortage of Physician-Scientists
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 17th February 2024Most people have no idea what a physician-scientist is or the job description for such a person. Many think that by definition medicine is a science and therefore an MD must be a scientist. Physicians get training in the rudiments of science during the first two years of medical school and may get a bit…
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Cancer Statistics 2024
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 23rd January 2024Every year the American Society publishes the latest cancer data. Its two reports are linked below. The abstract summarising the data is below. I have not corrected the few stylistic and grammatical errors contained in it. Below the abstract are some of the report’s key findings. Each year, the American Cancer Society estimates the numbers…
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Health as a Human Right: A Position Paper From the ACP
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 5th November 2023The American College of Physicians, the country’s premiere organization devoted to Internal Medicine, has issued a position paper describing its commitment to health as a “human right”. It’s appended below so you can read it independent of my comments about its worth and coherence. The ACP and the authors of the paper are serious both…
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Transthyretin Cardiac Amyloidosis.
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 26th October 2023Transthyretin amyloidosis, also called ATTR amyloidosis, is a progressive and fatal disease that affects multiple organs. It comes in two versions – genetic and wild (spontaneous and not hereditary). ATTR Amyloidosis is caused by the accumulation of a genetically variant form or even the normal form of the protein, transthyretin, into amyloid fibrils. Transthyretin is…
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Wagner’s Operas and Medical Education
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 22nd September 2023Are Richard Wagner’s operas a potential tool to teach medical students and young doctors humanities? is the title of a paper published by Gunter Wolf a member of the Department of Internal Medicine III, University Hospital Jena. He is also an expert on the operas of Wagner. The abstract of the paper is below. At…
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Novak Djokovic For CDC Director
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 17th September 2023As anyone semi-sentient knows the great Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic has won more Grand Slam tennis tournaments than any male player in history. He might have won two more had he not been denied entry to Australia and the US last year because he refused to take the COVID vaccine and thus was unable…
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