Category: Surgical Procedures
Medicine past, present, and future: Star Trek versus Dr. Kildare and The Knick
I love the new Cinemax series The Knick, which is set in 1900 and portrays a brilliant maverick surgeon named Dr. John Thackery on the cutting edge of medicine at the time. I also love Star Trek's Dr. "Bones" McCoy and have recently come to like the old radio show featuring Dr. Kildare. Looking at how the three shows portray medicine in...
Dental Management Of Obstructive Sleep Apnea
[Editor’s Note: I’m pleased to announce that Grant Ritchey has agreed to join SBM as a regular. He’ll be writing about dental science and pseudoscience every four weeks on Sunday. (I swear, we’ll get up to seven day a week publishing if it kills me—or the other bloggers.) Grant will be starting with science, but I’m sure he’ll soon be discussing all...
Science-based medicine throughout time
As 2013 comes to a close, because this probably will be my last post of 2013 (unless, of course, something comes up that I can’t resist blogging about before my next turn a week from now), I had thought of doing one of those cheesy end-of-year lists related to the topic of science-based medicine. Unfortunately, I couldn’t come up with anything I...
On humility, confidence, and science-based surgery
Every so often, the reality of trying to maintain a career in science-based medicine interferes with the fun that is writing for this blog. Basically, what happened is that I spent the entire weekend working on three different grant applications and, by the time Sunday night rolled around, I was too exhausted to write what I had originally planned on writing. Fortunately,...
Knee Osteoarthritis: Thumbs Down for Acupuncture and Glucosamine
One more time: acupuncture and glucosamine are useless for osteoarthritis.
New AAP Policy on Circumcision
Back in 2008, I tried to look objectively at the scientific evidence for and against circumcision. I got a lot of flak from commenters who focused on the ethical issues rather than the scientific evidence. I concluded that the evidence showed small benefits and small risks, and I didn’t advocate either for or against the procedure. At the time, the American Academy...
RISUG: Birth Control for Men
According to an enthusiastic article on the Internet, “The Best Birth Control In the World Is For Men.” It’s called RISUG: Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance. It involves a minor surgical procedure in which the vas deferens is exposed and pulled outside the scrotum by the same techniques used for a vasectomy. A copolymer, powdered styrene maleic anhydride (SMA, for which...
Tonsillectomy Indications and Complications
Tonsillectomy remains a common surgical procedure with over half a million cases in the US per year, the most common surgical procedure in children. The indications and effects of tonsillectomy remain a matter of research and debate, as is appropriate. It is also a subject of popular misinformation and alarmism. A recent article by Seth Roberts raises many of the issues with...
Steve Jobs’ cancer and pushing the limits of science-based medicine
Editor’s note: There is an update to this post. An Apple fanboy contemplates computers and mortality I’m a bit of an Apple fanboy and admit it freely. My history with Apple products goes way back to the early 1980s, when one of my housemates at college had an Apple IIe, which I would sometimes use for writing, gaming, and various other applications....
Honey
I cram for TAM, and, combined with other commitments, not the least of which is that it is finally sunny and warm in Portland, after a year that has resembled All the Summer in a Day, which leads to a relatively short post. There are just so many hours in a day and if possible those days need to be spent in...