Category: Surgical Procedures
The continuum of surgical research in science-based medicine
Editor’s note: Three members of the SBM blogging crew had a…very interesting meeting on Friday, one none of us expected, the details of which will be reported later this week–meaning you’d better keep reading this week if you want to find out. (Hint, hint.) However, what that means is that I was away Thursday and Friday; between the trip and the various...
Halsted: The Father of Science-Based Surgery
One (dark and stormy?) night in 1882, a critically ill 70 year old woman was at the verge of death at her daughter’s home, suffering from fever, crippling pain, nausea, and an inflamed abdominal mass. At 2 AM, a courageous surgeon put her on the kitchen table and performed the first known operation to remove gallstones. The patient recovered uneventfully. The patient...
Meet me in St. Louis?
I just thought I’d make a brief announcement that I’m currently in St. Louis attending the annual meeting of the Society of Surgical Oncology. If any of our St. Louis readers are attending the meeting, look me up. I’d be tickled to death to know whether any of my colleagues here are even aware of SBM, much less regular readers. (If no...
Checklists and Culture in Medicine
Surgeon and journalist, Atul Gawande, is getting quite a bit of deserved press and blog attention for his new book, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right. The premise of his book is simple – checklists are an effective way to reduce error. But behind that simple message are some powerful ideas with significant implications for the culture of medicine. One...
Abortion and breast cancer: The manufactroversy that won’t die
Editor’s note: Given the controversial nature of the topic, I think it’s a good time to point out my disclaimer before this post. Not that it’ll prevent any heated arguments or anything… The Science-Based Medicine blog was started slightly over two years ago, and this is a post I’ve wanted to do since the very beginning. However, since January 2008, each and...
A Case Study In Aggressive Quackery Marketing
With some degree of sadness I recently “outed” a former co-resident of mine who has turned to the dark side and begun putting money-making before truth and science. Without any clear evidence of benefit beyond placebo, platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is now being marketed aggressively as a cure-all for sports injuries. And at about $300 per injection (the NYT reports $2000/treatment), there’s plenty...
Platelet-Rich Plasma
I’ve often marveled at the marketing successes of “integrative” medicine – a practice which generally refers to the act of blending effective treatments with ineffective or untested/equivocal ones. Only the marketing elite know how integrative medicine became associated with enlightenment. Perhaps they’re the very same people who came up with the idea that women should be excessively concerned about cellulite? Thanks a...
Vertebroplasty for compression fractures due to osteoporosis: Placebo medicine
When seemingly science-based medicine turns out to be placebo medicine.
“Acupuncture Anesthesia”: A Proclamation from Chairman Mao (Part I)
James Reston’s Appendectomy For many Americans, the current wave of public fascination with “complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)” can be traced to a single event: New York Times columnist James Reston’s appendectomy in China during the summer of 1971, which Reston reported in an interesting and amusing article on July 26 of that year. Many of those who noticed the publicity following this event...
Human subjects protections and research ethics: Where the rubber hits the road for science-based medicine
Although clinical trials are science, they often can't be controlled as well as experiments in most branches of science. The reason is that the experimental subjects are human, and ethics demands that risks and harms be minimized and benefits maximized.