Even as patients in a giant and rapidly graying generation throng orthopedic surgeons’ offices seeking relief from aging’s pain and discomfort, the evidence for these pricey and invasive medical interventions is slim at best and too often is simply unpersuasive.
Those are the findings of an expansive, rigorous “meta examination” of major medical databases and reports on hundreds of
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Deadly fires and carbon monoxide deaths emphasize need for winter safety steps
The return of harsh winter conditions also has provided a tough reminder for homeowners and renters to redouble their fire safety and carbon monoxide precautions. It’s a must to triple-check alarms, indoor space heaters, and power generators, and ensure that everyone in the household knows about the deadly risks.
News organizations on the East Coast have reported how, during frigid
Medicare curbs Alzheimer’s drug coverage, fueling regulatory turmoil
As the nomination of Dr. Robert Califf to head the federal Food and Drug Administration advances, he and the agency already are confronting a major regulatory crisis over Aduhelm, a prescription drug targeted for Alzheimer’s treatment and approved on the thinnest of evidence.
An FDA sister agency, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), has joined the
U.S. has hit blood crisis and donors needed urgently, Red Cross says
It has no artificial replacement. Patients can require enormous amounts of it, suddenly and quickly, as well as on a sustained basis. But safe, abundant supplies of blood are desperately needed now, the Red Cross says, having declared what it says is its first-ever national crisis with the country facing its most dire shortages in a decade.
The coronavirus
Vaccine mandate upheld for health workers but not large companies
What is good for geese is not for ganders, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided.
The justices ruled 5-4 that the Biden Administration may force health employers to require their staff to get vaccinated or lose important federal funds, but in a 6-3 vote they rejected a vaccine-or-test mandate for companies with more than 100 employees for their workers in
Parents beware: Silicon Valley hypes inaccurate prenatal blood tests
Expectant parents have gotten an ugly exposure to a rapacious aspect of modern medicine: Over testing, over diagnosis, and over treatment, specifically with a new, fast-growing high-tech twist.
The grownups — whether over-reaching to safeguard the unborn or in a simply silly way to determine the gender of their hoped-for bundle of joy — are ordering unnecessary, expensive, and too
Poor FDA communication harms patients, taxpayers, other agencies
Critics are slamming the federal Food and Drug Administration for dropping the ball in informing the U.S. officials who run the Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans’ health programs about crucial regulatory decisions, leading the federal government apparently to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for patients to get a defective heart device and potentially to pay billions of dollars for a
In latest pandemic surge, nursing home problems hit center stage, again
Nursing homes and other long-term care facilities are playing a sad, familiar, and disturbing role in the U.S. health system’s teetering on the verge of collapse in too many parts of the country due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The owners and operators of the care facilities for the aged, sick, and injured insist they have done as well as
Motorists across region need to look in the mirror to improve road safety
When it comes to serious traffic and road safety problems in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area, to quote the late, brilliant cartoonist Walt Kelly of Pogo fame: We have met the enemy and he is us. We are the reckless, speeding, and law-defying motorists not only from the District but, yes, big numbers of bad-behaving folks from Maryland and
D.C. area slammed hard as winter coronavirus surge blasts the U.S.
The coronavirus pandemic is tearing up the country with the Omicron variant shattering infection records and rates and this viral strain and the Delta variant overwhelming hospitals and threatening to break the already exhausted U.S. health care system.
Uncertainty has returned to conversations about the pandemic’s course, as educators decide whether to return students at least temporarily to online
