An occasional ongoing series of my results as I train my classifier.  I have over 400 abstracts in the training set, and I still get dreck sometimes.  Hope this is of some assistance to someone....

1: PMID 20677480 Endometrial ablation with paracervical block.

2: PMID J Reprod Med. 2009 Oct;54(10):639-44. Breast mass in a patient with ovarian cancer: a case report.

From the machine learning algorithm this morning, culled from over 3,000 new abstracts posted overnight.

1: Refractory rickets in the tropics.

2: "Functional food" for acceleration of growth in short children born small for gestational age.

3: Changes in opioid use and healthcare costs among U.S. patients with diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain treated with duloxetine compared with other therapies.

1: Discontinuation of Cholinesterase Inhibitor Treatment and Determinants thereof in the Netherlands: A Retrospective Cohort Study.

2: Low-dose doxepin: in the treatment of insomnia.

3: Borderline personality traits and disorder: Predicting prospective patient functioning.

Today I saw a patient with a Heimlich valve.  What a neat concept--a one-way valve you can attach to a chest tube, that allows air to escape the lining of the lung.  In other words, it fixes a pneumothorax without a wall suction device.

They give these out to soldiers so they don't die if they get shot in the chest.  What a great idea--this alone has probably saved hundreds of lives.

However you feel about the guy, you gotta admit "You Don't Know Jack" was a well-done movie.

Certainly Jack Kevorkian is a controversial guy, and there are strong opinions on either side.  

I can imagine they'll be watching this movie in "Medical Ethics" classes in med schools for years. 

Looks like CBS News killed it with a story today on the secrets our digital copiers are retaining--when they get sold as used equipment.  I have to admit, I'm a pretty tech savvy guy, but I never even thought of this.  Copiers these days retain thousands of documents in their internal memory, and if the copier gets sold, any purchaser has access to the digital documents.

These copiers are great, but they have a dark side.  You don't exactly get a button on there that says "wipe memory because I'm selling the copier."

CBS found retained papers from a police sex crimes deparment and a health insurance company.  Wow.

Lotta items today in the news about an impending doctor shortage in America.  Ok, so the implicit message is good for medicine: not enough people in a field is good for the people already in the field, right?

I just got back from Costa Rica.  There aren't many hospitals, doctors offices, or pharmacies once you get out of San Jose, the capital.

So you figure the people are facing a lot worse life expectancy, right?

I get this question at least a few times a day.  Patients want to know.  My father-in-law asks.  Casual acquaintances ask me, "Whaddya think about the health care reform?"

Podcast file: 

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HealthCareRight.mp3

Is health care a right? Would any personal responsibility be required?  Would folks who drink and drive, race motorcycles, skydive or skip their high blood pressure medicines enjoy the same right to health care as the rest of us? Would this be fair?

There are not too many drugs that improve overall survival in prostate cancer.  Right now, the list is pretty short: Taxotere.

So the announcement that researchers have survival improvement with a new drug, cabazitaxel, is pretty exciting for us oncologists.

It's easy to become discouraged, but once in a while we get something to be happy about.  Today is one of those moments.