Recently in Healthcare Category

Babies are often given acetaminophen when they get their routine vaccinations. The drug, sold as Tylenol in the United States and called paracetamol in most countries, counters the common risk of fever and the much less common risk of fevers high enough to cause seizure.

But a new study, done in the Czech Republic and published last week in The Lancet, may have implications for children everywhere: the researchers found that the antifever drug makes some vaccines less potent. Fever is part of the immune response, and suppressing it, the authors said, appeared to impair the body’s ability to make antibodies.

I certainly understand the need for the body to have a powerful immune response for a vaccine to be effective.

While it's outside the scope of the study, you might want to hold off popping down a couple Tylenol when you get your flu shot(s).

Coca-Cola Co. said yesterday that it will put a calorie count on the front of almost all the drinks it sells around the world.

At the same time, some cities and states are requiring chain restaurants to post calorie counts on their menus, hoping that will encourage overweight customers to choose lower-calorie foods. One key backer of this push, former NYC Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden, is now running the CDC.

The company said the labeling will go on almost all of the company’s products, including “all sparkling beverages, teas, energy drinks, flavored water beverages, juices and juice drinks.” The more-prominent labeling is already in place in Europe and Australia, it’s currently being rolled out in Mexico and the U.S. and will be in place world-wide by the end of 2011.

While I'm against a "soda tax," I applaud Coke for putting the calorie count on the front. We can now have Coke Zero and Coke 100.

I'd love it if chain restaurants posted nutritional information in a more prominent place and even on the menus. I travel a lot, and healthy eating is hard enough as it is.

When a patient shows up at a doctor's office with a bruise after falling and bumping his head, the physician might order a CT scan even if she believes the injury is superficial.

Worries about a malpractice lawsuit might prompt her to take steps that aren't medically necessary. "If I don't get a CAT scan, this is that one case where I'll end up in court," the doctor might think, says Cecil Wilson, a physician who is president-elect of the American Medical Association.

This is defensive medicine -- a careful, fretful approach to treating patients, in which doctors authorize tests in part to reduce the risk that they will be sued. In the national debate over health care, doctors and policy makers often point to spending on defensive medicine as a key driver of soaring costs.

This is a huge deal. There have been several instances where a doctor's suggested an MRI for me "just to make sure" where "watchful waiting" would have been perfectly adequate. (I once learned from an MRI that I had a sinus infection, even though that wasn't at all related to the initial problem.) The MRIs would have (and some did) greatly increased the cost of care and would not have changed the outcome.

Until we get a handle on medical malpractice and our litigious society, the cost of care will remain high.