Thursday, August 30, 2007
My title alludes to the tendency of nurses (and other non-medicine disciplines?) to prefer the more inclusive terms “evidence-based care” or “evidence-based practice.” Recently, my eye caught some rather disparate articles from the quality literature. (Drew blogged on one of them from JAMA last week, so I won’t dwell on it.)1)The first,...
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
The journal Cancer has an article by Loberg et al that describes the lethal phenotype of cancer (free pdf!). While the article does get into the molecular level it keeps a pretty steady course and is very approachable for the 'non-bench research' physician. The article abstract highlights the key reason this is important for most palliative...
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Monday, August 27, 2007
3 on heart failure...1)Journal of the American College of Cardiology has a trial looking at left-ventricular assist devices (LVADs) as destination therapy in patients with advanced heart failure. LVADs, in the simplest terms, are implantable devices which augment the pumping of a failing heart; they are relatively well accepted as a temporizing...
Monday, August 27, 2007
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
#1)The Journal of Clinical Oncology recently published an ambitious study by Gripp and colleagues looking at clinical prediction of survival (CPS) objective prognostic factors, and the psychological impact of coping. 216 consecutive patients receiving palliative radiation treatments consented to the study (adjuvant and curative patients...
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Monday, August 20, 2007
Cancer cachexia and then several things in brief...1)Head & Neck has an interesting trial of celecoxib for cancer cachexia. This was a small, randomized, placebo-controlled, and blinded trial of 11 patients with recently diagnosed head/neck/or upper GI cancers, 5% unintentional weight loss, no mechanical GI obstruction, and who were...
Monday, August 20, 2007
Thursday, August 16, 2007
(Monday August 20, 2007: somehow sections #2 & #3 of this post became merged and some of the text was lost - I have tried to restore it by filling in the text as best as I can remember it. This post as it now stands is different that my original version but unless anyone can supply that to me this is how it's going to remain. Sorry...
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
The July issue of Pediatrics has an article about NICU decision making for terminally ill newborns. In the past few years there has been a bit of a media sensation because of the Dutch tackling the very tough issue of medicines and technology potentially prolonging the life or death of newborns that are unlikely to survive. It started...
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Monday, August 13, 2007
Back when I was a novice nurse, in 1980, I worked at a community hospital in Washington, DC. The favorite analgesic of one of our oncologists was Levo-Dromoran (levorphanol). The reason was that it was a little more potent than morphine, but more importantly it had a longer duration of action. I have only a vague recollection of how frequently...
Monday, August 13, 2007
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Two from the latest Journal of Clinical Oncology & one from Lancet Oncology. 1)First is a randomized controlled trial of donepezil for cancer fatigue. I briefly mentioned these results as they were presented at ASCO, but will look at them closer here. The trial involved ~110 advanced cancer patients (average age 56 years, women with...
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
An appeals court decision in DC has setup the potential for a very important Supreme Court hearing on the rights of the terminally ill. The court ruled 8-2 against the Abagail Alliance which supports the rights for dying patients to get access to experimental medications. The FDA is opposed to this measure. The finding by the judges stated that the constitution does not guarantee access to experimental drugs that have not...
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Friday, August 3, 2007
It's August, it's hot, I'm jealous of Tom Quinn who has seemed to be on an endless vacation (please give us the details when you get back), my little boy is about to take his first steps, I know all the secrets of the Harry Potter series, and my wee brain isn't working well, so I'm just going to touch on the interesting items cluttering...
Friday, August 3, 2007
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