Major medical specialty groups have recommended that doctors greatly reduce their use of 90 "widely used but largely unnecessary tests and treatments", including echocardiograms and early induction of labor. Each medical specialty society participating in the...
A study recently published in the journal BMC Medicine suggests caffeine consumption during pregnancy has no link to preterm birth, but does raise the risk of having a low birth weight baby. While in utero, a child expected to weigh about eight pounds at birth loses...
A class-action lawsuit last month has prohibited Medicare from denying patients coverage for reaching a "plateau," meaning their conditions are not improving. Medicare patients with chronic health problems or disabilities that require nursing care, home health...
"Morbidity and mortality" - or M&M - conferences emerged in the early 20th century as a way for physicians to review cases that had gone wrong behind closed doors, away from patients and families. In the medical world, surgery M&Ms are especially known for...
Delayed treatment after an emergency room misdiagnosis could have cost a Parma Heights, Ohio teen his life last April. When James Finnerty, a 15-year-old rugby player, exhibited symptoms including a piercing pain in his head and vomiting, the ER doctors where he...
How much should a hip replacement cost? $11,100? $125,798? The difference in figures may seem extreme, but those are just some of the actual quotes a woman received over the phone from more than 100 hospitals in every state last summer, half of which could not provide...
The Food and Drug Administration has demanded additional tests of potential heart risks in a new long-acting insulin, potentially delaying its approval in the U.S. until 2015 or 2016. Novo Nordisk, the Danish drug maker and world's biggest insulin maker, had been...
A dangerous pneumonia strand, with an estimated mortality rate as high as 40 percent, has spread across the nation and outside of health care facilities, according to The New York Times. Klebsiella pneumoniae, which poses as a serious danger to older hospitalized...
A hip implant recalled by Johnson & Johnson in 2010 has been estimated to fail within five years in nearly 40 percent of patients who received it, according to an internal analysis by the company. Hip implants often last for 15 years before they wear out and need...
