We’re getting into fishing season finally. There are a lot of people looking to drop a line and reel in a few. For many, the allure of water — any water — is huge. As most readers of this blog may appreciate, fishing is often a solitary pastime and some anglers are youngsters who may not have the experience...
Read MorePolice investigators have likely not had enough time to pull together all the information they need to reach solid conclusions about the cause of a deadly two-vehicle crash that claimed the lives of two Kansas City area men early Thursday morning. Officials say possible alcohol impairment has not been ruled out as a contributing factor. The Kansas Highway Patrol...
Read MoreOn Dec. 1, the Kansas City Chiefs were playing the Denver Broncos at Arrowhead Stadium. Kyle Van Winkle was among those who went to the game. Unfortunately, the 30-year-old husband and father of a 7-week-old baby boy never made it home. He died after allegedly suffering a brutal beating at the hands of a man he didn’t even know....
Read MoreThe importance of having a thick skin in the medical profession is something that is probably widely understood. Certainly anyone who has pushed through medical school and endured residency training knows it can be a brutal run. But medical training that involves berating, bothering and bullying has also been a staple context of TV medical dramas for years, making...
Read MoreOn May 29 of last year, about two weeks after earning her medical degree, a 26-year-old Maryland woman died of a brain hemorrhage. According to a wrongful death lawsuit brought by her family, her life could have been saved if doctors hadn’t failed to adhere to “some of the most basic and fundamental principles in medicine.” Furthermore, the hospital...
Read MoreHaving tonsils removed is a relatively common childhood experience. When children suffer from chronic infections, inflammation or an obstruction that impedes their ability to breathe or swallow, many doctors recommend a routine tonsillectomy and, perhaps removal of a related set of tissues called adenoids. Tonsillectomies and adenoidectomies are indeed routine — some 400,000 are performed a year, mostly on...
Read MoreThe Food and Drug Administration has just issued a surprising new warning about two drugs doctors commonly use to diagnose cardiovascular disease: they may themselves cause heart attacks. The two drugs, called Lexiscan and Adenoscan, are injected before stress tests to diagnose coronary artery disease. The American Heart Association describes a stress test as one intended to gauge heart...
Read MoreProPublica, the public-interest investigative journalism nonprofit, recently reported on an alarming new report by a NASA toxicologist who runs an independent advocacy group Patient Safety America. The report, published in the current issue of the Journal of Patient Safety, concluded that the number of people who die in U.S. hospitals due to preventable medical errors has been substantially underestimated....
Read MoreThis week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a 114-page report that finally quantifies how many Americans are sickened or killed by antibiotic-resistant infections such as MRSA and CRE (a drug-resistant bacterium related to E. coli). Tragically, while the agency intentionally reported the most conservative number, it found that at least two million people fall ill from...
Read MoreIn a case that was resolved through a highly unusual process, a jury in Florida has awarded the estate of a 69-year-old woman $110 million in damages and a staggering $1 billion in punitive damages in response to allegations that the nursing home she lived in failed to supervise her adequately enough to prevent her from repeatedly falling and...
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