LIVING In a World of Deadly Medicine
“Life in the Deadly World of Medicine” was written to empower the patient. The empowered patient no longer lies down in submission to the power of medicine. The knowledge gained from this book saves lives. You must read this book. Read it to open your eyes, to educate yourself, to be more informed. You will know how to protect yourself, you families, your loved ones.
The world of medicine is full of stories of miracles and suffering, triumph and tragedy. Among the worst cases are those of neglect, abuse, and simple human error with horrible outcomes. Medicine has advanced so quickly in the last 100 years, and is moving faster than ever now. New technologies, new innovations, the world of medicine is more exciting and more confusing now than ever.
After reading Life in the Deadly World of Medicine you will have a better understanding of the medical system and be able to make more informed decisions about your healthcare in a world of indecision.
Life in the Deadly World of Medicine is an inside look at the way things are. It reveals how to make things better for people. It teaches us that we make things better by telling the truth.
Choosing an Anesthesiologist
Local anesthesia usually is administered by the surgeon with the exception of local blocks of large areas such as one limb or another in preparation for surgery with the patient awake. General anesthesia falls into other hands. Lucky indeed is the patient who has a competent, dedicated anesthesiologist throughout an operation. This person holds life and future well-being in his hands from beginning to the end of the procedure. All his moments are precarious. The surgeon, on the contrary, most likely will have only a few moments of critical activity where failure could cost a life.
An anesthesiologist is a medical doctor trained in anesthesiology. An anesthetist is someone else, usually a registered nurse, trained in anesthesia. Nurse anesthetists bore the brunt of anesthesia responsibilities in this country through most of the twentieth century as the specialty of anesthesiology grew. Today, first-rate hospitals have a full staff of anesthesiologists. Others have a skeletal staff assigned to supervise a team of nurse anesthetists. The degree of excellence and safety depends on the commitment of the doctors in anesthesia. Nurse anesthetists usually are excellent, but they do not carry the authority of an anesthesiologist if something goes wrong. Aside from the surgery itself, the patient’s best chances of coming out of an operation unscathed lie with the anesthesiologist who begins with the patient and stays with the patient until he is awake and safe again.
An anesthesiologist supervising a team of anesthetists in one room might be too occupied with a critical prob¬lem to respond quickly enough to a second emergency elsewhere. Every anesthetic agent in common use is a deadly poison, but a combination of these drugs used at sub-lethal levels usually produces a satisfactory anesthetic state with reasonable safety, as long as a knowledgeable person constantly monitors the patient. A good anesthesiologist knows physiology, metabolism, and drugs—especially drugs—and medicine in general as does no one else. He takes a person down through the shades of sleep toward death to spare unbearable pain. Oxygen level, carbon dioxide level, blood pressure, sugar level, temperature level, blood volume, urinary drainage, anesthetic level, electrolyte level, breathing, and heart rate must all be controlled. This requires constant attention to monitoring devices and to the patient’s condition.
If the anesthesiologist is given to careless habits like going out in the hallway to talk on a phone while leaving his patient alone, or when his attention wanders and the patient wakes up enough to cough at a critical stage in the operation, or he fails to keep up with changes in vital signs, then he is worse than nothing. Such behavior can and does lead to cardiac arrest under anesthesia. Don’t think it didn’t happen in the early days when competition was scant or nonexistent. It still happens, though not as often.
Modern general anesthesia involves the uses of gases and intravenous agents. In addition to the anesthetic agents themselves, a number of drugs are used to paralyze skeletal muscle. This last group had its origin in jungle pharmacology, specifically curare used as arrow-tip poison in the Amazon forests. The drug relaxes muscles, thus requiring much less of the real anesthetic agents to control the patient during surgery, and allows the placing of a tube between the vocal cords and down toward the lungs to enhance breathing under anesthesia. But the drugs are dangerous; they paralyze breathing and require skilled use, and they do not relieve pain. A good anesthesiologist orchestrates this combination, with a minimum of toxic agents, to produce an optimal anesthetic state for the particular procedure to be done. Without question this person is a gift and blessing to modern life.
The remedy here depends upon the dedication of the anesthesiologist. So oriented he usually visits his patients before the surgery. Find out who this person is. The surgeons know; the house staff knows; the nurses in the operating room know; even the orderlies know. Beware of the hospital where the anesthesiologist retires to the doctor’s lounge to laze around, usually fondling old magazines in a state of boredom, leaving the nurse in charge after induction of the anesthetic. Stay away from anesthesia and heavy sedation in doctor’s offices, in dental offices, and in remote areas of the hospital. Deaths have occurred in dental chairs, during and after cosmetic surgery in offices, in MRI machines where no one can be in the tunnel with a child to watch for complications. Instances under these circumstances may seem to be sporadic, but a search reveals the problem to be commonplace (See google, et al.). Complacency can be fatal.
About Joseph T. McFadden
Retired neurosurgeon, Joseph T. McFadden, writes from firsthand experience witnessing abuses and tragedy in the medical system. His fiction works introduce richly developed characters, exciting plots of intrigue, and romance. Intelligent and relatable heroes and heroines parry with dark and twisted villains, and surprise twists keep the reader on the edge of her seat until the very end.
Joseph T. McFadden is the author of six works including his award-winning first novel Hermes’ Viper, The Wafer, Burnt Offering, A Hooker in the Choir, Fulton’s Monkey a collection of short stories, and his first non-fiction work Life in the Deadly World of Medicine, a guidebook for modern healthcare.
How to find a good surgeon
How does a person find a good doctor, surgeon, internist, or whatever specialist might be needed? The answer to this question is not easy to come by and its importance cannot be over estimated. The family doctor usually can be trusted to make the referral, but there are also many other sources to finding a trusted specialist. The patient’s choice of doctors is critical.
Among many other sources of information, the computer has brought a world of enlightenment and will continue to evolve as an almost limitless source. Start with the Yellow Pages for a name then go to “American Medical Association” website, http://www.ama-assn.org/, and click on “Doctor Finder.” This source provides information on licensed physicians in the United States, some 690,000 entries, supplying basic information on the doctor’s training. The AMA also publishes a four-volume Directory of Physicians in the United States, available in public libraries.
Another source, The Official ABMS Directory of Board-Certified Medical Specialists, lists the names and the description of each person’s training. This four-volume reference also can be found in public libraries. It lists all the specialists including family practices in each town, and provides a short biography describing the training of each doctor. The reference books would serve better than accessing the ABMS directory online, since some channels of information require registration and a fee.
Information about any particular doctor can be found on one of several search engines. For instance, at www.google.com, “Virtual hospital” is a digital library of health information. These routes reveal the training background of various specialists. HealthGrades, an online service, will supply a report on any physician for a fee (see their web site at www.healthgrades.com).
A board-certified doctor has completed a course of postgraduate training in a chosen specialty and has passed an examination given by the board members of his particular field. The doctor has taken the training and learned the didactic material. The certificate means little more. It says nothing about manual skills, honesty, morals, dedication to excellence, sobriety, health, ethics, compassion, charity, or sanity.
Every state medical society maintains a web site with information about its licensed medical practitioners. This includes a list of the physicians under investigation and those who have received disciplinary action.
If a diagnosis is not to your liking, other opinions are invaluable when properly obtained. Be wary of the method. The old adage “birds of a feather flock together” especially applies to medicine. It is safer to seek the second opinion independently. If the source of the first opinion makes the referral to the source of the second opinion, he is not likely to pick someone who is a threat to his own level of competence. Also, when one doctor asks another doctor for a mandatory second opinion on behalf of his patient, usually through a planned arrangement for such examinations, there is a tacit agreement against the second doctor’s taking over the treatment and a tendency for the two to agree. Go for another opinion instead of a second opinion, and without a referral from the source of the first opinion. This route makes it easier to choose another doctor. No one belongs to any doctor, nor does the doctor belong to any one patient until committed. Doctors make mistakes too, and misdiagnosis is not an infrequent occurrence.
Whatever characteristics are to be found in people in general will be found in doctors, too, from the near perfect, gifted, capable, dedicated humanitarian, to the callused crook and the murderous psychopath, and just as dangerous, the inept person who is blinded by his own egotism. With any new doctor be careful until you know.
About Joseph T. McFadden
Retired neurosurgeon, Joseph T. McFadden, writes from firsthand experience witnessing abuses and tragedy in the medical system. His fiction works introduce richly developed characters, exciting plots of intrigue, and romance. Intelligent and relatable heroes and heroines parry with dark and twisted villains, and surprise twists keep the reader on the edge of her seat until the very end.
Joseph T. McFadden is the author of six works including his award-winning first novel Hermes’ Viper, The Wafer, Burnt Offering, A Hooker in the Choir, Fulton’s Monkey a collection of short stories, and his first non-fiction work Life in the Deadly World of Medicine, a guidebook for modern healthcare.
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Death By Disease: Myth and Fact
Down through the ages, millions of people died from ordinary infections, and the toll mounted sporadically as epidemics, plagues, and pestilence swept through Europe, Asia, and other countries, sometimes reducing the population by more than 40 percent. Waves of terror seized and panicked people in the wake of these disasters. Modern public health measures have eradicated most sources of scourges such as bubonic plague, anthrax, smallpox, and cholera, with only an occasional and limited outbreak occurring in scattered areas of the world’s population. Malaria remains a problem in several countries.
Varro in 36 BC warned against living near swamps because they bred minute creatures “… which cannot be seen by the eyes, which float in the air and enter the body through the mouth and nose and there cause serious diseases.” (Varro On Agriculture 1, xii Loeb—via google). Despite this ancient and startling insight, further development would be delayed some two thousand years, the cause of these disasters remaining a mystery to mankind until germs were discovered in the mid-nineteenth century. Then, truly effective agents against infections did not appear for another 70 years.
So, just what is a germ? The term has become muddled from overuse. A fresh look in the dictionary helps to bring back reality: Webster defines it as “A microorganism causing disease.” Microorganism means you can’t see the organism without the micro-scope or other magnification. And there is no old adage more characteristic of human thinking than this one: “Out of sight, out of mind,” so the threat even today is too often ignored.
Here in the early twenty-first century, no one younger than 60 can even imagine the human predicament when no drugs were available to fight any one of the hundreds of deadly microorganisms. Death in ages gone by was commonplace from infections now easily controlled. Penicillin was discovered, in fact rediscovered, about 1930, yet its clinical application was delayed another 10 years. With this start, the antibiotic era developed during the remainder of the twentieth century, and continues to evolve. Before the era of antibiotics, infected flesh-and-bone injuries, pneumonia, meningitis, gangrene, gonorrhea, syphilis, peritonitis, diphtheria, typhoid fever, dysentery, and others ran a course determined only by the victim’s innate body defenses.
Although antibiotics changed the grim realities of uncontrollable infections, they are not effective against all strains of infective agents, particularly certain causes of pneumonia, meningitis, wound infections, and others. Existing drugs have saved millions of lives, but infection remains the major destroyer of life. Many infections and deaths are preventable, and too many are related to the hospital environment. Such disasters have been occurring for a long time and probably gave rise to the term, “pest house,” or the even more damning, “pest hole.” Doubtless, such complications are as old as the first hospital. Until the discovery of microorganisms (bacteria in this instance) mankind was totally blind to this invisible and deadly enemy.
Dr. Joseph T. McFadden
Retired neurosurgeon, Joseph T. McFadden, writes from firsthand experience witnessing abuses and tragedy in the medical system. His fiction works introduce richly developed characters, exciting plots of intrigue, and romance. Intelligent and relatable heroes and heroines parry with dark and twisted villains, and surprise twists keep the reader on the edge of her seat until the very end.
Joseph T. McFadden is the author of six works including his award-winning first novel Hermes’ Viper, The Wafer, Burnt Offering, A Hooker in the Choir, Fulton’s Monkey a collection of short stories, and his first non-fiction work Life in the Deadly World of Medicine, a guidebook for modern healthcare.
The dangers of mixing herbal remedies with prescribed medical treatments
Many herbs and teas have a medicinal effect, and some of the herbs currently in the ranks of alternative medicine will no doubt be assimilated into conventional medicine as evaluations continue. No intelligent person can quarrel with the use of herbs and other plants, but he certainly has legitimate reason to be reluctant about the foolish practice of using this approach to replace proven conventional medicine, and the indiscriminant and often deceptive mixing of both. Reckless claims for one or another herb should be received with skepticism.
To become a diehard adherent to alternative medicine and accept unfounded claims without doing adequate research is to join the ranks of the ignorant, superstitious, and foolhardy. Government regulation exerts a certain control over the use of drugs and treatments in conventional medicine, while alternative medicine, largely an unregulated industry, leaves the naïve and the gullible to fend for themselves.
Most ingredients in herbal remedies produce no recognizable signs of poisoning, but anything could be in the bottle just purchased. Since it is unregulated, the pills can contain something else, or be diluted to a useless level even if truly effective for any ailment at any strength. Herbal remedies may deprive a person of precious time when a treatable but progressive disease takes over. Some of the herbal and so called natural mixtures contain animal parts and animal excrement. Many adherents of alternative medicine are seldom bothered by doubt when taking unproven remedies.
Beware of positive statements about various herbs, weeds, and concoctions. For safety they should not be mixed with prescription drugs. Unless controlled studies have been done on a particular remedy, its effect on normal body functions—the everyday physiology and metabolism—is not known. In the body’s complex chemical factory, a little of the wrong substance can be deadly. For example, a taste of cyanide or a drop of nicotine can be a fatal dose. Other natural remedies might have a more prolonged and subtle action, and a variety taken over time can have a cumulative effect, causing anything from minor illness to sudden death.
This is not the place to question or to support the claims for herbs such as ginseng, kava, ginkgo biloba, St. John’s wort, feverfew, or the many others. But it is the place to point out some of the dangers. The American Association of Anesthesiologists warns against using interactive herbal remedies with conventional drugs and recommends the discontinuation of all herbal supplements at least two weeks before surgery. For instance, ginkgo biloba increases the action of blood thinners such as Coumadin or aspirin, and may cause difficulty in controlling bleeding at the time of surgery and thus ruin an opera¬tion by postoperative bleeding.
Before taking any herbal supplement resort to modern enlightenment. Get on a web site and read about the remedies, the complications, the contraindications, but cull the hype put out by hucksters trying to sell the product. At this point something should be said about these people, something which no one should ever forget: they are in business to sell, and to do so they take reckless risk with human life and well being, and play loose and fancy free with the truth. A typical approach is to lead the person in need to believe the worst about doctors and medicine, accusing them and the system of hiding the truth for the sake of their own profit. Thus statements such as what the doctors don’t want you to know, or what the drug companies don’t want you to know, written or announced in such a way as to lead the person to believe there are miraculous cures for cancer and other deadly diseases being withheld or hidden in order to protect the doctors and the hospital incomes. At least one of these peddlers, an ex-convict, blatantly makes false statements with no evidence to prove his claims of deception by doctors and drug companies. He has made millions of dollars from his books full of misinformation and his at best useless concoctions. Anyone inclined to take such a person seriously should first go to the trouble of finding out the facts on one or more search engines such as Google. This also should be said—if a cure for a disease is available, the public here in the twenty-first century and the medical community will embrace it as soon as or even before it meets safety standards. Contrary to hiding effective treatment, they are desperately constantly looking for it. Their resistance to change wears down quickly in the face of successful treatment.
Read “Life in The Deadly World of Medicine” for more information on healthcare trends to avoid.
Finding the Correct Doctor May Save Your Life
How does a person find a good doctor, surgeon, internist, or whatever specialist might be needed? The answer to this question is not easy to come by and its importance cannot be over estimated. The family doctor usually can be trusted to make the referral, but there are also many other sources to finding a trusted specialist. The patient’s choice of doctors is critical.
Among many other sources of information, the computer has brought a world of enlightenment and will continue to evolve as an almost limitless source. Start with the Yellow Pages for a name then go to “American Medical Association” website, http://www.ama-assn.org/, and click on “Doctor Finder.” This source provides information on licensed physi cians in the United States, some 690,000 entries, supplying basic information on the doctor’s training. The AMA also publishes a four-volume Directory of Physicians in the United States, available in public libraries.
Another source, The Of ficial ABMS Directory of Board-Certified Medical Specialists, lists the names and the description of each person’s training. This four-volume reference also can be found in public libraries. It lists all the specialists including family practices in each town, and provides a short biography describing the training of each doctor. The reference books would serve better than accessing the ABMS directory online, since some channels of information require registration and a fee.
Information about any particular doctor can be found on one of several search engines. For instance, at www.google.com, “Virtual hospital” is a digital library of health information. These routes reveal the training background of various specialists. HealthGrades, an online service, will supply a report on any physician for a fee (see their web site at www.healthgrades.com).
A board-certified doctor has completed a course of postgraduate training in a chosen specialty and has passed an examination given by the board members of his particular field. The doctor has taken the training and learned the didactic material. The certificate means little more. It says nothing about manual skills, honesty, morals, dedication to excellence, sobriety, health, ethics, compassion, charity, or sanity.
Every state medical society maintains a web site with information about its licensed medical practitioners. This includes a list of the physicians under investigation and those who have received disciplinary action.
If a diagnosis is not to your liking, other opinions are in valuable when properly obtained. Be wary of the method. The old adage “birds of a feather flock together” especially applies to medicine. It is safer to seek the second opinion independently. If the source of the first opinion makes the referral to the source of the second opinion, he is not likely to pick someone who is a threat to his own level of competence. Also, when one doctor asks another doctor for a mandatory second opinion on behalf of his patient, usually through a planned arrangement for such examinations, there is a tacit agreement against the second doctor’s taking over the treatment and a tendency for the two to agree. Go for another opinion instead of a second opinion, and without a referral from the source of the first opinion. This route makes it easier to choose another doctor. No one belongs to any doctor, nor does the doctor belong to any one patient until committed. Doctors make mistakes too, and misdiagnosis is not an infrequent occurrence.
Whatever characteristics are to be found in people in general will be found in doctors, too, from the near perfect, gifted, capable, dedicated humanitarian, to the callused crook and the murderous psychopath, and just as dangerous, the inept person who is blinded by his own egotism. With any new doctor be careful until you know.
Gland issue causes Cushing’s disease
Q: Please give me information on Cushing’s disease. What are its symptoms? How is it diagnosed? How is it treated?
A: A round face resembling a full moon; weight gain, especially in the trunk area; thin skin that is easily traumatized; facial-hair growth in women; loss of periods; erectile dysfunction; an outbreak of acne; purple stretch marks; osteoporosis; a rise in blood sugar; and elevated blood pressure are some of the signs and symptoms of Cushing’s disease.
Harvey Cushing was a famous American surgeon who died in 1939. He discovered that a pituitary tumor caused the above signs and symptoms that now bear his name. The pituitary gland is a small gland located on the underside of the brain. It releases hormones that stimulate other glands, such as the thyroid, adrenal, ovary and testes, into action.
Read more at the Columbus Dispatch.
Vitamin D3: A Misnamed But Vital Element for Good Health
Vitamin D is a pair of complex, essential nutrients that the human body uses to grow and develop healthily. Ergocalciferol and cholecalciferol are the two forms of D vitamins and are known as vitamins D2 and D3 respectively. Both of these nutrients must be incorporated in the diet to prevent harmful deficiencies.
An interesting fact is that “vitamin” is a misnomer for D3. Vitamins are important nutrient that are produced by plants. Vitamin D2 is found in fungus species and plants, so it fits the definition of vitamin. Vitamin D2 can be ingested naturally through vitamin-fortified foods such as cereal, juice and milk. Vitamin D3 is actually a hormone that is produced naturally within animals when the skin’s surface is exposed to sunlight. Indeed, the human body produces vitamin D3, but most people do not synthesize healthy levels of the nutrient.
Because of the preoccupation with the harmful effects of too much sun, most people do not get enough of it. Similarly, foods rich in vitamin D3, including egg yolks, sardines, fortified whole milk, mackerel and beef liver are unpopular or demonized by popular diet plans. As a result of the reluctance of consumers, supplementing vitamin D3 is suggested for many adults; however, it is unwise to rush to the vitamin shelf in the drug store and grab the first bottle marked “D.” A generic vitamin D tablet is likely to contain high levels of vitamin D2. While D2 is healthy in small amounts, large quantities of the vitamin can be toxic to the body. In contrast, there is no risk of toxicity with vitamin D3. Foods are uncommonly enriched with vitamin D3, but it can be found on sale in pill or liquid form.
Vitamin D3 helps the body absorb calcium and works to control the immune system. A lack of sufficient vitamin D3 can leave your body more vulnerable to autoimmune diseases and cancer. Obesity, kidney stones, fibromyalgia, type two diabetes, psoriasis and chronic fatigue syndrome are all linked to vitamin D3 deficiency. Mental conditions may rise from a lack of vitamin D3, as well. Those with insufficient levels of vitamin D3 have suffered from mood swings, depression and even Alzheimer’s disease.
Continue Reading here.
Blood Glucose Health: Nutritional Support for Good Health
A healthy blood glucose level is vital to maintaining overall good health. Proper diet is just one of the important components of effective blood glucose management. Dietary supplements can be a beneficial way to help maintain blood glucose levels already within the normal range, or simply a way to help promote optimal nutritional status.
Learn more how the following nutrients may be appropriate to help you achieve and maintain normal, healthy blood glucose levels and overall health:
Get more information HERE.
New study shows health insurance premium spikes in every state
The analysis of federal data by the Commonwealth Fund, an independent research organization, shed new light on the state-by-state picture while essentially confirming a national trend, highlighted in other recent surveys of employer-sponsored insurance, of greater premiums for skimpier benefits.
The District of Columbia had the highest annual total premiums, including both the employer’s and the worker’s share. In 2010, they averaged $5,644 for a single policy and $15,206 for a family version — a rise of 51 percent and 41 percent, respectively, since 2003.
But the costs were significant even in states with some of the lowest average rates, such as Alabama, where a single policy averaged $4,571 in total premiums and a family version reached $12,409. Maryland and Virginia were roughly in the middle of the pack.
“Although employees typically don’t see the total cost of their insurance, the sharp increase, in effect, means lower wages and salaries as employers make the trade-off between increasing wages and offering insurance,” said Cathy Schoen, a co-author of the study.
Continue Reading at the Washington Post.
Shot Might One Day Help Lower Cholesterol
Preliminary research suggests that a single injection of a man-made protein might lower levels of “bad” cholesterol.
Given in the abdomen, AMG145 reduced low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels among a group of healthy volunteers. The shot turned off a newly identified cholesterol regulator, PCSK9, which interferes with the liver’s ability to clear bad cholesterol from the bloodstream.
The findings were presented Monday at the American Heart Association (AHA) annual meeting in Orlando, Fla. The study was funded by AMG145 manufacturer Amgen Inc.
High cholesterol is a major risk factor for heart disease. The first step toward lowering cholesterol is typically lifestyle changes, which include eating a low-fat diet and regular physical activity. For some, medications such as statins must be added to get cholesterol levels where they ought to be. Even this is not enough to get everyone’s numbers into the safety zone, and not everyone can tolerate currently available medications. An LDL of less than 100 mg/dL of blood is considered optimal.
Study author Clapton Dias, medical sciences director of clinical pharmacology and early development at Amgen, in Thousand Oaks, Calif., said this shot could be given as an add-on to current cholesterol-lowering therapies for people who are not getting as low as they should be or as a standalone treatment for people who can’t tolerate existing lipid-lowering drugs.
“Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death in the U.S., and while statins are very effective, a good proportion of people are not meeting their goals, and in this setting the shot could be a valuable addition,” he said.
Red more at Health.com
A Hooker in the Choir
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