Bogus dentist accused of kissing buttocks of woman with toothache
Erika Pesantes for the Sun-Sentinel:
A 47-year-old man has been accused of posing as a dentist, treating a woman for a toothache and kissing her buttocks after administering an injection, according to a Hollywood police report.
This guy seems legit.
Ranbaxy recalls generic Lipitor doses
Linda A. Johnson, AP:
Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals Inc. has recalled dozens of lots of its generic version of cholesterol drug Lipitor because some may contain tiny glass particles, the latest in a string of manufacturing deficiencies that once led U.S. regulators to bar imports of the Indian company’s medicines.
Glass particles in pills. This is frightening. I am frightened.
fMRI used to communicate with brain damaged patient
Fergus Walsh, BBC News:
A Canadian man who was believed to have been in a vegetative state for more than a decade, has been able to tell scientists that he is not in any pain.
It’s the first time an uncommunicative, severely brain-injured patient has been able to give answers clinically relevant to their care.
Freezing Human Eggs for In Vitro Fertilization No Longer Experimental Procedure
Margaret Warner on Friday’s episode of PBS NewsHour:
Doctors started freezing and then thawing eggs for in vitro fertilization, or IVF, years ago, but in very few cases, and the procedure has been considered experimental.
Today, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine shifted its position, saying the process shouldn’t be labeled experimental any longer. It said babies born from frozen eggs are as healthy as those from fresh eggs. But the committee said the procedure should be limited in its use.
The new recommendation will make this available for coverage on insurance plans that don’t cover experimental procedures. Warner interviews a doctor who co-chaired the committee and a director of the Center for Genetics and Society on why the committee recommended limitations and impact on society and the fertility industry.
Sheriff: Man stole doctor’s ID, saw 500 patients
Jeffrey Collins of the AP has decided that you don’t need to fall asleep ever again:
A man stole a physician’s identity and pretended to be a doctor for a year in South Carolina, and now investigators are combing through medical records to see whether he harmed any of the hundreds of patients he treated, authorities said.
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[Ernest] Addo did have some medical training, and acted enough like a doctor not to raise any serious suspicion beyond one nurse — interviewed after Addo’s Aug. 24, arrest — who wondered why he consulted ask.com when she questioned his treatment plan, Metts said.
Yes, that’s right. Think about how the next doctor you see could be an impostor without a medical license who has been there for a year without detection. Feel it.
Brazilian women rebel against cesarean births
Juliana Barbassa, AP:
In Brazil, where natural childbirth fell out of favor years ago, more than half of all babies are born via cesarean section, a figure that rises to 82 percent for women with private health insurance.
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The reasons behind Brazil’s high rates are many. Experts say a longstanding interventionist approach to vaginal births made them more painful and stressful than necessary. All this gave C-sections a reputation as being a more predictable, safe, painless and modern way to deliver.
Pretty bizarre situation in Brazil. A C-section is still abdominal surgery, so it’s not this totally magic thing.
Probe: data in 172 papers by Toho University medical researcher fabricated
Report from Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun:
The Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists (JSA) on June 29 announced the results of an investigation finding that at least 172 research papers by Yoshitaka Fujii, a former associate professor of anesthesiology at Toho University, contained fabricated data.
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The investigation covered 212 papers listing Fujii as an author in 41 journals between 1991 an 2011. The society judged 172 papers published since 1993 were fabricated as they could not confirm experiments had actually been conducted, due to factors such as missing raw data and an absence of details on the administration of medications.
One hundred and seventy-two papers with confirmed fabricated data. That’s insane.
Gladstone Scientists Regenerate Damaged Hearts By Transforming Scar Tissue into Beating Heart Muscle
Cool medical news out of the Gladstone Institutes (affiliated with UC San Francisco):
“The damage from a heart attack is typically permanent because heart-muscle cells — deprived of oxygen during the attack — die and scar tissue forms,” said [Deepak] Srivastava, a UCSF professor who directs cardiovascular and stem cell research at Gladstone, an independent and nonprofit biomedical-research institution. “But our experiments in mice are a proof of concept that we can reprogram non-beating cells directly into fully functional, beating heart cells — offering an innovative and less invasive way to restore heart function after a heart attack.”
In laboratory experiments with mice that had experienced a heart attack, Qian and Srivastava delivered three genes that normally guide embryonic heart development — together known as GMT — directly into the damaged region. Within a month, non-beating cells that normally form scar tissue transformed into beating heart-muscle cells. Within three months, the hearts were beating even stronger and pumping more blood.
Next is to test if the technique scales up larger animals.
83 year-old woman got 3D printed mandible
3ders.org translation of a story from the Dutch newspaper De Pers:
The University of Hasselt (Belgium) announced today that Belgian and Dutch scientists have successfully replacing a lower jaw with a 3D printed model for a 83 year-old woman. According to the researchers, It is the first custom-made implant in the world to replace an entire lower jaw.
The lower jaw of the elderly woman was badly infected and needed to be removed. Considering the age of the patient, a “classical” microsurgical reconstructive surgery takes too long time and can be risky. Therefore a tailor-made implant is the best choice.
Normally it takes a few days to produce a custom implant, but with 3D printing technology it takes only a few hours.
Medicine is one of the most exciting applications of 3D printers.
Pfizer tries to protect Lipitor from generics
AP report:
Pfizer has devised discounts and incentives for patients, insurers and companies that process prescriptions that will, at least for the next six months, make the brand name drug about as cheap as or cheaper than the generics. Pfizer also has spent tens of millions of dollars this year on marketing to keep patients on Lipitor, which loses patent protection Wednesday.
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Typically, brand-name drugs get one or two generic competitors initially, priced about 25 percent lower. Six months later, other generic companies are allowed to jump in and the price drops up to 80 percent.
About 90 percent of the branded drug’s sales ultimately vanish, as insured patients seeking a lower copayment switch over and most pharmacies automatically substitute a generic for a brand name.
I’m not really sure how I feel about this. Potentially an anti-competitive move, but either way ends up for lower prices (Merck did a similar thing with Zocor in 2006). Merrill Goozner wrote a piece for The Fiscal Times about this move from a financial perspective.