Throwing Down the (Green) Gauntlet

From the American College of Gastroenterology annual meeting, San Diego
I was pleasantly surprised to see the American College of Gastroenterology promoting its eco-friendly iniatives at its annual meeting. So much so, in fact, that I think the ACG has thrown down a green gauntlet. Will other medical societies take up the challenge? Anyone know of [...]

Poke Your GI Colleagues

From the American College of Gastroenterology annual meeting, San Diego
The Mayo Clinic has a Facebook page. The Cleveland Clinic posts to YouTube. But the American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) has outdone them both.
Borrowing a page from Facebook and other social media, the ACG has launched its own social-professional networking site, and apparently is the first [...]

To Go With Your Cafe Au Lait: The Policy and Practice Podcast

From congressional hearings, press briefings and other health reform goings-on, Washington, D.C.
Gooooooooooooooooooooooooddddddddddddddd Morning, Washington!
OK, it’s mid-morning here, but it’s still morning on the Left Coast.  While ya’ll are enjoying your cafe au lait and beignets and Congress is off home to play, the hard-working staff here at the International Medical News Group has produced yet another [...]

Indecent Disclosure?

From the Digestive Disease Week, Chicago.
Walking around McCormick Place this week, one was struck by what was — and was not — in evidence, given all the hoo-ha over conflict of interest in medicine these days.  In the last few years, attendees were heaped up with purple-festooned items emblazoned with “Nexium“, the ubiquitous ”Purple Pill” that [...]

The Electric Kandy-Colored Metamucil Test

From Digestive Disease Week, Chicago.
So this meeting is, theoretically, a 10-year-old boy’s dream..approximately 16,000 gastroenterologists and hepatologists discussing what goes on from the mouth out through the rear end. I’ve yet to hear anyone say “poop,” “fart,” or “burp,” but I did enounter a “Dr. Butt.”  All kidding aside, there’s plenty of fiber to go around [...]

Surfing is a risk factor for GERD

from the Society of General Internal Medicine annual meeting, Miami Beach
Surfers have a 3.7 times increased risk of gastroesophageal reflux disorder (GERD), according to a study that compared reflux symptoms in 185 surfers and 178 nonsurfing athletes.
“I’m a surfer,” said Dr. Marc Kaneshiro, an internal medicine resident at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.  He and his [...]

I’m a Small World After All

from the Atlantic Dermatological Conference in Baltimore
The body of the average human adult plays host to roughly zillions of microorganisms, some of which perform necessary tasks that our own bodies can’t.  Exactly who are all of these hitchikers, where are they, and what are they doing?  That’s exactly what NIH’s Human Microbiome Project is going to try [...]

What’s So Hot About GWAS?

From the National Cancer Institute’s Science Writers’ Seminar, Gaithersburg, Md.
If you’ve read any medical literature or been to a medical meeting lately, chances are that you’ve heard of GWAS—genome-wide association studies.  GWAS are hot and with good reason. Genetic studies of the past have been limited either to looking at linkages among related individuals or to the [...]

Liver Donation After Cardiac Death Still A Work in Progress

From the annual meeting of the Central Surgical Association, Sarasota, Fla.:
Surgeons transplanted more than 6,000 donor livers into recipients in the United States in 2007, but that number may not seem so impressive when you consider that more than 16,000 patients remained on the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network’s waiting list and more than 2,000 people died [...]