Medicine
My last Medscape video commentary of 2015 discusses the draft Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guideline for primary care clinicians who prescribe opioids for patients with chronic non-cancer pain. Twice as many people died from overdoses of prescription opioids than from heroin overdoses in 2014, and although some have wanted to blame the problem on a small number of high-volume prescribers operating "pill mills," family physicians - myself included - bear some responsibility for overprescribing these medications and must be part of the solution.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Laurie Scudder and her team at Medscape Family Medicine for inviting me to tape these monthly physician-oriented pieces, giving me complete freedom to choose the topics, and for adhering to the highest standard of professionalism throughout the process.
Here is a complete list of my commentaries this year:
1. Lung Cancer: To Screen or Not to Screen (1/16/15)
2. Transforming Primary Care One House Call at a Time (3/31/15)
3. Can Patients Understand the Concept of Overdiagnosis? (4/7/15)
4. Screening Mammography Guidelines: The Change Clinicians Should Know (5/29/15)
5. Conflicts of Interest and Guidelines: Is Bias A Worry? (7/27/15)
6. Primary Care Training: Follow the Money (8/7/15)
7. "Death Panels": Moving Beyond the Rhetoric (9/10/15)
8. Breast Cancer Screening: The Evidence Is Piling Up (10/26/15)
9. Putting SPRINT in Focus for Primary Care (11/16/15)
10. Opioid Abuse: A Primary Care-Created Problem? (12/22/15)
- The Best Recent Posts You May Have Missed
Every few months, I post a list of my top 5 favorite posts since the preceding "best of" list on this blog, for those of you who have only recently started reading Common Sense Family Doctor or don't read it regularly. Here are my favorites from January...
- Screening For Hepatitis C And Lung Cancer: Proceed With Caution
Most of my patients don't know (or if they know, don't particularly care) that I blog, but after practicing for nearly three years at the same Washington, DC practice, I am starting to see a few who specifically chose me to be their doctor because...
- The Best Recent Posts You May Have Missed
Every few months, I post a list of my top 5 favorite posts since the preceding "best of" list on this blog, for those of you who have only recently started reading Common Sense Family Doctor or don't read it regularly. Here are my favorites from June,...
- "the Best [colorectal Cancer Screening] Test Is The One That Gets Done"
Last week was a busy one for cancer screening. I could choose to criticize the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's premature guidelines to screen all baby boomers for hepatitis C (which can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer) or the less-than-sound...
- Required Reading
"Lessons from the Mammography Wars" is a terrific commentary by physicians Kerianne Quanstrum and Rodney Hayward that appears in today's New England Journal of Medicine. After recapitulating the now-familiar controversy that ensued last November when...
Medicine
Opioid overprescribing: we have met the enemy, and he is us
My last Medscape video commentary of 2015 discusses the draft Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guideline for primary care clinicians who prescribe opioids for patients with chronic non-cancer pain. Twice as many people died from overdoses of prescription opioids than from heroin overdoses in 2014, and although some have wanted to blame the problem on a small number of high-volume prescribers operating "pill mills," family physicians - myself included - bear some responsibility for overprescribing these medications and must be part of the solution.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Laurie Scudder and her team at Medscape Family Medicine for inviting me to tape these monthly physician-oriented pieces, giving me complete freedom to choose the topics, and for adhering to the highest standard of professionalism throughout the process.
Here is a complete list of my commentaries this year:
1. Lung Cancer: To Screen or Not to Screen (1/16/15)
2. Transforming Primary Care One House Call at a Time (3/31/15)
3. Can Patients Understand the Concept of Overdiagnosis? (4/7/15)
4. Screening Mammography Guidelines: The Change Clinicians Should Know (5/29/15)
5. Conflicts of Interest and Guidelines: Is Bias A Worry? (7/27/15)
6. Primary Care Training: Follow the Money (8/7/15)
7. "Death Panels": Moving Beyond the Rhetoric (9/10/15)
8. Breast Cancer Screening: The Evidence Is Piling Up (10/26/15)
9. Putting SPRINT in Focus for Primary Care (11/16/15)
10. Opioid Abuse: A Primary Care-Created Problem? (12/22/15)
- The Best Recent Posts You May Have Missed
Every few months, I post a list of my top 5 favorite posts since the preceding "best of" list on this blog, for those of you who have only recently started reading Common Sense Family Doctor or don't read it regularly. Here are my favorites from January...
- Screening For Hepatitis C And Lung Cancer: Proceed With Caution
Most of my patients don't know (or if they know, don't particularly care) that I blog, but after practicing for nearly three years at the same Washington, DC practice, I am starting to see a few who specifically chose me to be their doctor because...
- The Best Recent Posts You May Have Missed
Every few months, I post a list of my top 5 favorite posts since the preceding "best of" list on this blog, for those of you who have only recently started reading Common Sense Family Doctor or don't read it regularly. Here are my favorites from June,...
- "the Best [colorectal Cancer Screening] Test Is The One That Gets Done"
Last week was a busy one for cancer screening. I could choose to criticize the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's premature guidelines to screen all baby boomers for hepatitis C (which can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer) or the less-than-sound...
- Required Reading
"Lessons from the Mammography Wars" is a terrific commentary by physicians Kerianne Quanstrum and Rodney Hayward that appears in today's New England Journal of Medicine. After recapitulating the now-familiar controversy that ensued last November when...