This is the occasional post made as I review the latest journal articles to come out. (As a disclaimer, this stuff is kinda fluid. Medicine sort of hones in on a conclusion. Initial studies look promising and then stuff later is confirmed or disproven. So one study often doesn’t prove or disprove a theory)
- people have less kidney stones down the road if the urologist removes asymptomatic stones while they’re removing symptomatic ones.
-For hernia repair out of three surgical options - open, laparoscopic and robotic - robotic has easily the worst outcomes.——This one is really interesting. These robots are shiny toys but seem to be as much of an advertising ploy as anything. A surgeon I know recently told me, “these robots are great, now I can do the same surgery in twice the time.” (Note I’m not a surgeon and I’m sure this whole topic is much more nuanced)
-patients who develop generalized pruritus (they get itchy) for no obvious reason have a higher rate of leukemia and leukemia like cancers (this is already known but seems worth mentioning)
-fish oil supplements do not help dry eyes (the magnitude to which “supplements” fail in studies is staggering)
-“viscosupplementation” (hyaluronic acid injections) don’t help knee arthritis. It’s been proven for over a decade but industry funded trials continue (sometimes unpublished).
-hypothermia looks to not be helpful in out of hospital cardiac arrest. —- this practice looks to be going out of favor.
and that’s enough. There’s always some COVID studies, but since people seem to absolutely lose their mind over these, i think I’ll just hold off
edit - I’d like to mention that the sglt2 inhibitor class (ozempic, wegovy, etc) are absolutely frikin killing it for weight loss. So far they also don’t have an Achilles heel (disclaimer everything has side effects and all drugs are good except for when they’re bad). There’s no study on these this month, but if you’re thinking about weight loss you may want to talk to your doc about it. Also think Canadian pharmacies, because if you’re insurance doesn’t help they’re astronomically expensive.
- people have less kidney stones down the road if the urologist removes asymptomatic stones while they’re removing symptomatic ones.
-For hernia repair out of three surgical options - open, laparoscopic and robotic - robotic has easily the worst outcomes.——This one is really interesting. These robots are shiny toys but seem to be as much of an advertising ploy as anything. A surgeon I know recently told me, “these robots are great, now I can do the same surgery in twice the time.” (Note I’m not a surgeon and I’m sure this whole topic is much more nuanced)
-patients who develop generalized pruritus (they get itchy) for no obvious reason have a higher rate of leukemia and leukemia like cancers (this is already known but seems worth mentioning)
-fish oil supplements do not help dry eyes (the magnitude to which “supplements” fail in studies is staggering)
-“viscosupplementation” (hyaluronic acid injections) don’t help knee arthritis. It’s been proven for over a decade but industry funded trials continue (sometimes unpublished).
-hypothermia looks to not be helpful in out of hospital cardiac arrest. —- this practice looks to be going out of favor.
and that’s enough. There’s always some COVID studies, but since people seem to absolutely lose their mind over these, i think I’ll just hold off
edit - I’d like to mention that the sglt2 inhibitor class (ozempic, wegovy, etc) are absolutely frikin killing it for weight loss. So far they also don’t have an Achilles heel (disclaimer everything has side effects and all drugs are good except for when they’re bad). There’s no study on these this month, but if you’re thinking about weight loss you may want to talk to your doc about it. Also think Canadian pharmacies, because if you’re insurance doesn’t help they’re astronomically expensive.
