Progress in Medicine

 Reading a biography of Lady Bird Johnson.  LBJ had gall bladder surgery, meaning an "enormous scar" which he showed off to the media and almost 2 weeks in the hospital.

My wife had surgery maybe 15 years ago, laparoscopic, and three days in the hospital (one pre-op because it wasn't scheduled), and today apparently it can be out-patient.

The Marvels of Modern Medicine

I've some loss of hearing, so have been using hearing aids for about a year.  I don't wear them all the time, mostly when going out or watching movies. By themselves they are a marvel, small enough to fit inside the ear. The inside the ear bit is complicated--a tube, a little jobbie which fits into the tube but can be replaced when it gets clogged with earwax, and a rubber/plastic shield which fits over the jobbie which seems also to protect against earwas.

Anyhow I've used the aids often enough that I've had to replace the shield and the jobbie a couple times.  But two weeks ago a confluence of errors,including failing to test that the shield was securely attached, meant that the shield came off and was stuck way inside my ear.  Uncomfortable.

Anyhow after some days in denial, I went to the doctors.  My internist wasn't able to reach it, so I got a referral to an EMT specialist.  He had this machine connected to a TV screen so when he inserted his implement into my ear both he and eye could see the shield inside the ear canal. No sooner had I realized what I was seeing than he'd grabbed the shield with the implement and removed it.  Total elapsed time < 1 minute.

I don't know how economists account for such improvements in productivity.

Good News Today: Multiple Myeloma

The NYTimes has column today on good news this week.  I'll add to it:  

Kevin Drum reports on the progress being made on multiple myeloma--the disease he's been fighting for years.  He's hopeful, which is great news for many, but especially for devoted readers of him, which I am.

Beware of Innocent Seeming Names

Someone, I suspect on Powerline but I'm not sure, included a link to this site, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.   It seems be an okay organization, but a skeptical eye might note this mission statement:

"Since 1943, AAPS has been dedicated to the highest ethical standards of the Oath of Hippocrates and to preserving the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship and the practice of private medicine."

 The "private" is a give-away, to me at least.  Back in the day the American Medical Association was a pillar of the fight against socialized medicine.  But my suspicion is that they didn't fight strongly enough, so a splinter group founded the AAPS to be more stalwart.

(I swear until I started writing this 10 minutes ago I hadn't checked the wikipedia entry.)

Modern Health Care: Dentistry

I know I've been lucky with my teeth, very few problems, certainly mainly less than I deserved considering the care I've given them.

I hate dentists.  When and where I grew up, one went to the dentist only when there was a big problem.  I think I went once in my teens.  Then came the Army and I had 2-3 small cavities filled. There was one trip to a dentist in my 40's, ruined by a young know-it-all hygenist who lectured me on tooth care. Sometimes I'm humble, but not that humble.

Finally in my 60's I finally had a crisis--bad wisdom tooth which had to come out.  After that I started seeing a dentist every 6 months.  He was my ideal dentist: had no hygenist, did his own cleaning, silent, we exchanged no more than a couple sentences each visit.   He retired, right when my other wisdom tooth started acting up.  After a couple years I finally arranged to see a new dentist.  On the morning of my appointment, half the wisdom tooth fell out.

I was impressed by my dentist's setup--the x-rays were displayed on a tablet computer, as was each procedure with its (high) cost. Though I didn't like the switch from taking a sip of water to rinse one's mouth to having a suction tube setup.  Anyhow, I got a referral to a specialist for the wisdom tooth, which I used this morning.  My dentist's office was able to email the xrays to the specialist's office, so they were able to extract what was left of the tooth without a prior appointment; total elapsed time maybe 40 minutes from the time I walked in the door.  That's impressive.  Perhaps less impressive is the multiplication of jobs in the field of dentistry, but that's looking a gift horse in the mouth.

The Wisdom of Engineers

For some reason, although the engineers (former engineers) whose blogs I follow are more conservative than I, they often have posts with which I agree, or at least appreciate.

John Phipps has a good post on "The survival rate scam" for cancer (i.e., better detection at earlier stages doesn't mean much).

The always impressive Walt Jeffries at Sugar Mountain Farm summarizes the year's achievements in building the butcher shop.

Steve Jobs and Medicine

The blogger at Respectful Insolence specializes in taking down the "woo" merchants, by which he means anyone who pushes "alternative" or "holistic" medicine. I like his posts, though they usually run longer than I've the patience for and require more medical knowledge than I can muster.  But today's post is on Steve Jobs and his pancreatic cancer and he surprises by concluding Jobs' life couldn't have been saved, probably, even if he had strictly followed all the prescriptions of conventional medicine.