Before I start, let’s do a disclaimer: I, myself, John Mandrola, having practiced for nearly 16 years, and having saved and lived frugally, am going to be okay. In the game of medical practice, I am in the sixth or seventh inning. I’m almost done. I write such healthcare essays then, not so much because […]
Category: Doctoring
Healthcare looks much different than it did just a few years ago. When you let your mind wander about where we were, it’s shocking really. There’s cultural changes, including an explosion of complexity of care, an infusion of young doctors with different ideas about life, an evolving set of incentives, employment models and a heck […]
Being mid-week, I had planned to tell you about the recent news concerning the role of fitness as a predictor of real outcomes. Important as this is, it will have to wait. I’ve got something much better. Though it isn’t about exercise; it is about health and happiness and soothing inflammation. Writing this year’s best […]
You may find this hard to believe but I really don’t look at my site’s stats much. In fact, just today I discovered that WordPress has a feature that ranks posts by views. I’m not going to give you my Top Ten just by ranking. Rather, I’ll mix in some of my favorites and those […]
It’s not normal for me to study the literature on pediatric cardiology. There’s more than enough medical science on adults to keep me busy. But this one on the quality of life in kids with cardiac devices caught my eye. Researchers found that kids with either pacemakers or ICDs (defibrillators) and their families reported significantly […]
Categories
Good coaching is good doctoring…
Every once in a while a topic comes up that takes me back to the origins of this blog. At its core, DrJohnM aims to merge the worlds of athletics, health and medicine. The glue, the secret sauce, is mastery of the obvious. As an athlete and doctor, I get to see how both plans […]
I hope my patients are satisfied. This is everything. Improving the lives of people is why doctors do what they do. How much we help our patients is the metric. It’s the peg we hang our self-esteem on. So yes, of course, patient satisfaction is really important. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea […]
If you read one article that explains where we are going in Medicine, read this one. Few procedures have been more entrenched in the dogma of Medical practice than mammograms. In our climate of political correctness and right-think, it would define heretical to suggest a procedure that detects breast cancer–an important killer of women–at an […]
I’ve written two new posts at the end of this week. The first is on the state of heart rhythm medicine, or as we call it, electrophysiology. The editor of the TheHeart.org asked me to look at a recent series of state-of-the-art review papers published in the British journal, the Lancet. The last time the […]
Quick question: What is the most overused word in Cardiology? Hint: We use it as an action verb. To find the answer, you will need to head over to my most recent post at theHeart.org. I tell the story of perhaps my most remarkable patient. Boy, that man taught me an important and timely lesson. […]
I’m tiptoeing out on a limb. In my state of Kentucky, few potatoes are hotter. I started this In the Prime post fully intending to discuss the under-appreciated dangers of NSAIDs (Non-Steroidal-Anti-Inflammatory Drugs), like ibuprofen, naprosyn, and celecoxib (Celebrex). Three things got me thinking about the thorny issue of treating pain. First: More than one […]