treatment
One morning last June, Colorado mom Patricia Byrne went online to read her Canton, Mass., hometown newspaper. What she read changed her life: an obituary for a 26-year-old young man who was a childhood playmate of her children. The cause of death: heroin overdose.
An epidemic of heroin addiction is spreading among young adults, yet for the most part, the problem remains hidden. Shamed parents, blaming themselves and wondering what they did wrong, struggle alone. As one boomer mom told me, “No one wants to announce to family and friends that their son is a drug addict.”
Older patients are not the same as younger patients. You’d think this was obvious, yet doctors often use a one-size-fits-all approach to prescribing treatment that can put their older patients at risk.
The swift, lethal nature of brain cancer — and the terrible decisions it forces families to face — has been in the news recently, with three of its victims forcing us to think about choices we hope we never have to make.
Should older adults be routinely screened for Alzheimer's disease or memory problems? Maybe, maybe not. A government panel says there's not yet enough data to recommend either for or against it. The panel's uncertainty reflects the complexity of the issue at a time when scientists are progressing much faster in their ability to diagnose Alzheimer's than in their ability to treat it.
It's a large, new study that raises doubts about the value of mammograms in preventing breast cancer deaths, but a lot of the publicity and debate about it seems to have missed an important point.
By Jenny Gold, Correspondent, Kaiser Health News
A government investigation reveals that doctors who have a financial interest in a radiation center are more likely to prescribe such treatment for older men with prostate cancer, possibly leading to unneeded procedures, negative side effects and a bloated medical bill.
If a new medical treatment could slow aging and allow you to live to 120, would you want to?
Interesting. Very interesting. While anti-aging treatments are all the craze these days in the plight to live forever, some folks are finding that, ironically, these new medicines that are supposed to elongate your life may actually be dangerous to it: