The Zika virus outbreak has sparked a massive media campaign to warn women who are pregnant or planning to become pregnant about the dangers of exposure. The ongoing efforts, which we have written about before, are intended to reduce the risk of birth defect or miscarriage. Now, a new study has spurred the US Food [...]
The Zika virus has triggered a global response; countries are pooling information and resources in an unprecedented show of cooperation. Efforts to combat the problem have increased in lockstep with the spread of the disease. One company proposes releasing genetically modified mosquitoes to help reduce the breeding population; others are taking the more tradition route [...]
In 1986, Dr. Hershel Jick wrote a single paragraph letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. In it, he wrote that less than 1% of opioid users would become physically dependent or addicted. His statistic wasn’t wrong, it was merely misrepresented; Dr. Jick was referring to patients who were carefully monitored [...]
On March 8, a Bill that would bring Tennessee’s car seat laws into agreement with recommendations from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was en route to the desk of Governor Bill Haslam to be signed into law. Just two days later, the Tennessee House of Representatives pulled their approval in a rare move on [...]
Digital assistants, or conversation agents, are the wave of the future. It seems that big tech announces updates or new features every week that tweak the way we interact with our smartphones, tablets and computers. The vision of the future that sells new devices is a seamless, natural language interaction; simply ask a question and [...]
Retail walk-in clinics have experienced a major surge in growth and use in the just the past six years. The spike was the result of planned business expansions to provide convenient non-emergency care that was promoted by policy makers and insurers as a way to decrease healthcare costs. A new study published in the March [...]
The Tennessee Medical Association is pushing for a constitutional amendment that would cap non-economic damage awards for medical malpractice cases. Amending the state constitution is no small feat; it requires ratification by a two-thirds vote by two General Assemblies and voter approval thereafter. Needless to say, it’s an uphill battle. The deluded thinking that leads [...]
At the end of October, 2015, ABC News 2 in Nashville reported that a 45 year old man was critically injured in a wrong-way crash with a box truck on I-40. According to their report, the police were informed of the driver going the wrong way, but were unable to reach him in time. The [...]
As Xarelto lawsuits move forward, new information about the clinical trials of the blood thinner is coming to light. At the heart of the controversy is a blood-testing device used during clinical trials that was later recalled for faulty results. While independent reviews of the clinical trials insist that the results were unchanged by the [...]
We’ve talked about Takata a lot over the years. Back then, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued an updated recall summary that expanded the number of vehicles affected and highlighted a previously unknown problem with side-impact airbags. The updated statement was the most recent part of an ongoing recall concerning defective airbags that seriously [...]
