Allergic to eggs, the flu shot or flu meds? Maybe, maybe not.

Clinton wrote this …
First it was H1N1 virus itself, then the vaccine became the shot heard ‘round the
world. Everywhere. All the time. Practically. Is the virus real? Is it as bad as people say? The government should to more, faster! The government should stay out of health care!
The most recent news has been about the [...]

Forget the turkey, save yourself this Thanksgiving

Clinton wrote this …
Let’s dispense with the tired clichés and get right to it. Some people just don’t enjoy the holidays. Or, they don’t enjoy the people they have to share the holidays with.
Sometimes the issues boil over at the dinner table, when food becomes the trigger for all kinds of highly charged emotions.
Cynthia Bulik, [...]

Burn survivors share stories, provide healing

Clinton wrote this …
Last Saturday afternoon four people told their stories about being burned as children — two in house fires, one in a plane crash and another, as a 13-year-old, who attempted suicide — to a gathering of more than 200 at the 17th annual Celebration of Life, a reunion for burn survivors and [...]

Science, not science fiction: Two flu drugs studied at UNC

When Scott Pelley of “60 Minutes” asked HHS Secretary Katheleen Sebelius about political punditry critical of the public health response to novel H1N1, she pointedly said, “I tend to like to get my health advice from doctors and scientists.”
She’ll be getting some of her advice about treating flu from UNC. Charlie van der Horst and [...]

AIDS in the U.S.; the patient profile has changed, so should testing practices

Clinton wrote this …
There is growing sentiment, and evidence, that attention to HIV and AIDS has shifted so far abroad, to Africa and in developing countries elsewhere, that Americans have overlooked a growing epidemic in our own collective backyard.
But even in the US we’re looking through bleary eyes. This isn’t the 1980s. We need to [...]

Graduating from high school, at the hospital

Ginger wrote this…
On Oct. 23 I attended a graduation ceremony – in the NC Jaycee Burn Center at UNC Hospitals. I watched Ryan Frias, a burn patient, precess down the hospital hall, lined with staff clapping and cheering, to “Pomp and Circumstance.”
Ryan’s story is an inspiring one. He was admitted to UNC almost a year [...]

Another “best” list?

Clinton wrote this …
They’re at it again. US News & World Report published online Oct. 20 a new list of “Best Hospitals” rankings based on patient satisfaction.
This is a new one. Sort of. The magazine extracted data from a list that’s already available to the public on the Hospital Compare Web site, managed by [...]

Appropriate surgical care: Who gets it? Who doesn’t, and why?

Tom wrote this …
Consider this: For many years now there has been a broad consensus among medical experts that far too many babies in the U.S. are being delivered by cesarean section. But repeated attempts to bring the number of c-sections down have hardly made a dent. At the same time, many morbidly obese people [...]

The eyes have it

Stephanie wrote this…
It seems inevitable that as we age things on our bodies tend to fall apart. I think it’s a part of life’s instruction manual that we fail to read. Between forgetting the simplest of things or needing to buy a pair of reading glasses, we tend to blame it on age.
I was comfortable [...]

An update on Patrick Kahuma

Tom wrote this …
Back in May, I wrote about how Patrick Kahuma, an 18-year-old from Uganda, came to the N.C. Children’s Heart Center at N.C. Children’s Hospital for treatment from Dr. Elman Frantz to correct heart problems that had greatly limited the quality of his life up to that point.
The procedures were a great success, [...]