Category: Medicine

California/General interest/Health/Lifestyle/Medicine/seniors/Sports
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Breaking news on broken-down joints

by Fran Johns

There’s old news — joint replacements for athletes are downright commonplace, seniors in their 80s and 90s are getting new hips — and now there’s good news. Researchers at the University of California San Francisco, led by sports medicine chief C. Benjamin Ma MD, are finding that damage to the cartilage connecting the foot bone to the ankle bone to the leg bone etc might not have to be permanent.

As almost anyone with a series of sports injuries may know, cartilage damage is permanent. In the words of Dr. Benjamin Ma, chief of sports medicine at UCSF, “cartilage is just lazy” — it doesn’t like to regenerate, so when it gets damaged or worn down through use or injury, it won’t come back on its own.

But Ma and his research team have discovered that given very specific circumstances, cartilage will, in fact, regenerate. The team has been taking knee cartilage from subjects and placing it on a matrix and under some very specific conditions, it is forced to regenerate.

“Cartilage cells are very lazy. They don’t like to grow if they don’t have to,” he said. “So we fool them by doing this particular maneuver and they feel they have to grow, and they form new cartilage. Then we glue it back into the knee.”

The new method has proved to be safe and it helps improve function, and now it is undergoing Phase 3 clinical trials to see whether it in fact works better than microfracture surgeries currently used to treat cartilage injuries.

Down the road, Ma and his team hope to see if there is an application of this method that could help people suffering from arthritis, which is also a cartilage disorder.

That cheer being heard across cyberspace is coming from millions of amateur athletes and the entire population over 50, almost every one of whom could use a little newly invigorated cartilage.

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner.

California/General interest/Health/Lifestyle/Medicine/USA
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Medical marijuana benefits proven

by Fran Johns

Surprise. Medical marijuana really helps. What millions of us have known ever since friends with AIDS proved it more than a decade ago is now affirmed. San Francisco Chronicle writers Victoria Colliver and Wyatt Buchanan broke the news today:

The first U.S. clinical trials in more than 20 years on the medical efficacy of marijuana found that pot helps relieve pain and muscle spasms associated with multiple sclerosis and certain neurological conditions, according to a report released Wednesday by a UC research center.

Dr. Igor Grant, a UC San Diego psychiatrist who directs the center, called the report “good evidence” that marijuana would be an effective front-line treatment for neuropathy, a condition that can cause tingling, numbness and pain.

The results of five state-funded scientific clinical trials came 14 years after California voters passed a law approving marijuana for medical use and more than 10 years after the state Legislature passed a law that created the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at UC San Diego, which conducted the studies.

California’s Proposition 215, passed in 1996, allows patients with a valid doctor’s recommendation to grow and possess marijuana for personal medical use. It is one of 14 state laws legalizing medical marijuana. But the federal government still says pot is illegal and without medical benefit. Perhaps that may now change.

“This is the first step in approaching the (U.S. Food and Drug Administration), which has invested absolutely nothing in providing scientific data to resolve the debate,” said state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, who noted that marijuana showed benefits throughout the AIDS epidemic in helping people afflicted with neuropathy and other ailments.

Dale Gieringer, a Berkeley resident who is executive director of the California branch of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, agreed.

“This is finally the evidence that shows that the (U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration) stance that marijuana does not have medical use is just wrong,” he said. “It’s time for the Obama administration to act.”

The bad news is that funding for research that could further confirm the potential medical benefits of marijuana may soon run out.

The Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research has approved 15 clinical studies, five of which were completed and reported Wednesday, and two are in progress. While researchers said more studies are needed, the future of the center is in doubt.

The center has spent all but $400,000 of the $8.9 million in research funding it started with in 1999. Leno said the state doesn’t have the money to continue funding it.

“It may be close to the end of its life unless there’s foundation money to continue the work,” Leno said.

If we could just combine the savings that could accrue from getting the feds out of the pot-prosecution business and the taxes that would accrue from legalization of medicinal use, a lot of that work could continue. And a lot of suffering could be alleviated.

California/Health/Lifestyle/Medicine/Politics & Causes
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Is marijuana a medicine?

by Fran Johns

Of course it is, to answer this rhetorical question posed by a January 18 headline in the Wall Street Journal. New Jersey is the most recent to recognize that fact, becoming the 14th state to legalize use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. The New Jersey law, signed this week by outgoing Governor Jon Corzine, limits use to patients with specific illnesses such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis and ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and specifically forbids grow-it-yourself projects.

What’s needed now are serious studies of how good a medicine it really is, and these aren’t happening very fast. As outlined in a New York Times article this week, getting permission to study the weed is no easy task.

Despite the Obama administration’s tacit support of more liberal state medical marijuana laws, the federal government still discourages research into the medicinal uses of smoked marijuana. That may be one reason that — even though some patients swear by it — there is no good scientific evidence that legalizing marijuana’s use provides any benefits over current therapies.

Lyle E. Craker, a professor of plant sciences at the University of Massachusetts, has been trying to get permission from federal authorities for nearly nine years to grow a supply of the plant that he could study and provide to researchers for clinical trials.

But the Drug Enforcement Administration — more concerned about abuse than potential benefits — has refused, even after the agency’s own administrative law judge ruled in 2007 that Dr. Craker’s application should be approved, and even after Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in March ended the Bush administration’s policy of raiding dispensers of medical marijuana that comply with state laws.

“All I want to be able to do is grow it so that it can be tested,” Dr. Craker said in comments echoed by other researchers.

Marijuana is the only major drug for which the federal government controls the only legal research supply and for which the government requires a special scientific review.

“The more it becomes clear to people that the federal government is blocking these studies, the more people are willing to defect by using politics instead of science to legalize medicinal uses at the state level,” said Rick Doblin, executive director of a nonprofit group dedicated to researching psychedelics for medical uses.

In California, where a mish-mash of laws and enforcement policies can bewilder all but the expert — (and there are many experts) — the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that lawmakers acted improperly in amending the voter-approved legalization of medicinal marijuana to limit the amount critically ill patients might have:

The high court ruled lawmakers improperly “amended” the voter-approved law that decriminalized possession of marijuana for “seriously ill Californians” with a doctor’s prescription by limiting patients to eight ounces (227 grams) of dried marijuana and six mature or 12 immature plants.

The Compassionate Use Act, passed by California voters in 1996, set no limits on how much marijuana patients could possess or grow, stating only that it be for personal use.

In 1997, the state’s Supreme Court defined a lawful amount as enough to be “reasonably related to the patient’s current medical needs.”

The state’s quantity limits were passed in 2003 as part of a voluntary identification card program designed to protect against both drug trafficking and wrongful arrest by allowing police to quickly verify a patient’s prescription.

The court on Thursday let stand the voluntary card program but found that the limits it imposes should not “burden” a person’s ability to argue under the Compassionate Use Act that the marijuana possessed or grown was for personal use.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown said in a statement the decision “confirms our position that the state’s possession limits are legal” as applied to medical marijuana cardholders.

While conceding that marijuana may have some just-for-fun attraction too, I can’t vouch for the recreational weed. Thankfully, since I am addicted to anything that comes down the pike and question the view that marijuana is non-addictive,  it hadn’t made its way to small-town Virginia when I was experimenting with other mood-altering substances. But I do know its medicinal value. My beloved now-deceased sister could have had much suffering relieved with legal pot. Countless friends I loved and worked with during the height of the AIDS pandemic would have suffered less with legal, easily-accessible marijuana.

We are past time to establish, through definitive studies, the medicinal benefits of this natural bounty, and make it legally available to those in desperate need.

California/General interest/Health/Medicine
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The doctor is in… cyberspace

by Fran Johns

Getting health care — whatever happens with the health care bill — is no longer just a matter of getting to the doctor. Issues of comfort, efficiency and cost control increasingly point to the use of telemedicine, which is coming, ready or not. And one recent report suggested the medical profession isn’t ready. Pauline Chen, M.D. , writing recently in the New York Times, cited resistance by doctors and nurses alike to what some consider long-distance health care.

Telemedicine has the potential to improve quality of care by allowing clinicians in one “control center” to monitor, consult and even care for and perform procedures on patients in multiple locations. A rural primary care practitioner who sees a patient with a rare skin lesion, for example, can get expert consultation from a dermatologist at a center hundreds of miles away. A hospital unable to staff its intensive care unit with a single critical care specialist can have several experts monitoring their patients remotely 24 hours a day.

But despite its promise, telemedicine has failed to take hold in the same way that other, newer, technologies have. Not because of technical challenges, expense or insufficient need. On the contrary, the most daunting obstacle to date has been a deeply entrenched resistance on the part of providers.

Tech industry writer/elder care advocate Laurie Orlov thinks those concerns are a thing of the past. Since data was gathered for the study Dr. Chen cited, Orlov points out in her Aging in Place Technology blog, doctors, patients and technology have come a long way. “Forget the JAMA study”, Orlov says, “here come the virtual visits.”

Medical practices, hospitals, clinics are well aware of a much-changed world and consumer health care costs that can be breathtaking. American Well’s virtual visit platform use is growing, as are other virtual platforms discussed in our 2009 Calibrated Care report. They have read about transformation of self-care and virtual visits in Denmark. Given the geographic distribution of people — and the distance required to get to doctors in some states and rural areas, given the availability of technology that was barely known or completely unknown in 2006, these are going to happen, reimbursement has begun, criteria for the use has emerged, and the JAMA study (and its much-syndicated press coverage) is already irrelevant.

On a technologically lower level is the use of PC programs long in place for Kaiser patients. They haven’t asked for a testimonial, but here’s one, with enthusiasm. The e-mail your doctor program allows doctor-patient communication at the convenience of each (my primary care doc, oncologist and other specialists almost all answer queries within 24 hours or less); test results are posted immediately and can be viewed via charts or graphs to show how you’re doing; drug information or other Q&A’s are immediately accessible through personal accounts. All of the above save time, money and patient angst.

Doctors in cyberspace could be good medicine indeed for U.S. health care.

compassion and choices/geriatrics/Healthcare/physicians/seniors
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Health Literacy

by Fran Johns

Health Literacy, which is as much about common sense as about the three R’s, can nevertheless be a matter of life and death. Rebecca Sudore M.D. covered the issue in a recent talk to a group of healthcare professionals and volunteers in which she included video clips and verbal summaries of cases that bring chills: a woman who didn’t know she was having a hysterectomy until after the fact because she was afraid to ask questions, people who suffered or died simply because they could not read the details about medications or procedures. Health Literacy may be a field still in its infancy but it is a topic, as well as a separate professional discipline, for which the time has come.

Dr. Sudore, whose youthful energy and unassuming demeanor belie an impressive list of credentials in geriatric scholarship and practice, is passionate about the subject. Among the messages she shared, here are just a few:

Health Literacy is defined as “the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.” In other words, if you’re sick or wounded, it’s a pretty good idea to understand what should or should not be done to you – and literally millions of Americans do not.

Millions? Really? Yep, between 40 and 44 million of us are somewhere around a fourth-grade learning level, cannot read signs or medication bottles, poison warnings or the schedules of city buses. Try to imagine making it through the day, if you were in this group, with a bad cold or an infected finger. Another 50 million or so of us are hanging around 4th to 8th grade level, which means we have trouble with “executive functions” such as simple forms or reading a magazine. I hold an advance degree, and don’t even get me started on the difficulty-with-forms issue. If that form, though, means whether or not you agree to a hysterectomy it’s a lot more serious than exchanging data or filing your taxes. Healthcare workers, and sometimes family and friends, must pick up where education or language skills leave off.

Patients, Dr. Sudore explains, are critically hampered not only by lack of education and skills but by shame, fear and a host of other issues. Doctors, often part of the problem, are hampered by lack of time and health-literacy training, and other issues of their own.

Dr. Sudore and her fellow crusaders are out to change all that. They preach keeping messages simple, using plain language, an “Ask-Tell-Ask” method of communicating. Dr. Sudore was pleased, recently, to encounter a physician who caught himself hurriedly saying “Any questions?” to a patient and then corrected the phrase as she had told him, “What are your questions?”

It may be a way off, but Health Literacy is gaining ground.

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