NEWS
By Meredith Cohn | November 1, 2009
When Jasmine Cadavid's parents took her to the emergency room near their Abingdon home nearly two weeks ago, the normally playful 2-year-old was lethargic, feverish and struggling to breathe. She not only had swine flu, but her right lung was so filled with fluid from pneumonia that it was getting no air. Soon she was headed to an intensive-care unit at the University of Maryland Hospital for Children, where doctors scrambled to halt the damage; she's still in the hospital, recovering, today.
NEWS
By Ken Murray | October 23, 2009
The small, horizontal scar is barely discernible until Dwan Edwards stretches out his thick, bull neck, as if showing off a medal. This is no medal, though. That scar and what lay beneath cost the Ravens defensive lineman the entire 2008 season and almost his career, all from an injury seemingly so inconsequential that Edwards didn't think he was hurt. The bulging disc in his neck came from a blow to the head in an August preseason game one summer ago. It took five doctors and four months to convince Edwards that surgery was necessary to continue his career.
NEWS
By Kelly Brewington | October 14, 2009
A 10th person in Maryland has died of swine flu, state health officials said Tuesday. The person, an adult from Western Maryland, had underlying health problems. As with other deaths related to the H1N1 virus, officials would not release further details. Since the outbreak of the virus in the spring, 217 people in Maryland have been hospitalized and two children have died, one of them a 14-year-old girl with no underlying health problems. Nationwide, 81 children have died of the swine flu, according to figures released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
NEWS
By David Zurawik | April 6, 2009
After watching every second of the Peabody- and Emmy Award-winning Hopkins 24/7 and Hopkins documentary series from ABC News, I did not think there was anything that TV had left to tell me about the making of and professional lives of medical doctors. But after seeing the final installment of Nova's 21-year project, Doctors' Diaries, which premieres Tuesday night at 8 on MPT (Channels 22 and 67), I now know I was wrong. It is not that producer-director Michael Barnes finds new emotions, themes or narratives that ABC's Terry Wrong didn't in his brilliant studies of Hopkins and its doctors.
NEWS
By Steve Dudley | December 15, 2008
I ran into him in the toothpaste aisle of the local Rite Aid. He was a patient of mine, but I hadn't seen him in a while. I was embarrassed to admit that I couldn't remember his name. Nice guy, about my age, though he appeared to think it was still 1968 with his tie-dyed T-shirt. I had just snagged some dental floss, so I could rack up three or four days of flossing before my visit with the dentist. He took one look at me and said somewhat sheepishly, "Hey, Doc! I gotta see ya soon." (I always wonder, when they call me "Doc," if they don't remember my name either.
NEWS
By David Kohn | December 12, 2008
Nearly everyone agrees that America's health care system is badly broken. Most people focus on out-of-control costs and lack of coverage: Every year, we spend almost $2 trillion on health care, 16 percent of our gross domestic product. One in six Americans has no health insurance. These are major problems. But another urgent issue gets far less attention. Despite the astronomical costs, our system doesn't provide the right kind of care - even to people lucky enough to have insurance. In short, we're not getting enough for our trillions.
NEWS
By Susan Gvozdas | October 26, 2008
Sarah Price may have had her scrubs on, but she was not prepared to operate. The 6-year-old who won a contest to name the new surgical robot at Baltimore Washington Medical Center in Glen Burnie shook her head vigorously from side to side when the nurse asked her if she wanted to practice using "Poppy". The nurses soon coaxed Sarah to climb into the chair, peer through the viewfinder and thread her thumbs and index fingers through the loops on the fingertip controls. By pinching her fingers together and moving her wrists, she could manipulate the tiny clippers on the arms of the $1.7 million robot to grab rubber loops and place them on small rubber cones.
NEWS
By Jim Jaffe | July 9, 2008
America's physicians are holding their breath as they wait to see how Washington will resolve the latest mess resulting when the methods of "Madman Muntz" meet Medicare. Earl William "Madman" Muntz was the pioneer pitchman who explained his low prices by saying, "I lose money on every one I sell, but I make it up on the volume." His business model is being tested by Medicare, which tries to keep its budget balanced in response to the increasing number of services that doctors provide by reducing the price paid per service.
NEWS
By Tricia Bishop | June 29, 2008
Dr. Ronald Sroka has been a family care physician in the same Crofton location for 30 years, just six miles from where he grew up. He's the president-elect of the Maryland State Medical Society, he was voted favorite physician last year in the local Suburban Scene publication, and he counts his high school principal among his many longtime patients. Simply put, Sroka loves what he does. But this is the last year he may be able to afford to do it. Half of his 4,000-client practice relies on Medicare to pay their bills, and Tuesday, a 10.6 percent reduction in Medicare reimbursement rates will take effect unless Congress intervenes.
NEWS
By Jamie Smith Hopkins | May 4, 2008
Turn the tables on your doctors: Do a checkup on them before they conduct one on you. Armed with an Internet connection, you can make sure the medical professionals you're seeing - or considering - are licensed, find out if they have board certification in their specialties, see quality ratings for the hospitals where they practice, get feedback from their patients and weigh in with your own opinions. It's the wired-age version of asking everyone you know for recommendations. "There's an ever-growing appetite for this information," said Scott Shapiro, a spokesman for HealthGrades (healthgrades.