Know of Health Sites??

A while back I posted a web site of a hospital in Los Angles, Ca. where I'll be going for lung surgery due to my emphysema and now possible malignant nodules.
Gary (GT) had suggested at the time I use more health orientated sites but can't seem to find any. The one I used for years has changed and became more commercial. I'm putting it up again and if you can tell me where else or pass it on yourself would be great.
There is such a lack of knowledge in the medical fields doctors just do not know when new techniques come about. They either don't take the time or have the time to research. Most of they're information walks in the doors of their offices with bags filled with sample drugs to hand out to patients, which is helpful at times, especially with the cost of prescriptions. Anyway here it is again, I hope it will benefit someone.

http://www.csmc.edu/5868.html

 

Google on "heath" or "medical" site. 652 million links (unbelievable).

http://www.google.com/search?as_q=&...as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&as_rights=&safe=images

Bazza

 

oh my, yep a lot but I'm looking for ones that I can post this information on, rather put the web site on. I used to look constantly and never found this one on my own. Thanks bigbazza

 

These are 3 UK based health sites I've used before for information:

http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/
http://www.surgerydoor.co.uk/
http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/

 

http://www.clevelandclinic.org/ ----http://www.jointcommission.org----http://www.porthuronhosp.org/------http://www.cancer.gov/----http://dmoz.org/Health/Medicine/Facilities/Hospitals/North_America/United_States/Michigan/ ,These are a few I've found to be useful.

 

Yes but it's to contact the web site and not actually post anything for people to read. Don't they have lung conductions in the UK? Seems like there is more help with sexuality then any other.
I was trying to find sites with public forums. Like here

 

Maybe here, http://ehealthforum.com/health/health_forums.html

Steve

 

This has people already aware of the treatments, that surprises me, thats great though. Thanks for your time, humm also in the Los Angeles area.

 

Information all over the place in these sites also. Wonder why I never found anything on my own, think I misspelled it?
Actually they stopped the surgery a few years back, lost too many people. Think then they resorted to surgery when they were on death's doorstep. Now they have new techniques and treat people in earlies stages. I'm so glad people are getting this info. Thanks for your help.

 

Wow, this one sounds busy.

"Cleveland Clinic has become one of the nation’s leading lung transplant centers, handling a large volume of cases from all over the country. Our cadaveric lung transplantation program is considered the largest and most active in the United States. In 2004, we performed 64 transplants: 28 single-lung, 35 double-lung and one combined lung and heart/lung transplants."

These are great sites, thank you.

 

consumer sites try
http://www.healthinsite.com.au/
http://www.qldcancer.com.au/support.asp (cancer)

If you want to know what is accepted medical practice try http://www.emedicine.com/
If your after herbal information re cancer try http://www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/11570.cfm
If your wish to read the research articles yourself http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query/static/clinical.shtml
If you wish to read what that research means in practice and what has been proven to make a difference
http://www.cochrane.org/index.htm

Now for my soapbox.

Medical journals that publish new studies form a pile over two hundred meters high every year. A group of 10000 doctors and researchers in the cochrane foundation (above) sift through this data and put it in context with respect to previous studies.
We live in an age where there are specialist who only practice in a specific part of a specific part of a specialty. A generalist is not going to know everything but then neither is a specialist but they will be able to send you to someone who does. None the less a generalist can become knowledgeable about any treatment thanks to the web in a few minutes.

Be cautious about medical information from chatrooms and other web sources including from this site and from me. Anybody can publish their musings on the web. Just because a person takes a treatment and feels better doesn't mean that this treatment works. Similarly if you see a crow then have a car accident it doesn't mean crows cause car accidents. A temporal association between events doesn't imply their relationship is causal. If you throw a dice and get number six three times it doesn't mean the dice is a number six dice. The chance that this could occur is one in 216.
Ideal trials need to rule out the effect of chance by having suffient number of patients.(The p value is a measure of this. P value of .05 means a one in twenty chance that the benefits of treatment was due to chance.
Ideal trials need to be prospective placebo controlled double blinded in addition to many other aspects including numbers involved definitons lead time bias etc etc.
Many early trials are of no use because their definions of the illnesses (and cure) weren't defined. So you can read that one in five children has attention deficit dosorder or one in a hundred depending on your defintion. Most modern trials use idc sytem to define illnesses.
In one state in the U.S. they defined deafness as anybody having hearing under the tenth centile for their population. Many years later they launched an investigation to try to find out why ten percent of the population was deaf.

Prospective means they are done looking forward and seeing what happens rather than looking back at what did happen by asking people or reading charts.
Placebo controlled means the treatment under investigation is compared to a placebo treatment. So a treatment tablet is compared to a tablet without the active ingredient. (More recently it is suggested that active treaments that make you feel a "wonky' initially need to be compared with placebo tablets that also have an ingredient that makes feel a bit "wonky". Injections need to be compared to injections of something like saline.
Interestingly a placebo injection will tend to cure more people than a placebo tablet.
The placebo effect can be huge. Half to three quarters of the response to established antidepressant medications are due to the placebo effect of taking something/anything.
Double blind means that neither the patient nor the person administering the treatment knows who is getting active or placebo until the trial is finished and the codes are cracked.
A parallel example of this is those horses who appear to do maths equations by stamping the answer with their feet. But when the trainer was removed from direct sight the horse just keep on stamping his foot. The horse was picking up subtle clues from their trainer that the correct number of stamps had been done. Similarly a doctor who believes in a treatment can alter the outcome of a trial by giving subtle clues to the patient when they administer the active treatment. Another example of this was a doctor at the turn of the century who claimed that injecting himself with an extract from dogs testicles made him feel vital and full of energy. This has been rexamined and becuse of bioavailability issues he would have had to inject himself with the extract from fifth thousand dogs at once to appreciable change his hormone levels. A belief in a treatment can make it seem like it works.
When radiation was first discovered clinics were set up to adminster this magical new treatment for every ailment form headches to tiredness etc and many people claimed a cure... before the side effects were discovered.
Thats enough of a rant from me but I do beleive specialists will generally be up to date on the latest treatments in their area. They may not have read the trials themselves but they will have read the interpretion of these trials by the many research specialists who can rip a trial to shred and analyse the pieces.
In my opinion a good guide to a shonky treatment is that it contains testamonials rather than research. You know the ones... Bill and Jane Doe from Utah." Since we started using blah blah... I feel ten dillion percent better."

 

I can clearly see I was mistaken, to a certain degree. It seems only the doctors I have had treating me for the past few years were unknowledgeable and I'm speaking so called specialist. My current primary care physician was surprised the treatment (surgery) was available. He said last he heard in med. school it had been done away with due to the risk. He now sends people to the hospital I'll be going to, one he informed me just in time. I have had a so called specialist for the past three years and never once was the word scan mentioned. That upsets me. I now have a new pulmonary doctor, same town, who is scan happy, seems he wasn't in agreement with the surgeon and had to check for himself. He is in his words, "impressed" being weeks - months of testing confirmed the surgeons 10 min go over. I have seen people in wheel chairs with oxygen looking barley alive where I used to go and wonder if they could be helped, saved if you will, by a more aggressive treatment. It bothers me greatly.

 

Best wishes darlene, whatever treatment you decide on. Bazza

 

Thank You, it's already decided, I simply wanted others with lung conditions to know there is something more then inhalers, steriods and such available to make them better, live longer with a better quailty of life. At least thats the plan If no one hears from me tell everyone, "don't do it" LOL

 

To anyone reading this, and thinking of taking up / giving up smoking, check out

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=106105&page=3

and check out reply #3 graphic.

Read all that thread, and this thread too, from start to finish. Bazza

 

To Bazza, so sorry to hear you lost both your parents due to smoking.
When I was a kid you were kind of a freak if you didn't. It was everywhere, doctor's offices had ash trays. Pity of it too is when the government started informing us of the dangers, well who believes the government after all they lie about everything else.
The Marlboro Man died of lung cancer. I think that just came out. When they took the ads off tv and replaced them with anti smoking it made me want to smoke more, didn't think of it till I saw it on tv sometimes, humm strange, me I mean.

 

On the right side is a listing called "I want to" with clickable links to contact them,http://www.nationaljewish.org/

 

more info on the Cleveland Clinic for Darlene--http://www.usnews.com/usnews/health/best-hospitals/directory/glance_6410670.htm

 

A list of the best----http://www.usnews.com/usnews/health/best-hospitals/rankings/specihqpulm.htm

 

To Darlene, has your Dr. suggested getting a Pet Scan to get a better idea of your condition? Mine had me take one last October and that is when he found out my cancer had come developed. I had lung cancer cut out of me in 2002 and had been cancer free since until then. I am fighting it now with chemo and hope but if not for a Pet it wouldn't have been found.----http://www.mdanderson.org/departments/webuildpet/

 

I'm so sorry to hear that, prayers go out to you for your recovery. Yes I have had a pet scan, two as a matter of fact plus some ct scans. Thats what upsets me and was trying to get the word out to other people with lung conditions that scans and procedures are available. All the doctors I had seen over the years never mentioned it at all. The only thing I had ever had was ex rays when I got really sick which unusually turned out to be pneumonia and landed in the hospital.
Again good luck with your chemo and getting well.

 

I didn't mean to be insulting, the ones I skimmed through to begin with I couldn't locate lung disorders. I use About a lot to check for hoaxes. Turns out I was less informed then people I was trying to get a message out to. Also people turning up with more serious conditions then mine. Hopefully it will all turn out good for everyone. & Thank You

 

Thank you, I have had specialist. Last one I'm sure saved my life when we first moved here 3 yrs ago. After that when I went to his office all I ever saw was nurse practitioners. Then they lost my files, then I had 2 files, then 3 then none, due to an apos. in my name. Have a new local doc now who was recommend by the surgeon in L.A. I saw.

 

Yes good luck on your surgery Darlene. Sorry about my previous post. I had incorrectly assumed that you were talking about lung reduction surgery for emphysema which I wouldn't consider to be an obscure area of knowledge.
I was interested to read your comments about how cigarettes were promoted. Its seems to be in line with the attached picture that I found under the lino of a turn of the century house...it speaks for itself.

 

Oh my, that brings back memories, although that particular one doesn't stand out. I do believe it was Old Gold or Chesterfield that on TV that had a dancing cigarette pack along with a child size dancing match book.

 

Yep, found one.