The Annals of Internal Medicine occasionally reviews the articles and studies of note in a particular field of internal medicine for those of us who don't read all of the specialty journals. This month there was an update in pulmonary and critical care medicine, the internal medicine specialty that is most intimately involved with caring for the very ill and those people who are at the ends of their lives. Nestled among articles on diagnosis of tuberculosis and novel treatments for non-small cell lung cancer is one about palliative care, that is medical interventions intended to make people more comfortable as they die. This article, published in the New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. J.S. Temel and colleagues from the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, looks at quality and length of life in patients with recently diagnosed incurable lung cancer, cancers that have spread metastatically beyond the lung tissue. These patients cannot expect to be cured of their cancers, ...
The cost of health care in the US is higher than anywhere else in the world, and yet we are not healthier than our peer nations. In fact, in terms of such measures as infant mortality and life span, we don't measure up. Why is this? Many people involved in providing or receiving care have some pretty good ideas about what costs so much, and what we can do to reduce costs and improve quality. Sharing these stories is an important step in creating affordable universal health care.