I generally think of myself as a confident and conscientious practitioner, but my pulse was racing and my palms were moist as I reviewed the patient’s hospital chart that afternoon. He had been a man in his late 60s with a bacterial infection in his lungs. I checked the reports on all the cultures I had ordered: blood, urine, sputum. Then I checked the antibiotics I had prescribed. There was no mismatch; he had been on appropriate treatment. I asked another doctor to double-check me.
Had I been negligent? No. I was relieved — but still accused. More important, the letter made me reflect on the paradoxes of our medical malpractice system.

The next day, I was considering whether to order a CT scan for a hospital patient experiencing abdominal pain. On the one hand, I did not think the scan would reveal anything significant, and I try to avoid ordering unnecessary tests. But then I thought about a potential lawsuit. What if I missed a cancer or an abscess by not ordering a CT? How would I defend myself? It was easy enough to pen “CT abdomen to rule out abscess” — something that could be identified and treated if found through this extra test. The fear of a lawsuit trumped all other thinking: I ordered the scan; it was negative. Read the full article in The Washington Post.

Comparisons between age groups underline the muscle disparity: An 80-year-old might have 30 percent less muscle mass than a 20-year-old. And strength declines even more than mass. Weight-lifting records for 60-year-old men are 30 percent lower than for 30-year-olds; for women the drop-off is 50 percent. With interest high among the aging, the market potential for maintaining and rebuilding muscle mass seems boundless. Drug companies already are trying to develop drugs that can build muscles or forestall their weakening without the notoriety of anabolic steroids. Food giants like Nestlé and Danone are exploring nutritional products with the same objective.

In addition, geriatric specialists, in particular, are now trying to establish the age-related loss of muscles as a medical condition under the name sarcopenia, from the Greek for loss of flesh. Simply put, sarcopenia is to muscle what osteoporosis is to bone. “In the future, sarcopenia will be known as much as osteoporosis is now,” said Dr. Bruno Vellas, president of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics. More in The NY Times.

In terms of weight gain, each obesity-related gene variant in inactive volunteers was associated with an additional 1.3 pounds in body mass for someone about 5 1/2 feet tall. In people who exercised, the extra body mass was 0.8 pounds, according to the report. Gil Atzmon, a geneticist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, N.Y., said the findings underscore that DNA doesn’t necessarily mean destiny. “The message from this is, if you have a genetic predisposition for some things, you can change your lifestyle and contribute to better health,” he said. (Source: LA Times)