Doctors Throw Blows in Delivery Room, Endanger Baby

The fight over cesareans has gone international...and violent.  Two Italian doctors are being blamed for the botched delivery of a newborn that have led to complications for both the mother and son, after the doctors got into a fistfight in the delivery room.  Medical mistakes UFC-style.

According to reports, the mother Laura Salpietro, 30, had to have her uterus removed and her son, Antonio, suffered heart problems and possible brain damage following his birth last Thursday in a Messina, Sicily public hospital.  The two doctors, one a state hospital employee, the other a private doctor hired by Salpietro as a gynecologist, disagreed on whether the patient should have a C-section.  The disagreement turned to blows.

Sapietro's husband, Matteo Molonia, said the fight delayed the C-section by over an hour leading to the complications.  This has become a big story in the country, forcing the Italian health minister to traveled to Sicily on Monday to apologize to the woman.

The fiasco is only one of a number of errors plaguing the southern Italian region infamous for its high rate of medical mistakes.  Not lost on me is one significant detail of the Italian health system.  Yep, you guessed it--universal health care.

As a result of the entitlement-based system is an explosion of private doctors available to people that can afford them.  I have predicted the same to happen here in the U.S. if nationalization of our system continues to grow.  People that can afford it will hire private doctors to get around the inadequacies of government-run hospitals.  Just a conclusion of deductive reasoning, that's all.

What has made this particular situation tragic is that the patient decided to have her birth in a public hospital with a private doctor present.  Duh!  I guess she learned the hard way that doctors can be territorial, literally and figuratively, and if she has followed common practice she would have given birth at a private clinic instead. 

This story also highlights the dramatically high C-section rates in Italy in general, and Sicily specifically.  According to reports, approximately 38% of all births in Italy are done by C-section, more than twice the 15% recommended by the World Health Organization. In Sicily rates reach 52%.  In other parts of Italy, Campania--the southern mainland region that includes Naples-- for instance, C-section rates have reached 60%.

I have said in several posts, this is a major issue.  C-section are way over-prescribed, and experts believe the trend will continue.  Although many reasons for recommending C-section exist, most thinkers agree it is too high.

So keep your wits about you, America.  Don't ignore the inevitable problems associated with universal health care.  It ain't the panacea it's being sold as.  If you can't see the flip side from our friends in Europe, then you've let your blinders fall too far.  My condolences to the Molonia/Salpietra family--I hope it turns out okay.

Stay Healthy: Save A Penis

Do your part to save the male appendage today: Stay healthy at all costs! What?!?! You heard me right--staying healthy is your best insurance to keeping your organs, appendages, digits, and yes, your genitalia too.

According to a recent report, a Romanian man lost his penis in an "accidental" severing during a testicular surgery. Whoops! And the surgeon performing the operation wasn't a hack, either; he was a renowned and "highly respected" urologist and anatomy professor. Double oops! Ain't that just enough to make you cringe?

The slippery-wristed surgeon was ordered to pay the 38-year-old man $500,00 euros (785,000 dollars) in compensation. That's all?!?! for an amputation of that nature? Sheesh! I guess I think very highly of myself, but, well...I wouldn't have been happy with less than $10 million that's for sure--I'm still building my family, for heaven's sake!

I'm not posting this story to poke fun at this poor man's misfortune--his wife has since left him, to add insult to injury--but I use this as an example of why it's best to use the medical system as little as possible--emergency and life threatening situations only; for the most part, anyway. As I discuss in detail in the first chapter of my book, The Six Keys to Optimal Health, medical mistakes are one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in this country. I guess they happen in Europe, too.

Listen, we need modern medicine: it is absolutely critical in times of crisis, and many of its marvels have improved the quality and quantity of life significantly for millions of people around the world. However, far too many use it as a quick fix for all their health woes, even the most minor ones; and frankly, that's foolish. Be smart--take care of your health to the best of your ability. Honor your body and put in at least the minimal amount of work to maintain it. Follow the six keys to optimal health and assure yourself the greatest chance of staying healthy and vibrant for years to come. And as a result, you may just do your part to save a penis one day.

Flawed Paradigm or Religious Propoganda?

I get most of my health news off the news wires like Reuters or Associated Press. For anyone not familiar with these news outlets, they provide stories for use by newspapers, radio and television programs and other media outlets. It comes over as a "just-the-facts" piece that other writers can use to create a story, which essentially leaves the writer to choose how the story is told without losing its essential meaning and information.

So, as you can probably tell, I have a blast getting these facts-only stories and sending them back out with what I consider a more realistic twist. I know that nobody reading this believes for a second that the information we get over traditional outlets is the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It's not about being a born skeptic as much as it's about having way too many experiences of being told one thing but seeing another that makes us question what we are told.

Take for example the latest news being reported in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, which says that people who take a proactive approach to their health may, in fact, be better informed, but by no means are they necessarily more healthy. Now, when I see opening words of this sort, along with the headline, "Involved" patients not always healthier, I get an immediate chuckle. I chuckle because I know that either, one: they are providing faulty information; or two: they are defining terms a little differently than I would. I know this because I read the health news every day. I know that studies pour out every week showing that a proactive approach of incorporating healthy lifestyle habits is, without a doubt, the number one beneficial thing people can do to ensure better health and a longer life. But, then, stories like this one come out and, well...they make me chuckle.

So, according to this study, 189 people with high blood pressure were observed: Those people who wanted a greater say in their health care tended to have higher blood pressure and cholesterol than the people who let their doctors have most of the control. Oy vey. And the conclusion of the research team was that, "merely being involved in health care decisions does not necessarily make patients healthier."

Well no ship, Sherlock.

Here are the flaws with these conclusions: First, being proactive goes way beyond "being informed." Could you imagine if we extrapolated that idea--that is, considering simply being informed the same as being proactive--to voting (I'm informed but I don't vote), to our work life (I went to college but I prefer not to work), or to our finances (I know I should save, pay my taxes, and my bills...but I don't). We can all appreciate that proactivity is taking action--in the realm of health it's exercise, adopting a healthy diet, regular bodywork, getting enough sleep, and so on, and so forth.

The second flaw of this study is that they used high blood pressure--hardly a measure of health, and more accurately a measure of potential disease--as the health parameter. People who have high blood pressure are already on the verge of illness. Please. Aren't they already doing something wrong or neglecting to do some things right? And these are the folks we should use as our reference point that "simply being informed doesn't lead people to be healthier"? How amusing. I really could go on for hours about the absurdity of this notion.

Studies like this are an unfortunate relic of the old health paradigm that I am so proactively trying to get you to abandon. That paradigm says, health is a chance occurrence and is fleeting. In other words, illness is inevitable (I've got no argument there) and only through medical intervention can you hope to stand a chance of survival (this, however, is false). Obviously, that message is not presented so blatantly, but you'll find it if you simply read between the lines.

And this is exactly how powerful institutions attempt to control you. Just ask any major religion outside of the Church of Medical Science and they'll tell you: It all starts with brainwashing. You need us. We've saved hundreds of millions of lives, and we save millions more every year; we're here to save you. This has been propagandized for years; nothing new there. But the next step is to tell you that you can't make it without said religion. Don't meddle when it comes to your health; we know what we're doing; we know your health and your body better than you do, and we're here to save you. That's where we are now. The third step is mandating conformity. Mandatory treatments, mandatory inoculations, mandatory obedience. We're just starting to get a glimpse of this practice now. Hang on, we should be seeing much more of this in the future.

Then the break occurs; the unfoldment of upheaval. It has happened in every major revolt in history, including the American Revolution. And now, we are in the midst of a health paradigm revolution. Damn, I feel like Thomas Paine!

Here's the bottom line: people who take a proactive approach to their health and well-being stand an exceptionally high chance of having better health, period. Proactivity means, "acting in advance to deal with an expected difficulty." Acting. Not just being informed. Big difference.

Although this study comes to one very true conclusion, that "studies have found that patients generally tend to do better when they agree with their doctors on how to manage their health problems." This, however, is not the same thing as people taking a proactive approach to their health. For sure, it helps when doctor and patient are on the same page; however, I highly doubt that anyone sets out to deliberately challenge one's doctor when one's health is on the line. But in an era of medical mistakes, profiteering, and just plain incompetency, where 98,000 people a year die as a result of medical errors (not accidents, not natural acts, but mistakes)...then yeah, people will question. And that, in my opinion, is highly proactive.

Health Care Changes On the Rise

You know how I feel about our current health care system--fabulous in many regards, but definitely in need of changes. One obvious change needs to be the enormous waste that goes on in the U.S. hospital system. Along with that needs to be better measures toward curbing medical mistakes, now one of the leading causes of death in this country.

But times, they are a changing: Recent reports disclose that Medicare, the nation's federal health insurer, will stop paying for medical errors and waste starting October 1, 2008. Whoa. Like what, exactly? Preventable hospital errors that will no longer be covered by Medicare are, among other things, catheter-caused urinary tract infections, injuries from falls, and objects left in the body after surgery. The rationale from Medicare is that not only will hitting hospitals in the wallet press them to tighten up on mistakes, but it will also lower costs, as the government estimates the cost of errors to be $10,000 to $100,000 per mistake, which usually gets tacked on to the patient's bill ($9.3 billion in excess charges per year). Doh! Next year, there will be three more errors added to the no-pay list--ventilator-caused pneumonia and drug-resistant staph infections head up the list--and Medicare believes that it will save the government $190 million over five years.

Well I guess I have mixed feelings about this latest news out of the federal government. Overall, I think it is a smart move. There is way too much nonchalance about standard medical procedures. For instance, the Medicare report disclosed that 25% of all hospitalized patients receive urinary catheters as standard procedure, despite the fact that many don't need them. Catheters trigger more than half a million urinary tract infections annually, the most common hospital-caused infection. Ouch! Even worse is that many catheters are left in longer than needed, causing infections. Last year, the University of Michigan conducted the first national study of catheter practices and found that almost 50% of hospitals don't keep track of which patients get one--now that's carelessness. Double ouch!

So, as I said, overall it's a good idea: Money talks; and when you threaten to withhold funds, it's amazing how fast things get fixed. But I am a bit ambivalent for two reasons. First, it might lead to hospitals and doctors hiding mistakes--not a comforting notion. And when the pressure is on, people and organizations have a way of rationalizing their decisions, even if those decisions lead to mistakes, and that might not be good for consumers. The other thing that worries me, especially as a health care provider, is that the insurance companies might use this move by Medicare to rationalize their own denial of claims. Medical insurers do as Medicare does, and they are notorious for using any weapon at their disposal to withhold payment of claims; because for them, it really is all about the money.

So I guess we'll have to wait and see. Nothing comes without problems: All good things come with complications, this situation being no different. But, all in all, we need to decrease the amount of medical mistakes taking the lives of Americans annually--it's just way too high. We have the greatest medical system in the world; it just doesn't make sense to lose so many people to medical mistakes; 82% of the deaths caused by medical mistakes are preventable, so why not nip them in the bud now? I guess that's what Medicare is trying to do. We'll have to see how it turns out, but I'm guessing it's the right move to make.