by Dr. S. Russell Vester, MD
13. July 2011 12:41
There is a lot of buzz right now in the cardiac surgery and cardiology literature about replacing the aortic valve without opening the chest. Certainly an attractive concept if you’re the recipient, but at what risk? Conventional surgical practice, whether done through the middle of the chest ...
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by Dr. S. Russell Vester, MD
22. June 2011 08:00
Many doctors and patients harbor the notion that as people get older they don’t need as careful attention to their blood pressure as they did in their younger years. For unclear reasons the notion had developed that once you are 80 years old you somehow are able to “tolerate” blood...
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by Dr. S. Russell Vester, MD
14. June 2011 08:15
Sleep apnea, or, more correctly, obstructive sleep apnea is a condition that occurs during sleep. Basically your airway closes off during sleep because the soft tissues in the back of your throat collapse on themselves to the point that when you try to inhale, you can’t. Your sleeping brain ke...
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by Dr. S. Russell Vester, MD
17. May 2011 15:43
Every year the office of Surgeon General of the United States produces an annual report on smoking. As the studies of the effects of cigarette smoke become more and more exhaustively complete, the news about smoke exposure just keeps getting worse.
As Kathleen Sibelius, Secretary of the Department o...
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by Dr. S. Russell Vester, MD
28. March 2011 09:08
In this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association there is an article that answers a question everyone wants to know the answer to but is afraid to ask their doctor. And that question is “Can I have a heart attack and die when I’m having sex?”
This, of course, brings...
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by Dr. S. Russell Vester, MD
14. March 2011 08:10
Ever heard of the RAC? Well I hadn’t either until about a year ago. It turns out that RAC is yet another government acronym. This one stands for “Recovery Audit Contractor.”
The RAC was conceived as the enforcement arm of Medicare and Medicaid. It was put into law in 2006 and as of...
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by Dr. S. Russell Vester, MD
18. January 2011 08:13
Did you know that the total cost to the U.S. economy for our population of overweight fellow citizens is now more than a quarter of a trillion dollars. This was reported in the January 11th issue of Bloomberg Business Week.
$127 billion is for direct health care expenses. The rest is for loss of pr...
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by Dr. S. Russell Vester, MD
24. December 2010 20:55
My patients frequently ask me what they should eat during the holidays. With all the tasty food around they are concerned with what is safe. So I’ll tell you what I tell them.
What is most important in your diet is what you eat day in and day out when you’re eating to get from breakfas...
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by Dr. S. Russell Vester, MD
10. November 2010 11:08
Everyone wants to know why we spend so much money on health care in our country. Where do the costs come from? The following are just three examples from patient encounters I had just last week. Every week presents new examples, but the theme, unfortunately, never changes.
Patient A had a stent pla...
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by Dr. S. Russell Vester, MD
26. October 2010 13:56
Obamacare is very much in the news right now. It appears to be THE hot button issue of this year's upcoming elections. People know that the provisions of Obamacare are far reaching. What appears to be missing is a clear understanding of exactly what's coming. To help with this absence of factual inf...
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