Osteoporosis

An article on the front page of the New York Times was entitled “FDA is Wary of Lengthy Use of Bone Drugs”. Many of my patients or else members of their family may be taking medication to help reduce osteoporotic fracture. Some of these women are on drugs mentioned in this article and other women are not. Such information may be confusing and frightening to many patients and so I believe it is worthy of discussion in this space. (more…)...

Pap Smear Screening

There was an article in the New York Times by Tara Parker-Pope entitled “The annual appointment loses some relevance”.  It was about the highly publicized, but not so very different, pap smear guidelines by the USPSTF (United States Preventative Services Task Force).  The guidelines had already been changed several years ago making the recommendation for less screening in some women.  At that time, as a member of the Editorial Board of Contemporary ObGyn, I wrote a piece entitled “If it...

Calcium & Vitamin D

Recently, there has been a lot of medical attention vis-a-vis calcium, and to a lesser extent, Vitamin D.  Many patients are confused, hence this post.  Make no mistake – calcium and vitamin D are crucial for healthy bone.  The current recommendation is for 1000mg of elemental Calcium for women up to age 50 and 1200 mg for women above age 50.  I have been telling my patients for years that you are best off getting your calcium from diet.  Some evidence suggest that calcium supplements may...