This time of the year marks long-awaited warmer temperatures, extended days, and the sweet smell of springtime. Now that Spring has finally arrived and we can kiss our cabin fever blues away, there’s another fever we have to contend with - Spring... 

Doctors weigh treatment options differently when they’re deciding for themselves and when they’re treating patients, according to a new study. Doctors were more likely to opt for treatments with a higher chance of death — but lower risk of... 

Kaposi’s sarcoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and invasive cervical cancer are considered “AIDS-defining cancers,” striking those infected with HIV at much higher rates than the general population and, except in the case of cervical cancer... 

Dimebon, the old Russian cold medicine that held promise as a treatment for Alzheimer’s and potentially other brain diseases, is looking more and more like a dud. In a late-stage trial in 403 patients with Huntington’s disease, a genetic... 

Here’s a scary new stat to swallow: smoking causes half a million deaths each year in the US, killing slightly more men than women . For this report, Dr. Brian Rostron, then of the University of California, Berkeley, tracked data that asked 250,000... 

With growing concern that adolescents aren’t getting the full menu of medical services they need to stay healthy, new efforts are under way to improve preventive care for physical and mental-health issues, according to today’s Informed Patient column.... 

  Mining Medicare: An analysis of Medicare’s claims databases shows how one Portland-area neurosurgeon has had an unusual propensity for performing multiple surgeries on the spine, the WSJ reports .  For the past year, the Journal has been mining... 

Aviation safety is often held up as a model for patient safety. Most notably, the whole idea of a safety checklist during surgery or other procedures was borrowed from the cockpit. A paper published recently in the Milbank Quarterly, a peer-reviewed... 

In the push to get more Americans to prepare advance directives outlining their end-of-life wishes, more states and regions are adopting a program known as Polst, for Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment, today’s Informed Patient column reports... 

If you’re admitted to the hospital with a heart attack, your chances of survival may depend as much on such factors as how quickly the institution cycles through CEOs as on the type of treatment you receive. That’s the conclusion of a new...