Who hasn’t wanted to chuck his or her cell phone, laptop, or tablet at least once a day? The idea of being continually tethered to technology can be crushing, but this interconnectedness will also be our salvation. At least that’s what one Wunderkind thinks.

“This may be hallucinatory optimism, but it gets to the point where the more connected we are, the... »

My necktie collection needs a makeover, at least some vim and a spray-down with Febreze to mask their musty smell.

I keep my collection hanging on a tie rack shoved in the far corner of my closet, barely within reach and safe from potentially damaging ultraviolet rays. Wearing ties underwhelms me, though I consider three as prized possessions. These... »

As the Supreme Court prepares to take on challenges to the Affordable Care Act, new data suggests that Americans remain divided on the constitutionality of the law’s requirement that all Americans purchase health insurance.

Little more than half of Americans (54%) think the individual mandate should be ruled unconstitutional and that the Supreme Court will... »

Delivery system reforms come second to repealing the Sustainable Growth Rate formula. That’s according to congressional testimony by private sector payers at a recent hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee.  While each of the panelists presented compelling ideas for delivery system reform, all agreed that the first step to progress is a new... »

Physicians are getting better at advising adults to exercise.

In 2010, 32.4% of adults in the United States who had seen a physician or other health care professional in the past year had received a recommendation to begin or continue to do exercise or physical activity, up from 22.6% in 2000. At each time point, women were more likely than men to have... »

It’s been a quick reversal for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation, reinstating funding some 72 hours after cutting off Planned Parenthood because of new criteria barring grants to organizations under investigation, prompted in this case, by a Republican congressman.

“We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations ... »

Human genome sequencing. Facebook. Informed consent. “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” Rare diseases. “Hotel California.” Cost-effective medicine.

It was all in a day’s work for the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues in its eighth meeting, this time at the University of California, San Francisco. The focus: What policies or... »

Not sure how to counsel your patients with obstructive sleep apnea about surgery? You might want to share the results of this study.

After multiple patients had surgery and reported anecdotal changes in dream content, recall, and sexual activity, Dr. J. Drew Prosser and his colleagues at Georgia Health Science University in Augusta decided to find out... »

Just a few years ago, tobacco and alcohol use were presumed to be the main causes of head and neck cancers. Evidence of oropharyngeal cancer associated with human papillomavirus (HPV) first appeared about 10 years ago, but it wasn’t until 2010, with the publication of 2 papers showing far greater survival among HPV-positive patients with head and neck... »

Government officials have stood before doctors many times and talked about the need to change the perverse incentives that pay them more for caring for sick patients than for keeping people healthy to start. Dr. Richard Gilfillan, who runs the new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, had a similar pitch when he talked to more than 1,000 people... »

Republicans on the House Energy & Commerce Committee took President Obama to task on Tuesday in a short video that accused him of doing nothing to fulfill a promise made in last year’s State of the Union address to address medical liability reform.

    Courtesy Wikimedia Commons/johnfekner/GNU Free Documentation License

With its... »

Atul Gawande and Ezekiel Emanuel say physicians can make a greater impact than health care law. »

Dr. Paul Lizzul and Dr. Allan Conney, along with their colleagues, are in the early stages of research that hints at broad implications for preventing squamous cell and basal cell skin cancer. After starting in the lab and progressing with animal models, they took a hypothesis about the effect of caffeine on actinic keratoses and applied it... »

Nowhere in the thousands of pages of the Affordable Care Act does it give the federal government the power to stop insurance companies from charging excessive premiums. But the controversial health reform law does grant the Department of the Health and Human Services the right to review some large rate increases and to tell consumers when they... »

Catch up with what you missed as we count down the 10 most-read online stories from The Oncology Report in 2011.  »