US attitudes toward aging drive patient demands for elective medical and surgical services. Ethical physicians must make sure patients have realistic expectations.
Clinical case and commentary on how physicians should respond when confronted by medication requests from parents of children with mood and concentration disorders.
Physicians have a duty to learn the facts and use their medical expertise to allay patients' fears rather than order unnecessary tests when a certain disease or condition receives a great deal of media coverage.
This article asks whether the benefits of neuroelectronic devices that restore function outweigh their risks to the individual and society and whether we should move beyond therapy to enhance our capabilities by the use of such devices?
A hypothetical clinical case discusses patient demand for advanced diagnostics such as MRIs when physicians do not recommend such tests. Better patient education is the suggested approach.
A plastic surgeon criticizes reality television programs that focus on plastic surgery for their less-than-realistic depictions of cosmetic procedures and the profession as a whole.
Two physicians present their viewpoints on the practice of plastic surgery on reality television shows and the accuracy of the information provided by these shows.
A bioethicist argues that two journal articles about quality of life-adjusted years research oversimplifies the issue and do not take into consideration people's abilities to adapt to disability and disease.
A health economics professor believes more research is needed on quality of life-adjusted years to explore the way we describe health states, the elicitation of patient values, and how to develop methods for obtaining informed general population preferences.