We talk with Dr. Catherine Kelly about her study in  BMJ showing serious interference of some SSRIs with tamoxifen therapy in breast cancer. The study was conducted using Canadian provincial databases.

Reach us at 1-617-440-4374 or by email to [email protected].

Interview article:

Medical news links:

A panel of the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, and the American Urological Association issued a statement on androgen-deprivation therapy and cardiovascular risk. We’ve got an interview with the chair of the writing committee, Dr. Glenn Levine.

Interview-related links:

News-related links:

If you’d like to contact Clinical Conversations, call 1-617-440-4374 or write to [email protected]

We’ve got Dr. William Carroll this week — we tried last week, but the 13-hour time difference between Boston and Perth just stymied me. Dr. Carroll speaks about his NEJM editorial concerning two new drugs for multiple sclerosis. Both are oral therapies that work to keep lymphocytes at bay in this disease.

Interview-story link:

News links:

I tried arranging an interview across a 13-hour time difference, with no luck. We revisit, instead, an October conversation about the late clinical course of dementia.

First a look at the news.

Comments to [email protected] or to 1-617-440-4374.

Interview link:

News links:

This is the podcast for January 15, 2010.

We have an interview on the impact of the USPSTF guidelines with two clinicians who study the best ways to communicate clearly with patients. I think you’ll like it.

You can reach me at [email protected] or by calling 617-440-4374. If you like this podcast, there are many others in the archives, and they’re all free. I hope you find them useful.

News links:

Adult immunization schedule in MMWR

Ticagrelor versus clopidogrel

Platelet-rich plasma injections

Lack of evidence supporting rapid response teams

Inerview linki:

JAMA essays on USPSTF recommendation

I’ve been on vacation, and I hope that you’ve managed to sneak some time away as well.

In December, JAMA published an article associating increased survival after breast cancer with eating even modest amounts of soy food regularly. The work was done using a cohort in Shanghai, and the study’s first author agreed to an interview.

If you have comments (and there seems to have been more over the holidays, for some reason) please feel free to chime in. I’ll be better about evaluating them promptly for appropriateness.

You can also leave voice mail at 1-617-440-4374 and email me at [email protected].

Here are the week’s links:

Interview-related–

JAMA abstract

News-related–

Atypical antipsychotics

Presurgical prep

High-test flu shot for elders

Contaminated cocaine and agranulocytosis

Dr. Robert Centor of the University of Alabama at Birmingham believes that the paradigm for treating pharyngitis in adolescents and young adults must change. Listen to our conversation and hear why.

Here are this week’s links:

Interview:

News stories:

This week’s Archives of Internal Medicine investigates what happens when you analyze the outcome of all those pulmonary angiographic CTs ordered in the emergency department to rule out pulmonary embolism.

We talk things over with Dr. Shannon Carson and Dr. William Hall, two of the paper’s principal authors.

It’s Thanksgiving Week here in the U.S., and so there won’t be a news section in this edition. I’ll catch you up next week on what’s happened.

I hope your holiday is pleasant, if you get one, and your workload reasonable, if you don’t.

Interview link:

One of the more intriguing pieces of research presented at the American Heart Association this week (and simultaneously released online in the New England Journal of Medicine) shows that extended-release niacin outperforms ezetimibe in high-risk patients. We talk with Dr. Allen J. Taylor, the study’s first author.

Contact us at 1-617-440-4374 or write [email protected].

This edition’s links:

Interview Link:

News Links:

Investigators have suspected that there isn’t much advantage to renovascular angioplasty and stenting in atherosclerosis, but their studies haven’t had the statistical power to prove that point. A new bit of research in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine may have hit the mark. We’ve got an interview with two of the principals of the ASTRAL study (that’s their acronym for Angioplasty and Stenting for Renal Artery Lesions). Dr. Philip Kalra, the nephrology lead, and Dr. Jonathan Moss, the radiology lead, kindly agreed to the conversation, which I think you’ll find of interest.

Reach us with your comments and suggestions at [email protected], or call 1-617-440-4374.