In the coming weeks, Crozer-Keystone Health System will begin performing WATCHMAN device implantation. It’s intended for patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation, or A-fib, which is an irregular heart rhythm that increases your risk of a stroke. Crozer-Keystone is the first to offer WATCHMAN in Delaware County. You may benefit from the procedure if you are a candidate for, but cannot take, blood thinners for the…
How about some fireside non-fiction reading for winter hibernation? When Antidepressants Aren’t Enough: Harnessing the Power of Mindfulness to Alleviate Depression by Stuart J. Eisendrath, M.D., would be a good start. This psychiatrist’s antidote to depression taps into the benefits of meditation and mindfulness. Depression may be fleeting unhappiness or a temporary sadness, but it can also be debilitating, impairing cognitive functioning, concentration, sleep, and…
I sit at a college in Massachusetts, staring out the window at a stand of lodgepole pines. Students, staff, tread the paved walkways cleared of snow. I am here because a young woman athlete named Grace died in a car crash. Some of her rowing crewmates are still in a Florida hospital, hopefully healing from their injuries. The local Boston papers have reported sudden deaths…
Coronavirus has been a fixture in the news cycle since the start of the new year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) describes its spread and the ongoing investigation as an “emerging, rapidly evolving situation.” Within the last 24 hours, nearly 6,000 cases had been confirmed by the World Health Organization across 16 countries, including five in the United States. And at least…
A landmark study has ignited a dramatic shift in stroke care over the last two years, removing much of the ambiguity that had long surrounded one of the primary treatments. If you had a stroke at some point over the last 24 years and you were brought to an ER within three hours of its onset, you likely would have been given a drug called…
Have you made any New Year’s resolutions for 2020? Perhaps if you share your goals with a “higher status” individual, you will be more committed in reaching them. According to research summarized in the American Psychological Association Monitor’s In Brief column (January, February 2020), people appear more committed to achieving their goals when they share them with someone they perceive as having more authority. The…
The word empathy gets bandied about a lot these days, becoming yet another platitude. If we slap the word in a “PR” paragraph, it must mean a corporation cares. If we use it in conversation, it must mean we really own it. Well, no, on both counts. True empathy is the unsung hero of the quotidian lives we live. What is empathy anyway? It is…
Sure, sure, sure, I have written about holiday stressors many times before. However, just as holidays return every year, it can’t hurt to revisit some of the stresses they conjure and also what might help to allay those stresses. It’s sort of like old recipes — we know them, but we forget them and so we need to go back to the cookbook or the…
The name of the procedure is a mouthful, but the impact it’s having on patients is huge. It’s called transcatheter aortic valve replacement—TAVR for short—and it’s revolutionizing how patients with aortic valve disease are treated at Crozer Keystone Health System. “Put simply, TAVR involves the replacement of a diseased or malfunctioning aortic heart valve through a very small incision in the groin you cannot even…
The average trick-or-treater in America will consume around three cups of sugar (or about 7,000 calories of candy) on Halloween, according to one industry report. Buried beneath that mountain of sweets is an already pressing concern about the amount of sugar Americans (kids and adults alike) eat on a daily basis, the growing research that suggests that excess added sugar in the diet has strong…
From family dinners to telecommuting, psychologists have done their homework, according to research summarized in the October, 2019, issue of the APA Monitor on Psychology. According to family therapist Anne Fishel, research on the importance of family meals notes that “regular family dinners are associated with less depression and anxiety, lower rates of substance and tobacco use, lower rates of teenage pregnancy, and fewer behavioral problems…