Category: Your Health Matters

(2 stars)
We know the LA Times is doing a lot of health news on its blog, which we applaud. This entry, though, lacked the context that people would need to judge the progress in MS research.

(4 stars)
Excitement but caution captured in the same story – including a strong patient quote about being careful about jumping on new and unproven ideas.

(1 stars)
Reads like a story filed on a Sunday based only on a news release.

(4 stars)
This entire story on treatment of Are they expected to know?

(4 stars)
Important area of research. But this story had some important gaps – no context of prior research, benefits framed only in relative terms (see our primer on this topic), and use of causal language when it wasn’t warranted.

(4 stars)
Kudos to this newspaper for exploring an important professional debate – one that raises questions about whether evidence-based, tested therapies are being ignored too often.

(4 stars)
A rare story that appropriately focuses on the downsides of an expensive medical procedure!

(4 stars)
In comparing this HealthDay story with a Reuters story on the same study, the latter is slightly better for small but significant reasons. Read both story reviews for a comparison.

(4 stars)
This story from Reuters did a slightly better jobthan a competing report from HealthDay.

(2 stars)
A surprisingly fawning, one-sided and incomplete story.

(2 stars)
The story may have missed an important theme: The reality is that there is no routinely applied standard of practice related to infection prevention at the time of routine surgery. The drugs and the diagnostic test in question are routinely available, yet their use is not routine in many US hospitals.

(3 stars)
This story delivers a valuable message for millions of families with small children: More medicine is not necessarily better medicine when it comes to the treatment of ear infections.