Doctor

Asthma sufferers have long relied on inhalers for relief from wheezing or coughing attacks. But as of Dec. 31, Primatene Mist -- the only available over-the-counter asthma inhaler -- was taken off shelves because of its adverse effect on the environment. Other inhalers are available, but these require a doctor's prescription. Some people with asthma aren't happy about the change, but lung doctors and asthma specialists agree that Primatene Mist wasn't the best option for patients anyway.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A Pakistani doctor who led a phony vaccination campaign aimed at helping the CIA pinpoint Osama bin Laden's whereabouts was convicted of treason Wednesday and sentenced to 33 years in prison, a decision that is likely to further fray Washington's fragile relations with Islamabad. U.S. officials have been seeking the release of Shakeel Afridi since his arrest by Pakistani authorities after the secret American commando raid that killed the Al Qaeda leader in his sprawling compound in the garrison city of Abbottabad a year ago. In January, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told CBS' "60 Minutes" that Afridi had provided intelligence that assisted the raid and criticized Pakistan's arrest of someone involved in helping track down the world's most wanted man. From the start, however, Pakistani authorities have regarded Afridi as a traitor and have ignored Washington's calls for his release.

Manny Hamelburg, 68, a retired businessman, had fought prostate cancer for years. First, he tried radiation, then a drug with side effects that nearly killed him, and finally Lupron, a drug that blocks production of testosterone, the hormone that can fuel prostate cancer. The cancer disappeared. But life was miserable. Without normal levels of testosterone, Hamelburg says, he had no energy, and "zero libido for seven years. I was like a eunuch. I was chemically castrated. Sex was just hugs."

Is the routine PSA test to screen for prostate cancer going to fade away now that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has recommended against it for men of all ages? The signs are maybe not, according to a survey of primary care physicians done by Dr. Craig E. Pollack and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The survey was done in November, after the task force's draft recommendations had been released but before the final ones were published earlier this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine . In the survey, 125 primary care physicians and nurse practitioners affiliated with Johns Hopkins responded to a questionnaire about their approach to PSA screening.

The PSA test should be abandoned as a prostate cancer screening tool, a government advisory panel has concluded after determining that the side effects from needless biopsies and treatments hurt many more men than are potentially helped by early detection of cancers. At best, one life will be saved for every 1,000 men screened over a 10-year period, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. But 100 to 120 men will have suspicious results when there is no cancer, triggering biopsies that can carry complications such as pain, fever, bleeding, infection and hospitalization.

"Oh, you mean the guy with the 70-year-old head and the 20-year-old body-builder body? That picture has got to be Photoshopped." Dr. Jeffry Life smiles when I tell him about the general reaction I get about the famous picture of him with his shirt off, the shot that turned a mild-mannered doctor in his mid-60s into a poster boy for super-fit aging and controversial hormone replacement Appearing in medical-clinic ads in airline magazines and...

Montel Williams is not your typical pot-smoking snowboarder. Best known as an Emmy-winning talk show host, the former Marine and decorated naval intelligence officer was also a champion boxer, bodybuilder and power-lifter. In 1999, Williams was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and it hit him hard. After a downward slide to rock bottom, Williams decided to get his life back. Were you active in your younger years? I was extremely active. I was a martial artist.

My husband has high cholesterol. His doctor put him on Lipitor. After the dosage was increased, I noticed he wasn't as enthusiastic about our previously very active sex life. He said he wasn't feeling aroused and his usual morning erections weren't occurring. He asked his doctor if the Lipitor might be responsible, and the doc said to stop it for a month and see what happened. Our sex life is back to normal. He takes niacin, eats oatmeal and exercises, but is unwilling to have his cholesterol checked.

So how many omega-3 fatty acids are enough — and how should you get them? That likely depends on your age and your specific health concerns. The United States does not yet have guidelines for DHA or EPA, and consensus among nutrition experts is elusive. But specialty groups, some governmental agencies and individual experts have started to take a stand. For healthy adults without major medical issues, the European Food Safety Agency recommends a daily dose of 250 milligrams of combined EPA and DHA, while the National Heart Foundation of Australia suggests 500 milligrams.

Vertigo. For most people, the word summons images of Jimmy Stewart dangling from high places in Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller by the same name. It means something else, however, to hundreds of thousands of people who experience the strange, dizzying affliction. The most common cause of vertigo, known as benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, usually can be treated with one visit to the doctor.

The PSA test should not be a routine screen for men of any age, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force declared earlier this week. The assessment wasn't about saving money but was based on a review of the science on PSA screening -- what were the benefits and what were the harms? To recap: The task force concluded from two large studies that over a period of 10 years, one prostate cancer death at most was saved from PSA screening for every 1,000 men screened. The test finds many cancers that are not life-threatening, and treatment causes side effects from surgery and radiation such as impotence and urinary incontinence.

The PSA test should be abandoned as a prostate cancer screening tool, a government advisory panel has concluded after determining that the side effects from needless biopsies and treatments hurt many more men than are potentially helped by early detection of cancers. At best, one life will be saved for every 1,000 men screened over a 10-year period, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. But 100 to 120 men will have suspicious results when there is no cancer, triggering biopsies that can carry complications such as pain, fever, bleeding, infection and hospitalization.

Dodgers Manager Don Mattingly said Sunday that the team doctor told him second baseman Mark Ellis was within several hours of possibly having his left leg amputated if Ellis hadn't had emergency surgery. "That was scary," Mattingly said of the injury, which is expected to keep Ellis out of action for six weeks. "I didn't realize how bad that was. " Ellis, 34, suffered the injury Friday when he was upended by the St. Louis Cardinals' Tyler Greene to break up a double play.

I had a routine physical exam a couple of weeks ago and paid a $40 co-pay. I thought it was strange, so I called my insurance company. They said I should not have had to pay a co-pay for a routine physical exam. I called the doctor's office and they referred me to their billing department, who refused to refund me the co-pay until my insurer reimburses them for the full amount of the physical. This doesn't sound correct to me. They collected a co-pay that they should not have collected.

My mom's first day of motherhood was one of the happiest of her life. It was also one of the worst. She had accompanied my dad from Sri Lanka to Washington State University in 1968, so he could complete his doctorate as a Fulbright Scholar. The school was in Pullman, a small town near the Idaho border. Fluent in English, she worked as a university librarian. During her pregnancy, at age 30, she received care from one of Pullman's few obstetricians. She endured labor without drugs, and I was born healthy in 1972.

A polite comedy about a potentially rude subject,"Hysteria"takes its title from the medical condition diagnosed to women in Victorian England for any number of unrelated symptoms. As a treatment, doctors would stimulate a woman to orgasm, referred to as "manual massage to paroxysm," leading one beleaguered physician, essentially as a labor-saving device, to invent the vibrator. In the film, which opens in Los Angeles on May 18, the progressive young doctor Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy)

A small wooden cabinet went up for auction on EBay. Inside were two locks of hair, one granite slab, one dried rosebud, one goblet, two wheat pennies, one candlestick and, allegedly, one "dibbuk," a kind of spirit popular in Yiddish folklore. The seller, a Missouri college student named Iosif Nietzke, described the container as a "haunted Jewish wine cabinet box" that had plagued several owners with rotten luck and a spate of bizarre paranormal stunts.

KCBS-TV Channel 2 reporter Serene Branson suffered "migraine aura" when she began speaking what appeared to be gibberish during a live report following the Grammys on Sunday evening, Dr. Andrew Charles, director of UCLA’s Headache Research and Treatment Program, said in an interview Thursday. Some previous reports had indicated she was suffering from "complicated migraine" or "complex migraine. " Those are really laymen's terms that have fallen out of favor with physicians, Charles said.

Montel Williams is not your typical pot-smoking snowboarder. Best known as an Emmy-winning talk show host, the former Marine and decorated naval intelligence officer was also a champion boxer, bodybuilder and power-lifter. In 1999, Williams was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and it hit him hard. After a downward slide to rock bottom, Williams decided to get his life back. Were you active in your younger years? I was extremely active. I was a martial artist.

A controversial proposal to allow some nurses, midwives and physician assistants to perform certain early abortions was withdrawn by its author Friday because it lacked enough votes to pass a key legislative committee. The bill had the backing of the leaders of both houses of the Legislature and of Planned Parenthood but was opposed by an influential nurses union and by foes of abortion rights. Proponents argued that the measure would make it easier for women who live far from urban areas with plenty of abortion providers to get safer, less intrusive procedures.