All Topics

• Bicycle-Car Crashes

  Ken Margolin | December 15, 2006 7:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  In a typical year, nearly 750 bicycle riders nationwide may die in car-bicycle crashes. Thousands more cyclists are injured, some with serious traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, or other life-threatening harm. Many drivers are hostile to cyclists, resentful if their ride is slowed down for a few moments by a bicycle in front of them, or if they have to move over a foot to give the...

• Hunting Deaths

  Ken Margolin | December 14, 2006 5:15 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  Last week, an 18 year old woman living in South Paris, Maine, was shot and killed by a hunter, while she was at the edge of the woods a short distance from her home. Every year during hunting season in hunting-intense states - especially deer hunting season - there are fatalities and many more non-fatal gunshot injuries. Residents and visitors of states in which hunting is a tradition, must be...

• New FDA Drug Information Rules

  Ken Margolin | December 08, 2006 5:00 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  Earlier this year, the federal Food and Drug Administration passed new rules designed to make it easier for doctors to get essential information from the inserts inside packages of prescription drugs. The rules change reflected an understanding that the growing complexity of information presented in package inserts, was becoming confusing even to physicians. Serious medication errors were a...

• Medication Error Reduction Efforts Continue

  Ken Margolin | December 08, 2006 1:00 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  The ground breaking book, Medication Errors, edited by Michael R. Cohen, was published in 1999. In November of this year, Medication Errors 2nd Edition, was released. A review the book reveals the nature of some of the still-problematic areas of medication errors, as well as the ongoing efforts of the medical profession to reduce them.Pediatric medication errors continue to be a serious problem....

• Car versus Truck Accidents Far More Dangerous

  Ken Margolin | December 06, 2006 7:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  According to the American Automobile Association ("AAA"), American motorists share a fear of being involved in accidents with large trucks. That communal fear is not unreasonable. Approximately 5000 people are killed annually in accidents involving passenger cars and commercial trucks. Fatal car-truck crashes are all too common. While many states have placed limits on the size of trucks' rigs,...

• New Stroke Treatment to be Tested

  Ken Margolin | December 05, 2006 7:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  More than 700,000 people suffer strokes each year. Currently, there is only one drug on the market, TPA, approved in 1996 to treat and protect the brain from strokes. Subsequent efforts to introduce a better drug have failed--more than 100 times, in fact, since 1996. TPA's side-effects include brain hemorrhaging and it is only effective if administered within 3 hours of the onset of stroke....

• Traffic Injuries are Not Inevitable

  Ken Margolin | December 04, 2006 11:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  A recent article on traffic injuries, written by researchers at a non-profit organization affiliated with Emory University, states that worldwide, traffic accidents cause 1 million fatalities and over 20 million injuries per year. The authors (Lauren P. Giles, B.A.; Elisabeth S. Hayes, M.B.A.; and Mark L. Rosenberg, M.D., M.P.P., Road Traffic Injuries: Can we Stop a Global Epidemic?), draw the...

• Construction Accidents Continue

  Ken Margolin | November 30, 2006 9:30 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  An ongoing theme on this blog site is the hazards of construction work and the justifiable liability for companies that negligently put workers at risk. Two more significant settlements were reported this week in Massachusetts, resulting from serious accidents at construction sites. In the first case, an ironworker fell to his death from a scaffolding 65 feet in the air. A piece of structural...

• Pharmacy Errors and Tips on Avoiding Them

  Ken Margolin | November 21, 2006 3:00 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  Pharmacy errors cause over 7,000 deaths per year, and around 5% of the more than 3 billion prescriptions filled are incorrect, according to the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP). The NABP has even created a special task force to combat medication errors in pharmacies as the number of prescriptions increases and the potential for error rises as well. Pharmacy medication errors...

• Dog Bites

  Ken Margolin | November 20, 2006 6:30 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  In a 19 year period from 1979 through 1998, the federal Center for Disease Control, reports that more than 300 Americans died from dog bite attacks. Giving an idea of the scope of the danger - an astounding 800,000 Americans sought medical care because of dog bites in a single reported year. Most dog attacks involved a lone dog, and not surprisingly, while any breed of dog can bite, pit-bulls,...