Dr. Elaine Schattner

Doctors have understood for decades that breast cancer is not one disease. Still, and with few exceptions, knowledge of breast cancer genetics -- information on cancer-causing mutations in the malignant cells -- has lagged. Here's the paradox: Because effective treatments exist for most patients with this disease, the...

Like most women, physicians and mothers of my generation in the U.S., I've been fortunate to learn of deaths from wire hangers and shady abortionists only indirectly. Last week I realized that I've taken women's health, or what's really at issue -- women's access to needed care --...

Susan Niebur is a 38-year-old mom and astrophysicist who lives near Washington, D.C. In most mornings, lately, she chats with her husband as he drives to a medical center for her near-daily radiation treatments. She has metastatic breast cancer (MBC) that's spread to her spine and other bones.

It's...

In late June, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) held an unusual, open-door and emotionally-packed meeting of its Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC). The topic was Avastin, a costly cancer treatment. The panel listened to testimony from women, including my cousin, about their ongoing cancer treatments. It heard,...

Like many New Yorkers, might-be feminists, hematologists and others, I was saddened to learn of Geraldine Ferraro's death. The Depression-era born mother, public school teacher, attorney, criminal prosecutor, Congresswoman, 1984 Democratic VP-candidate and otherwise accomplished woman from this region, succumbed to complications of multiple myeloma at...

A new report in the Journal of the American Medical Association may influence -- and reduce -- surgical treatment for many women diagnosed with breast cancer. The key finding is that for women with apparently limited disease before lumpectomy and what's called a positive sentinel node,...

Recently, the fraudulent work of Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who with his followers feverishly propounded a notion that childhood vaccines cause autism, fell further down the credibility ladder upon a detailed report published in the British Medical Journal. It turns out that cases reported in the original, retracted and...

This week the Obama administration pulled back on a Medicare provision that would have compensated providers for discussing end-of-life care. This is an unfortunate reversal.

The problem is that many people don't get the kind of care that they would choose for the end of life. This...

I'm looking forward to 2011, which among other steps in a healthy direction will deliver incentives for doctors and other medical care providers to adopt electronic health records (EHR). The push for better health IT (HIT) is long overdue.

A few months ago I had the...

I'll be staying near my home for Thanksgiving. But if I did have plans to travel by airplane for the holiday, I think I'd be apprehensive about the new screening procedures implemented by the Transportation Safety Authority (TSA).

My concern is not with the scanning machines. The level...

Breast Cancer Fatigue Syndrome (BCFS) may be setting into our collective consciousness. This newly named, unofficial and insidious condition afflicts individuals who've become desensitized to all things having to do with breast cancer. The list of topics people shy away from, now, includes breast cancer screening and particularly...

Tired of seeing pink? You're not alone, says Dr. Barron Lerner in a piece on Pink Ribbon Fatigue in the New York Times. While cancer awareness campaigns have heightened awareness about this condition, lessened women's fear of the disease and helped raise needed funds for research and care,...

Last week's medical news centered on a New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) article on breast cancer screening by mammography. The paper, authored by an international group of epidemiologists and biostatisticians, suggests that mammography has only a small influence on survival. The findings, along with an accompanying

This month and next, fresh batches of bright and eager first-year medical students will be strolling into their classrooms and lecture halls. They'll be diverse, smart and, hopefully, as idealistic, optimistic and altruistic as we want our future doctors to be.

These baby-docs, quick at their keyboards, will be...

This summer's heat wave in NYC follows what was, on the medical front, a searing spring. In April, St. Vincent's Medical Center in Greenwich Village, a Catholic hospital that provided care to downtown Manhattan residents since 1849, shut its doors. In May, the city's Health and Hospitals Corporation...

Marilyn Monroe's x-rays, white-on-black films of her chest and pelvis, are up for grabs this weekend. The images, long held by the star's deceased gynecologist, will be sold at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. Julien's Auctions, a Hollywood firm specializing in the sale of celebrity memorabilia,...

Lately it seems like we're wired to want information. In the health sphere, we just can't get enough. At the national level, the HITECH act would save our system, or at least give it some needed blood. Evidence-based medicine is all there...

There's a new reality view of doctors' lives at work. The scoop's provided by the venerable New England Journal of Medicine in "What's Keeping Us So Busy in Primary Care? A Snapshot from One Practice." This article, by Dr. Richard Baron, documents the mundane, every-day activities of five...

We're in the midst of National Public Health Week. After a year of constant jabbering about medical care, last month's heated debate and President Obama's signature just days ago, this event might seem anti-climatic. It's not. Rather, this week - with its emphasis on health literacy...

Most people who are sick with a chronic illness don't choose to be so. Most cancer patients don't develop tumors because they did something wrong.

Somehow these, what should-be-obvious statements about the nature of disease, certain to most thoughtful and experienced physicians, have become controversial in our media-riddled culture....