How to establish a face transplant team

March 3, 2015- Interviewed by Steven E. Greer, MD

In Part 2 of our interview with Eduardo Rodriguez, MD, DDS, Chairman of Plastic Surgery at NYU, he discusses the new face transplant team that he has assembled, preparing for their first case.

The super cool new drug: Marijuana

May 31, 2015- By Steven E. Greer, MD

I was watching Green Day give their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame acceptance speech and the singer made some references to smoking pot, as if it was his generation’s thing. I have wondered to myself Read more »

Atul Gawande’s surgical checklist fails in real world study

March 15, 2014- By Steven E. Greer, MD

In 2009, Atul Gawande, MD, MPH and his large international team published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) an observational study that showed a significant reduction of death and “complications” after non-cardiac surgery. The World Health Organization (WHO) created the checklist used in the NEJM paper. After this non-randomized, non-controlled, observational study was published, entire nations adopted the surgical checklist system.

Now, in 2014, a population study drawing from Ontario surgical patient data, published in the NEJM, showed no significant benefit from the widespread adoption of the same WHO surgical safety checklist that Dr. Gawande popularized. This study was also observational, but it was stronger than the 2009 Gawande study in that it included the entire population within a region.

What went wrong? Read more »

Update on the DEA’s efforts to curb the “pain pill mill” problem in Florida

March 7, 2012  By Steven Greer, MD

We previously interviewed Special Agent Mark Trouville, the DEA agent in charge of tackling the rampant abuse of prescription opioid pain pills in Florida, and the “pain pill mill” system. Since then, the State of Florida passed laws making it harder for doctors to operate the illegal clinics, and the results have been dramatic.

In one year, the number of oxycodone pills ordered by physicians has declined 97%. Most of those pills were traveling out of the State of Florida to the rest of the country. In addition to bad doctors and the dispensing pain pill mill clinics, the DEA has also addressed higher up the food chain and shut down a Cardinal Health distribution center for allegedly looking the other way, still shipping to CVS pharmacies that were distributing too many pain pills to reasonably meet the demand of the region.

In this video interview, Special Agent Trouville gives us an update.

Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD: The medical checklist concept to reduce adverse events

By Steven Greer, MD

(Viewable in full screen 1080iHD)

Dr. Peter Pronovost, Professor of anesthesiology and critical care at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, discusses his paradigm changing medical checklist concept that has greatly reduced adverse events in hospitals. Starting with reducing central line infections dramatically, the concept was expanded to reducing ventilator pneumonias and then to reducing mortality in the operating room.

Dr. Pronovost was named one of Time Magazine’s “Most Influential People in the World” and is a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” award. Dr. Steven Greer took a tour of his ICU and discussed his advances.