Daily Rounds: Crackdown On Medical Tests; Doctors Mum On Fat Kids; Trump's Anti-Vaccine Rant, And More

Doctor Panels Urge Fewer Routine Tests (The New York Times) — "In a move likely to alter treatment standards in hospitals and doctors’ offices nationwide, a group of nine medical specialty boards plans to recommend on Wednesday that doctors perform 45 common tests and procedures less often, and to urge patients to question these services if they are offered. Eight other specialty boards are preparing to follow suit with additional lists of procedures their members should perform far less often."

Most Parents Of Overweight Kids Don't Hear It From The Doctor — (Time Healthland) — "But even providers who’ve mastered the art of informing parents in a tactful way that Junior needs to slim down aren’t necessarily sharing that information with parents. Just one quarter of parents of overweight kids say they’ve been told by a doctor that their kids weighed too much, according to a new study published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine."

Woman Who Became World's Oldest Doctor Dies at 114 (AP via The Boston Globe) — 'Dr. Leila Denmark, the world's oldest practicing physician when she retired at age 103, died Sunday in Athens, her family members said. She was 114. Denmark became the first resident physician at Henrietta Egleston Hospital for Children in Atlanta when it opened in 1928, said her grandson, Steven Hutcherson of Atlanta. She also admitted the first patient at the hospital, now part of Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. She loved helping children, and it showed in the way she would turn to the next family waiting to see her, Hutcherson said. "She would say, `Who is the next little angel?," he said.'

Donald Trump Enters Anti-Vaccine Quack Territory (Slate) — '"On Monday morning’s Fox & Friends, Trump helped kick off Autism Awareness Month by spouting some boring, boilerplate nonsense about the (shattered) link between autism and vaccines. Trump apparently buys into the “too many, too soon” idea. That is currently anti-vaccine activists’ favored argument, having replaced mercury. “I’m all for vaccinations, but I think that when you add all of these vaccinations together and then two months later the baby is so different … I’ve known cases,” he says. When co-host Gretch Carlson interrupts him to say that most physicians disagree with this position, he dismisses the idea: “Yeah, I know they do. … I couldn’t care less.” (At least he didn’t say “could care less.”)'