Healthcare Unfiltered

Samer Al Hadidi (@HadidiSamer), MD, assistant professor in the multiple myeloma program, University of Arkansas, shares his own human experience of receiving an unfortunate diagnosis as an immigrant going through residency and through fellowship, all while dealing with the loss of a close relative. Dr. Al Hadidi recounts the dilemma he had as an immigrant in the US on a visa and deciding whether t...

To debate the utility and appropriateness of real-world evidence against clinical trials for treating patients with hematologic malignancies, Chadi welcomes back Aaron Goodman (@AaronGoodman33), MD, hematologist, University of California San Diego, and Alan Skarbnik (@ASkarbnik), MD, director of the lymphoma and CLL program, Novant Health (Charlotte, NC), as well as invites first-time guest Liz Br...

Chadi hosts Graham Collins (@graham74GC), MBBS, MA, MRCP, FRCPath, DPhil, hematology consultant in the UK, for a broad discussion aimed to simplify an often complicated disease: Hodgkin lymphoma. The duo talk about early-stage disease categorizing, treatment considerations for each stage, reasonable clinical trial endpoints of practice-changing potential, adverse effects resulting from intensive t...

Chadi re-invites Dave Feldman (@DaveKeto), senior software engineer and entrepreneur, and Ethan Weiss (@ethanjweiss), MD, cardiologist at UC San Francisco, to rehash a Twitter argument on secondary prevention for heart attacks for patients with high LDL. Should patients receive statins or should they not? What does the data show and where is the controversy, if any? How does diet play a role? What...

Ramaswamy Govindan, MD, Anheuser Busch Endowed Chair in Medical Oncology, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, provides the condensed oral history of thoracic oncology – dating from the late 1990s to the present day. Chadi and Dr. Govindan discuss how stage III chemoradiation and PET scans were new strategies before the turn of the century, the introduction of gefitinib as a pivo...

Adam Stern (@AdamPhilipStern), MD, neuropsychiatrist and assistant professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, joins the show to discuss his book “Committed: Dispatches from a Psychiatrist in Training” and the struggles that psychiatry trainees face today. Dr. Stern hits on an unexpected diagnosis he was given three years ago, dealing with imposter syndrome, the cruelty of survival rates when...

Leah Houston (@LeahHoustonMD), MD, an emergency physician and founder of HPEC (@HPECid) as well as Evercred, explains blockchain as a decentralizer of physician and patient data and how it will be applied ubiquitously across the healthcare system. Dr. Houston shares and makes the case for how blockchain stores medical data and keeps the ownership in the hands of physicians, offers a solution to is...

Ben Mazer (@BenMazer), MD, anatomic and clinical pathologist at Yale New Haven Hospital, joins Chadi to recap the rise and fall of the now infamous Theranos – a private lifestyle and healthcare startup company that claimed to have innovative, revolutionary blood testing technology that was ultimately proven ineffective. Dr. Mazer explains how Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the company, allegedly...

Marion Mass (@mass_marion), MD, practicing pediatrician and co-founder of Practicing Physicians of America, joins the show to share her unique ideas about how to reduce healthcare costs while simultaneously improving access to care. She describes her “sentinel moment” in which she realized that physicians are no longer the primary medical advocates for their patients and how this led her to foundi...

Fadlo Khouri (@DrFadloKhuri), MD, hematologist and medical oncologist, and president of the American University of Beirut (Lebanon), is asked to join the show after a recent announcement from the University regarding a fuel shortage at its hospital. Dr. Khouri explains how Lebanon’s economic downturn is affecting hospitals – from the inability to supply hospitals with air conditioning to cancer th...

Keeping up with the dietary theme in recent episodes, Chadi hosts Jerry Teixeira (@jerryteixeira), a strength and conditioning expert. He begins with a personal anecdote on how changing his eating habits along with continued regular exercise was necessary to losing weight, divulges exactly what goes into his low-carb diet, shares how alcohol and dessert consumption factors into the diet, explains...

Chadi is joined by Dave Feldman (@DaveKeto), senior software engineer and entrepreneur, who shares his counterintuitive experience with the ketogenic diet in 2015 and a healthy obsession with the study of lipids and cholesterol that led him to the founding of the “energy model.” Dave breaks down the scientific details of fat cell breakdown in the body, how this process translates in blood tests, a...

In a long overdue appearance, Saurabh Jha (@RogueRad), MD, radiologist in Philadelphia, makes his triumphant return to the show to pick apart the single payer model idea as well as FDA regulatory processes, this time with a worthy adversary: Adam Gaffney (@awgaffney), MD, MPH, pulmonary specialist and health policy researcher at Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School. The conversation be...

Mikkael Sekeres (@MikkaelSekeres), MD, chief of the division of hematology at the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, and David Steensma (@DavidSteensma), MD, global hematology head at Novartis, share their recent experiences undergoing career transitions. The physicians dive into a discussion on how often fellowships are given to candidates who are pursuing academic careers...

Sonikpreet Aulakh (@SonikpreetA), MD, assistant professor of medicine at West Virginia University, provides valuable perspective on the transition into the academic world just two years after her fellowship. Dr. Aulakh sheds light on the experience and details of applying for jobs post-fellowship, what types of challenges she may face as a new faculty member, struggles she may encounter as an immi...

Aaron Mitchell (@TheWonkologist), MD, MPH, medical oncologist and health outcomes researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, comes on to discuss the shortcomings and pitfalls of the regulatory processes at the FDA, optimal trial endpoints that provide the strongest evidence for approval, whether the accelerated approval process is enforced as it is written, what power any advisory panel...

Chadi is rejoined by Priya Sampathkumar (@PSampathkumarMD), MD, infectious disease specialist and hospital epidemiologist, Mayo Clinic, to provide a state of affairs for the current COVID-19 situation in America, including why the country has failed to get more of its people vaccinated, why myocarditis has been a frequent side effects in some people, why the delta variant and other future variants...

Vivek Subbiah, MD, associate professor in the department of investigational cancer therapeutics, MD Anderson, is the world-renowned guest on the show this week to tackle the world of precision medicine in cancer. He begins by explaining how precision medicine is more than simply a “fancier” mechanism of treatment than chemotherapy, why tumor sequencing is important even though there aren’t drugs a...

For another lively debate, Chadi brings on two lymphoma experts to talk about what to do with peripheral T-cell lymphoma (PTCL) patients after an achieved remission: Barbara Pro (@bpromd), MD, Northwestern University, and Mehdi Hamadani (@MediHumdani), MD, Medical College of Wisconsin. The two doctors share how they counsel and treat patients in uncertain situations, including the “right” circumst...

Chadi welcomes back Rafael Fonseca, (@Rfonsi1), MD, interim director of Mayo Clinic Cancer Center, and Aaron Goodman (@AaronGoodman33), MD, hematologist, University of California San Diego, to debate whether smoldering multiple myeloma should be treated. They begin by agreeing on a definition of the disease, listing patient characteristics that may warrant consideration for early intervention, and...

Is it a coincidence that many clinicians are talented musicians? These doctors don’t believe so! In this exclusive roundtable pow-wow, Chadi hosts a range of crafty and passionate oncologists that share a similar dedication to music. Conversations on musical inspirations and favorite artists are interwoven with music samples and personal anecdotes in this truly lighthearted, uninhibited jam sessio...

In this captivating episode, Chadi shares the microphone with Nancy Olivieri (@DrNancyOlivieri), MD, professor of medicine, pediatrics, and public health science at the University of Toronto, to recount her famous clash with a pharmaceutical company (among other entities) that tried to silence her for reporting on adverse effects related to an experimental drug. Dr. Olivieri became famous for rais...

Alan Skarbnik (@ASkarbnik), MD, director of the lymphoma and CLL program, Novant Health (Charlotte, NC), and Aaron Goodman (@AaronGoodman33), MD, hematologist, University of California San Diego, join the show for a long-awaited debate: treating double-hit lymphoma with R-CHOP vs dose-adjusted (DA)-EPOCH-R. The conversation gets testy when the trio describe double-hit lymphoma in terms of histolog...

To tackle the complicated world of neuroendocrine tumors (NETs), Chadi is joined by Pamela Kunz (@PamelaKunzMD), MD, Director of the Center for GI Cancers at Yale Cancer Center; as well as the Vice Chief of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for medical oncology at Yale Cancer Center. Dr. Kunz begins by shedding light on potential reasons for higher incidence of NETs in the past three decades and th...

Vincent Rajkumar (@VincentRK), MD, Mayo Clinic, and Editor-in-Chief of Blood Cancer Journal, rejoins the show to answer some critically important questions related to medical publications and information reliability in the pandemic and post-pandemic world. As a consumer of medical news, which sources of information should you take seriously? Should you ignore press releases and pre-prints in favor...