Healthcare Unfiltered

Chadi dives into the world of nutrition and dieting with Kevin Bass, MD, PhD student in Texas; Ethan Weiss, MD, cardiologist; and Aaron Goodman, MD, hematologist and current subscriber to the Ketogenic diet. The groups begins with a history of the “Keto” diet and how it has transformed into a popular diet for weight loss, what goes into the traditional Keto diet and how to do it effectively, contr...

To provide an update on the COVID spike and response in India over the past 6 weeks since Chadi’s previous episode, Aju Mathew (@ajumathew_), MD, oncologist practicing in southern India, joins the show. Dr. Mathew begins by describing the tradeoffs of moving home to practice in India while leaving his academic career behind in the US, offers critical remarks on India’s government use of resources...

In early May, a Lithuanian doctor named Laura Silinskyte committed suicide after facing constant bullying from her superiors at her regional hospital. To shed light on the issue of medical bullying and physician suicide, Chadi is joined by two friends of Dr. Silinskyte—Monika Arzanauskaite, a radiologist, and Gil Morgan, a medical oncologist—as well as a personal friend Laurie Gordon, an adult and...

For this special episode, Chadi invites John Marshall (@marshalj23), MD, Chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology, Medstar Georgetown University Hospital, and his wife Liza Marshall, a lawyer by training who was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer 15 years ago. John and Liza co-wrote a book, titled Off Our Chests, about their shared experience of overcoming her diagnosis – told from t...

Chadi welcomes “Papa Heme,” or Aaron Goodman (@AaronGoodman33), MD, hematologist at University of California San Diego, and Matt Wilson (@mattwilson2287), MD, Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre (UK), to debate the importance and utility of CNS prophylaxis for patients with DLBCL. The trio explain the origins of the debate, who the high-risk patients are in the first place, whether better syste...

Bishal Gyawali (@oncology_bg), MD, PhD, Queen’s University Cancer Research Institute (Canada), joins the show to discuss the measurement of clinical benefit of new therapies and optimizing clinical trial design. Dr. Gyawali recaps a presentation he gave at last year’s ESMO Annual Meeting on clinical trial characteristics leading to artificial improvement of ESMO-MCBS scores for cancer drugs, goes...

Recurring guests Saurabh Jha (@RogueRad), MD, radiologist in Philadelphia, and Vinay Prasad (@VPrasadMDMPH), MD, MPH, hematologist/oncologist in San Francisco, seek to settle the debate surrounding COVID vaccine passports. Both scholars defend their recently published viewpoints – Dr. Jha arguing for passport mandates and Dr. Prasad arguing against them. Will requiring proof of vaccination be driv...

To truly understand the gravity of the somber COVID situation in India, Chadi hosts Parameswaran Hari, MD, MRCP, chief of oncology, Medical College of Wisconsin, and Nikita Mehra, MD, associate professor of medical oncology, Cancer Institute Adyar (India). Dr. Hari begins by providing a ground-floor perspective of the COVID situation in India from his visit there just a few weeks ago, including ho...

Chadi hosts three medical oncologists to break down “near equivalence” for alternative standard-of-care cancer therapies – a new paradigm published in detail in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Ian Tannock, MD, PhD, Princess Margaret Cancer Center (Canada); Mark Ratain, MD, University of Chicago; and Daniel Goldstein, MD, Rabin Medical Center (Israel), describe what is meant by “near equivalence”...

Chadi hosts two thoracic oncologists to dish and debate on the nuances of lung cancer screening: Charu Agarwal, MD, MPH, University of Pennsylvania, and Lecia Sequist, MD, MPH, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. The trio start by making the case for screening the healthy, low-risk population as well as people with a smoking history, and then jump into a round-up of clinical...

George Dawson (@dawso007), MD, addiction and neuropsychiatrist in Minnesota, joins Chadi to discuss mental illness and COVID – of having the virus itself, as well as the result of isolation and lack of social interaction. Dr. Dawson shares how individuals with drug or alcohol addictions have struggled to stay sober while being stuck at home without in-person meetings and human interaction, whether...

Krishna Komanduri (@drkomanduri), MD, chief of the division of transplantation and cellular therapy, University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, joins the show to provide a fascinating account of the history of allogeneic and autologous transplantation, the discovery of the difference between B cells and T cell, and up through modern cellular therapy with a forecast for the future d...

Chadi invites Amy Barhorst (@amybarnhorst), MD, and Rocco Pallin, colleagues at UC Davis Health, to tackle the stigma and underdiagnosing of mental health in America and how mental illness intersects with gun violence in this country. The experts delve into whether community and person-to-person violence should be largely attributed to mental illness as well as why policy changes are the clearest...

Aziz Nazha (@AzizNazhaMD), MD, former hem/onc at Cleveland Clinic, self-taught computer science expert, and now practice manager in the Data and Machine Learning Team at Amazon Web Services, joins the show to discuss artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning from an entirely unique perspective. He details the pitfalls of unstructured healthcare data, privacy and ownership issues related to...

Chadi is joined by Priya Sampathkumar (@PSampathkumarMD), MD, infectious disease specialist and hospital epidemiologist, Mayo Clinic, to detail the COVID vaccine effort over the past 12 months and how the currently approved ones came to be safe and effective in such a short period of time. She then compares each vaccine in relation to their clinical trials and study populations, side effects (incl...

Andrew Foy (@AndrewFoy82), MD, cardiologist at Penn State University, joins the show to discuss publishing bias for medical research along with the psychological dilemma as a result of the pandemic of sacrificing personal liberties for the safety of others. The conversation pivots to Dr. Foy’s experience with boxing at a young age and how he eventually channeled that love into promoting the sport....

Toni Choueiri (@DrChoueiri), MD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, joins the show to guest host a discussion with Rana McKay (@DrRanaMcKay), MD, UC San Diego, and Alicia Morgans (@CaPsurvivorship), MD, MPH, Northwestern University, on the practice-changing abstracts presented at the 2020 ASCO-GU virtual meeting. The trio weigh the importance and real-world implications of the ACIS study for mCRPC, EV-...

Chadi welcomes back Jack West (@JackWestMD), MD, associate clinical professor and medical oncologist, City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Nathan Pennell (@n8pennell), MD, PhD, thoracic medical oncologist, director of the thoracic oncology program and director of clinical research, Cleveland Clinic, to the show. The task was to break down the ADAURA trial again, but to go beyond ADUARA an...

David Fajgenbaum (@DavidFajgenbaum), MD, MBA, MSc, assistant professor in the department of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as the associate director of patient impact for the Penn Orphan Disease Center, joins the show to talk about his experience writing and receiving feedback on the national bestseller “Chasing My Cure” as a survivor of Castleman disease – a commentary on how...

Vincent Rajkumar, (@VincentRK), MD, hematologist at the Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN), joins the show to guest host a debate between Sagar Lonial (@SagarLonialMD), MD, FACP, chief medical officer of Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, and Rafael Fonseca, (@Rfonsi1), MD, interim director of Mayo Clinic Cancer Center. These multiple myeloma “gurus” dive into imaging, smoldering disease, endp...

Tanios S. Bekaii-Saab (@GIcancerDoc), MD, professor of medicine and director of the GI oncology program at the Mayo Clinic (Phoenix, AZ), joins the show to highlight the research with significant clinical application presented at the virtual ASCO-GI meeting, including KEYNOTE-177 and ATOMIC in colorectal cancer, atezolizumab plus bevacizumab for first-line HCC, a survival update in the POLO trial...

Stacie Dusetzina (@DusetzinaS), PhD, associate professor of health policy, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, joins the show to expound on the changes that have been made to Medicare Part D since its inception during the Bush administration, how Part D is failing the older population in need of expensive drugs, and the counterintuitive state of generic drug affordability for Part D recipients....

Chadi welcomes back Alison Bateman-House, (@ABatemanHouse), MPH, PhD, medical ethicist at New York University’s School of Medicine, to break down COVID-19 vaccine distribution and mandates. Why has vaccine distribution not been an efficient and effective process? Are the right people being prioritized in the vaccine pecking order? Should vaccine doses be immediately available to anybody and everyb...

Rohin Francis (@MedCrisis), cardiologist in the UK, brings his expertise and unique sense of humor to the show to share how he’s combined comedy with medical education through his Twitter and YouTube presence, how he sifts through the vast expanse of COVID-19 research for data that is useful and legitimate, the apparent inability to have an open scientific debate on Twitter without being chastised...

Aaron Goodman (@AaronGoodman33), MD, hematologist/oncologist, University of California San Diego, and Jatin Shah (@JatinShahMD), MD, executive vice president and chief medical officer, Karyopharm Therapeutics, join the show for a deep consideration of oncology drug approvals in the context of RCTs, RWE, surrogate endpoints, and outcomes. The larger discussion is framed around Karyopharm’s STORM st...