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 given to individual patients, anecdotes in the book that highlight the nuances of psychiatry traini...
Nov 09, 2021•44 min
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 issuing and maintaining digital credentials for healthcare professionals, and highlights how physician...
Nov 02, 2021•50 min
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 engaged in a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud investors, doctors, and patients. Fast forward ...
Oct 26, 2021•54 min
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 founding a grassroots physician organization dedicated to patient advocacy. The conversation takes interes...
Oct 19, 2021•56 min
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 therapies. He also gives a glimpse of a day in the life of the AUB president, how he approaches politi...
Oct 12, 2021•54 min
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 the benefits of training your muscles to reach temporary muscle failure, breaks down the correlation...
Oct 05, 2021•1 hr 13 min
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, and how the “energy model” can be used to elevate one’s health and consumption habits, among a host o...
Sep 28, 2021•1 hr 9 min
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 begins with discussion of a proposed federal single payer system in America, why it could not be model...
Sep 21, 2021•1 hr 15 min
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, how and why the decisions were made to leave one institution for another (or an institution for in...
Sep 14, 2021•1 hr 14 min
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 immigrant and a woman in applying for residency and faculty positions, and plenty more.
Sep 07, 2021•52 min
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 really has when it comes to FDA approvals, and so many more pain points today.
Aug 31, 2021•56 min
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 come about, whether booster shots should be administered to healthy individuals and those who have ...
Aug 24, 2021•1 hr 5 min
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 available for every possible mutation, how much the field has advanced even in the past 10 years, the...
Aug 17, 2021•1 hr 2 min
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” circumstances to watch-and-wait, autologous transplant, allogeneic transplant, or maintenance chemotherapy.
Aug 10, 2021•57 min
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 stating the importance of improving the ability to predict progressing disease. The trio then debat...
Aug 03, 2021•1 hr 2 min
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 session like you’ve never heard.
Jul 27, 2021•1 hr 20 min
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 raising doubts about a drug that was being studied to treat patients with thalassemia. In great and juic...
Jul 20, 2021•1 hr
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 histology and phenotype, the limitations of retrospective analyses when it comes to establishing a standard ...
Jul 13, 2021•1 hr 7 min
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 the boom of FDA approvals in the last decade, as well as the latest therapies and clinical trials with...
Jul 06, 2021•55 min
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 of abstracts or papers? Should peer-reviewed literature be your only source of reliable information...
Jun 29, 2021•50 min
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, controversy surrounding the diet and whether it is associated with adverse health effects, reasons to fol...
Jun 22, 2021•56 min
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 to combat COVID up to and during the “tsunami,” shares how vaccine hesitancy around the world bled i...
Jun 15, 2021•51 min
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 child psychiatrist with experience treating healthcare workers. Monika and Gil share who Laura was ...
Jun 08, 2021•1 hr 9 min
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 the perspective of the caregiver as well as the patient. The couple open up about their individual ex...
Jun 01, 2021•1 hr 5 min
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 systemic control is a better strategy for these patients, how to weigh the benefits against the toxicitie...
May 25, 2021•1 hr 2 min
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 on to list in detail the ten trial design characteristics that inflate the scores (including the use...
May 18, 2021•1 hr 11 min
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 driven by the business sector, local or federal governments, or anywhere in between? Will vaccines help ...
May 11, 2021•59 min
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 how the country fared in 2020 compared to the current day and how hospital systems are managing in dif...
May 04, 2021•1 hr 8 min
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” and the practice of generating evidence to support global alternative cost-effective treatments. Ho...
Apr 27, 2021•57 min
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 trials that have shown a positive impact from screening. The highly-questioned JAMA publication on ...
Apr 20, 2021•55 min
