For hundreds of years, medical decision making was characterized by physicians making decisions for their patients. This approach, known as paternalism, put the patient in a completely passive role while the doctors who had the knowledge and experience were the active decision makers. The old saying, “The doctor knows best” grew out of this uneven relationship between doctors and patients. Over the past several decades, however, this situation has changed dramatically. Many reasons for this...

ATLANTA (EGMN) – Two-thirds of young adults with diabetes who were aged 40 years or younger had significant coronary artery atherosclerosis, based on coronary CT examinations of 130 such patients at one U.S. medical center.Results from the study also showed that when compared with more than 3,500 similarly aged young adults without diabetes, patients with diabetes had an adjusted, fourfold increased prevalence of coronary atherosclerosis, Dr. Nikhil Daga and his associates from Harbor-UCLA...