'The Real Risk Is a Bad Trip': What We Heard This Week

— Quotable quotes heard by 's reporters

MedicalToday
A female reporter holding two microphones takes notes on a pad

"The real risk is a bad trip." -- Smita Das, MD, PhD, MPH, of Stanford University in California, on the risks of off-label ketamine use.

"It is like trying to compare apples with artichokes." -- Douglas Smith, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, discussing earlier studies of Havana syndrome patients and current NIH research.

"Women physicians are often offered less starting pay than their male colleagues." -- Shikha Jain, MD, of the University of Illinois in Chicago and founder of the nonprofit Women in Medicine, discussing a report about compensation for male and female doctors.

"We really have a very confusing, complex black box of problems." -- Catherine Diefenbach, MD, of NYU Langone Health in New York City, on the complexities of knowing which immunocompromised patients should get a COVID vaccine booster.

"Some of it may go back to the misnomer 'tying your tubes.'" -- Nikki Zite, MD, MPH, of the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine in Knoxville, on how tubal sterilization often is misunderstood.

"I would not expect an additional 1% of a population getting the flu shot to actually show meaningfully clinical outcome differences." -- Mark Fendrick, MD, of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, discussing electronic nudges for influenza vaccine uptake.

"Doctors need to think about this new potential cause of acute kidney injury." -- Thomas Robert, MD, PhD, of Hôpital de la Conception in France, after a young woman developed acute kidney injury following "Brazilian" hair-straightening treatments.

"If you can think of the abdomen kind of like a five-story building, we're only supposed to be working in the attic. The drain ended up on the second floor." -- Pat Pazmiño, MD, a plastic surgeon and owner of Miami Aesthetic in Florida, discussing how one surgeon allegedly placed drains too deeply after liposuction.