ArcaMax

If you're on a med for high blood pressure, paid for by insurance, take one now.

It should come as no surprise that the CEOs and leaders of health care companies are well compensated. (They probably don't even have to do the copay.) In 2023, the median industry CEO salary was $4.1 million. That means half of CEOs made more, half made less. The average salary was $11 million.

Amazingly, that's a drop from the year before.

Stephane Bancel, the guy who calls the shots for COVID-19 vaccine-maker Moderna, topped the list with an annual salary of $305 million.

Suicide Hotline Goes Local

Calls to the national suicide and crisis hotline 988 will now be routed to local call centers based on the caller's location rather than their phone's area code. The old system was problematic because 97% of Americans own cellphones, and their phone's area code is often different from where they live, work or actually happen to be.

Body of Knowledge

Human blood is composed of four main components: plasma, red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. There are, however, more than 4,200 compounds in blood, from acetoacetate, an energy source produced by the liver during fasting or exercise, to vasopressin, a hormone that helps regulates tonicity -- a measure of how a solution's osmotic pressure affects the volume of cells by altering their water content.

Get Me That, Stat!

More kids are seeing their dentists regularly. In 2009, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, 78.4% of children aged 2-17 went to the dentist at least once in the past year. In 2019, the percentage was 85.9. Good, but not perfect. By age 18, the average number of cavity fillings for Americans is between four and eight.

Counts

800,000: Estimated number of Americans who died or became permanently disabled last year due to diagnostic error (Source: STAT)

Doc Talk

Costochondritis: A benign condition that causes inflammation of the cartilage connecting your ribs to your breastbone. Also known as chest wall pain syndrome, it can mimic that of a heart attack or other heart conditions. It can last a few weeks to several months but usually gets better on its own.

Mania of the Week

Clinomania: An abnormal inclination, so to speak, to remain in bed

Best Medicine

A psychiatrist to his patient: "Don't worry, you're not delusional. You only think you are."

Observation

"The quickest way to a man's heart is through his chest." -- Comedian Roseanne Barr

Medical History

This week in 1935, the first modern surgery on the frontal lobes for treatment of mental disorders was performed by Antonio Egas Moniz at Santa Marta Hospital in Lisbon, Portugal. Moniz injected absolute alcohol into the frontal lobes of a mental patient through two holes drilled in the skull. Moniz later used a technique that severed neurons and led to the prefrontal lobotomy techniques of the 1940s. Moniz was later awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1949. Such radical surgery fell out of favor when psychoactive medication became available.

Ig Nobel Apprised

The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate achievements that make people laugh, then think. A look at real science that's hard to take seriously and even harder to ignore.

In 1998, the Ig Nobel Prize in science education went to Dolores Krieger, professor emerita at New York University, for her advocacy of therapeutic touch, which involves nurses manipulating patients' energy fields by carefully avoiding actually touching the patients at all.

Medical Myths

The cautionary advice to never pluck a gray hair because two or more will come back in its place is not true. Plucking one gray hair means only that it will be replaced by another gray hair. Hair follicles produce only a single hair at a time. Hair color depends on how much pigment the hair follicle is producing. It declines with age, leading to gray or white hair. Repeatedly plucking hairs can damage the follicle, resulting in infection, scar formation and -- yikes! -- bald patches.

Med School

Match these medical conditions with excessive amounts of these elements found in the human body.

1. Acidosis

2. Hyperkalemia

3. Hypernatremia

A) Potassium

B) Hydrogen

C) Sodium

Answers: 1-B; 2-A; 3-C

Last Words

"I hope the exit is joyful and I hope never to return." -- Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954)

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To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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