DEAR DR. ROACH: My child has been prescribed a device by their neurologist to treat their migraines. My child is 18 and has suffered migraines since the age of 4. Due to other prescriptions for a neuromuscular disorder, my child’s doctor does not want to add another prescription into the mix. After insurance initially paid […]

DEAR DR. ROACH: My older friends and I talk about your column once in a while, and we all read it every day. Thank you. One thing we all wonder is, how do pills work? How does the medicine know where to go? — D.A. ANSWER: With a few exceptions, the medicine in the pills […]

DEAR DR. ROACH: Do meds for high blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes lose their efficacy if the patient is noncompliant with diet? My partner thinks a meal of wings, French fries, cake and ice cream is OK as long as he takes a statin, Glucophage and Norvasc. I think the meds will eventually become ineffective. […]

DEAR DR. ROACH: I’ve been experiencing pain in my chest, dizziness and shortness of breath on exertion. The chest pain lasts for a few hours. At one point, it was so bad that I couldn’t walk a hundred feet, had to use a cane and severely limit my physical activity. I’ve been to the doctor […]

DEAR DR. ROACH: I read your recent column about the MESA calculator. I found the test myself and input my numbers. But I found that I have a higher 10-year risk when I state that I am using a statin; each time I omit the statin risk, however, my score is actually lower. Common sense […]

DEAR DR. ROACH: I am an 80-year-old semi-retired vet who has been having my knees managed with injections for a number of years. The right knee is bone-on-bone, and last year, I had to get what my doctor referred to as a booster, three months after my usual six-month shot in my right knee. The […]

DEAR DR. ROACH: My 73-year-old husband was just hospitalized for an emergency appendectomy. Pre-surgery, he had a low-grade fever and some stomach tenderness — symptoms that he thought was a stomachache. He had not eaten or slept very much for a couple of days. The surgeon said he had an abscess on his appendix. Post-surgery, […]

DEAR DR. ROACH: Could you address the issues that come with the diagnosis of normal pressure hydrocephalus? My 82-year-old husband was diagnosed with NPH after experiencing a slow decline in walking and some cognitive decline. An MRI showed moderately enlarged ventricles, and a lumbar puncture test was done, which gave him about 24 hours of […]

DEAR DR ROACH: My 73-year-old wife has been diligent in getting her mammograms done, plus blood tests and doctor’s visits every three months. In November 2021, she came down with what seemed like a very bad cold that was actually confirmed by X-ray to be pneumonia. After two rounds of different antibiotics, she had lost […]

DEAR DR. ROACH: I wonder if you could comment on the relative merits of new cholesterol measurements that were recently presented to me. I have been maintaining my total cholesterol level just below 200 (at 170) with 20 mg of pravastatin. At a recent doctor’s visit, I was advised that at my age (74), my […]