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A nationwide push is underway to lower radiation exposure from CT scans, amid growing concern about the risks of cancer linked to the high-powered imaging technology, as I write in the Informed Patient column today.

Doctors are narrowing their recommendation on who should take daily aspirin for heart health, based largely on concerns about the drug’s side effects, which can include bleeding ulcers. See here for more about that.

But there’s another type of person who might someday be advised to steer clear of a daily aspirin: those for whom the pain reliever doesn’t work well as a blood clotter.

Pfizer has won FDA approval of a product developed by Wyeth, which Pfizer bought last year for $68 billion. And it’s a biggie — a updated version of the world’s best-selling vaccine Prevnar. See the Pfizer announcement.

With new food-safety legislation making its way through Congress, safety advocates are hoping the FDA will soon have sweeping new powers to protect the nation’s food supply, as I write in the Informed Patient column today.

New risk calculators from the American College of Surgeons aim to help evaluate individual patients’ risks of complications and death from surgical procedures, as I write in my column today.

External fixators — like the rig pictured at right — can work wonders for fractures.

But in post-earthquake Haiti, a fixator can also be a liability. A few days ago, a patient showed up at a field hospital near the Port-au-Prince airport with an advanced infection around the pin sites in a fixator in his leg. The leg had to be amputated at the knee.

There’s more research out today indicating that being overweight can be less harmful for the elderly than for younger people and saying that dieting may not be helpful for the post-70 crowd.

More than 350 people who were hurt in the Haiti earthquake were evacuated to hospitals in South Florida.

The U.S. military is still evacuating some people for medical treatment, but now they’re being waved off from South Florida and sent farther north — in part to make sure emergency rooms in and around Miami are ready to handle additional traffic that could come from Super Bowl crowds.

Chuck Grassley, a Republican senator and a prolific author of letters, has written to more than 30 hospitals to ask about their experiences — including “complications,” “errors” and “problems” — with health IT systems.

The letters follow a barrage Grassley sent out last fall to some of the companies that sell electronic systems to hospitals and doctors, asking some similar questions.

You’re a TV correspondent on the scene in Haiti, reporting on the devastation following the Jan. 12 earthquake. But you’re also a doctor in the place where there’s an intense need for people to treat the injured. How do you keep the normally distinct roles of doctor and journalist separate?