What this blog covers

The other sections of this site hold lasting information. What an operation involves, how recovery goes, what to weigh before deciding. Those pages are written to be read start to finish and are updated once or twice a year.

The blog does a different job. It holds writing that is tied to something current, carries a date, and states a view.

Four kinds of writing appear here

Taking marketing language apart

What the sentences circulating in health advertising actually mean, what they leave out, and when a word is a technical term rather than a sales line. Words like "non-surgical", "permanent" and "scarless" are the usual examples.

Regulation and patient rights

What changes in the rules covering health advertising, informed consent and patient rights mean for the person reading them. How to verify a surgeon's credentials belongs here too.

Reading the evidence

What a study does and does not establish. The questions worth asking when a "new technique" makes the news. Why the difference between a case series and a comparative trial matters.

Notes from the field

Debates within the specialty, changes in technique, and observations on how a doctor stays current.

What will not be published here

The blog carries a freer tone, but the limits of the site apply here unchanged.

• No patient images, before and after comparisons, or operative photographs
• No accounts of procedures performed, no case presentations, no results shown
• No prices, campaigns, appointments or referral prompts
• No promotion of brands, devices or products; a product is named only when it is being examined critically and with a source
• Personal clinical experience is not offered in place of evidence

The rule every post shares

Blog posts pass the same checklist as the rest of the site and carry the same two dates: the day they were published and the day they were last revised. If the basis for a post later changes, the post is not quietly deleted; it is updated and the change is stated.

A sentence carrying an opinion and a sentence resting on evidence are not blurred together here. Where something is an opinion, it is marked as one.