Cost Comparisons of Physician-Ordered Versus Direct-to-Consumer Laboratory Testing.

Objectives To determine if direct-to-consumer (DTC) laboratory testing is less expensive for patients, as is generally advertised, and whether it has any role in managing uninsured or underinsured patients. Methods The costs of six commonly ordered laboratory tests were obtained through two major DTC laboratories and compared with 42 physician-ordered, hospital-based laboratories in Florida. The costs of DTC tests were also compared to concurrent reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid.

A Core of Keratocan-Negative Cells Survives in Old Corneal Scars.

Corneal scars originate from keratocyte-derived fibroblasts and myofibroblasts that are ultimately cleared through apoptosis or revert to keratocytes. A mouse model expressing the keratocyte lineage-specific reporter KeraRT/tetO-Cre/mTmG (I-KeramTmG) was interrogated to elucidate cell phenotype dynamics during scar maturation. This model expresses tdTomato (red) in all keratocan-negative cells, while enhanced green fluorescent protein (green) is expressed only by keratocytes.

Jonas Friedenwald, Eugene Wolff, and the Two Books That Helped Bridge the Specialty Gap.

Background: Eugene Wolff (1896-1954) and Jonas S. Friedenwald (1897-1955) were life-long students and educators of anatomic pathology and ophthalmology. Both contributed toward narrowing the gap between the two rapidly diverging specialties of pathology and ophthalmology.