As many as 15 percent of men have varicoceles, masses of enlarged and dilated veins in the testicles. There is new evidence that varicoceles, long known to be a cause of male infertility, interfere with the production of testosterone — a crucial hormone to maintaining men's health.

An estimated 75 million Americans have hypertension, or high blood pressure, and 50 million take antihypertensive drugs. But in as many as 20 percent of cases, the drugs don't bring the blood pressure under control, and most doctors randomly add drug after drug in an expensive, prolonged and often unsuccessful guessing game to see what works.

Wearing stiletto heels or other extreme footwear can put you one step away from a host of foot problems such as hammertoe, a painful condition in which the toes are bent in on each other.

Patients need less blood after surgery than is widely thought. A new study comparing two plans for giving blood transfusions following surgery showed no ill effects from postponing transfusion until patients develop signs of anemia or their hemoglobin concentration falls below 8 g/dL.

Among those presenting at this year's Digestive Disease Week meeting are physician-scientists from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. The meeting takes place May 7–10, at McCormick Place, Chicago.

The flu season is fast approaching and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends immunization to include all people 6 months of age and older. Those at highest risk of complications from the flu are still young children; people 65 and older; pregnant women; and people with health conditions such as heart, lung or kidney disease, or a weakened immune system.

Nurses in the emergency department at NewYork-Presbyterian/Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital are pioneering techniques — including the use of iPads — to improve the patient experience by eliminating or minimizing pain.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, among the top 10 hospitals in the country, is ranked #1 in the metro area, according to the first edition of U.S.News & World Report's Best Hospitals metro-area rankings.