Doctors

Have a cold or a fever? Mess up your knee playing basketball? You don't have to hassle with dragging yourself to your doctor's office. Just grab your cellphone.

For the third year, Emory cardiologist Laurence Sperling helped U.S. News & World Report rate the country’s top diets. Sperling joined a panel of 20 experts to evaluate 29 diets from Atkins to Zone. Fortunately for Sperling, medical director of Emory's Center for Heart Disease Prevention, he didn’t have to actually try all the diets.

Breast cancer was just Yolanda Mitchell’s first bad news. A decade ago at age thirty, the part-time model and boutique owner endured a mastectomy and monstrous doses of chemotherapy and radiation.“It’s been all downhill from there,” says the surprisingly cheerful Mitchell, as she ticks off a laundry list of the procedures and diagnoses she began to face.

Every patient and [every delivery] is just a little bit different. It does not ever get boring, because it’s never the same.

If things are not going well and you don’t know what to do next, my job is to figure out how we go about figuring out what’s wrong. Is this vasculitis? An autoimmune disease like lupus? Sometimes it’s just a drug allergy. You keep going back to the history, you keep going back to the physical [exam] until you get the clue that leads you to the right diagnosis.

Maybe James Kinsey swerved to avoid an animal. Maybe his cell phone rang. Maybe, as the investigating officer suspected, he dozed off at the wheel on Old Fountain Road, just a half mile from his home in Dacula, after a long night shift. Whatever the cause, his Chevy Aveo crossed into an oncoming lane and was struck by another car. Too tall for the Chevy’s tiny cabin, the six-foot-one Gulf War veteran smashed his head against the door frame. The seat belt saved his life.

Michael Moore was the first person to save seventeen-year-old Scott Dolezal’s life last year. The Westminster Schools maintenance staffer just happened to come into work that Saturday, August 1. He just happened to drive his utility tractor the long way around campus to avoid disturbing parents who were watching preseason cross-country trials. And he just happened to glance back over his shoulder after he passed a runner along the wooded trail—at the very moment the runner toppled silently into a deep ravine, where he hung hidden and motionless, feet tangled in brush, suspended headfirst over a creek.

Need knee replacement surgery or emergency help for a heart attack? The hospital you choose can make a huge difference in whether you have complications or literally make it out alive.

Going into the hospital for a routine procedure could have other risks—especially in Georgia. Because germs spread easily in a hospital setting, patients can pick up infections when sanitary practices aren't followed.

Of the eight top hospitals in Atlanta according to U.S. News & World Report, two of them have nationally ranked specialties. Emory University Hospital and Shepherd Center, the top ranked local hospitals on the list, have national areas of expertise.