Maura Lerner

You won't find the word "nagging" in the study. But scientists at the University of Minnesota have found that smokers are more likely to kick the habit if a counselor calls them every month for a year with helpful tips and nicotine patches.

It's a question that some patients are afraid to ask: What are my chances of dying on the operating table?

Now, believe it or not, there's an app for that.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Hospital officials said Thursday that they regret the suffering of a patient last fall, when a nurse at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis allegedly stole his pain medicine before a routine kidney procedure.

But they refused to draw any conclusions about what might have gone wrong, or why the procedure wouldn't have been halted if the patient was in pain.

Dr. Marcus Thygeson once wrote his patients countless prescriptions for heartburn drugs -- Prevacid, Prilosec and Nexium -- the "little purple pills" of TV ads.

But several months ago, when his own doctor advised him to start taking the pills, he refused. "It was all I could do to get out of the office without a prescription," he said.

Thygeson, a gastroenterologist, has come to see the popular pills as a symbol of the excesses of modern medicine -- a powerful medication "handed out like water" in his words, amid mounting evidence that it may do more harm than good.

"It's a drug we've become very cavalier about," says Thygeson. "Now it's like front-line therapy if you so much as belch."

The heartburn drugs, known as proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs), are designed to reduce the body's ability to pump acid into the stomach. Today, they are among the nation's best-selling medications, with more than 119 million prescriptions written last year, in addition to over-the-counter sales. Experts have called them a godsend for ailments like acid reflux, a major cause of heartburn.