Public Health
Could ambulance diversion affect high-risk patients more?
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The elderly, the uninsured and the critically ill are among the groups most likely to rely on an ambulance to get to the hospital, a new study finds—raising the possibility that such high-risk patients are the ones most affected when hospitals turn ambulances away due to emergency room overcrowding.
To help relieve overburdened ERs, hospitals across the U.S. rely on a practice called ambulance diversion—temporarily directing incoming ambulances to other medical centers.
The policy has come under criticism for potentially putting patients at risk by increasing their transit time to the hospital. On the other hand, the goal of the practice is to get patients the treatment they need more quickly—since ER overcrowding may delay the care of both newly arriving patients and the ones already waiting.
Slipknot bassist died of “accidental” overdose
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The bassist for the Grammy-winning metal band Slipknot died of an “accidental” overdose of morphine and fentanyl, a synthetic morphine substitute, police in Iowa said on Monday as autopsy results were released.
Paul Gray, 38, was found dead on May 25 at a hotel near Des Moines, Iowa, the hometown of the band who always appear in public in grotesque masks, beat each other up on stage and call their fans “maggots.” Gray co-founded the band in 1995.
An autopsy conducted by the Polk County Medical Examiner’s Office also found that Gray suffered from “significant heart disease,” according to a statement released by the Urbandale police department.
Software cuts CT radiation dose in half: study
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A new software program that enhances the quality of CT images allowed doctors to cut in half the radiation dose needed for a colon scan and still produce clear images, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
A series of recent studies has suggested that computed tomography or CT scans can increase a person’s lifetime risk of cancer, especially younger people who have multiple scans.
“This new technique allows us to use far less radiation than even a typical abdominal CT scan without compromising image quality,” said Dr. Daniel Johnson of the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona, whose study appears in the American Journal of Roentgenology.
Individuals see health insurance costs jump-report
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U.S. health insurers are raising prices by an average of 20 percent for adults age 64 and younger who buy their own policies, according to a survey released by a nonprofit healthcare group on Monday.
Such premium cost increases affected more than three-quarters of the 14 million adults who buy their own health plans and caused some to either seek a cheaper option with fewer benefits or switch insurers altogether, the Kaiser Family Foundation study showed.
The findings come as the Obama administration works with insurers to implement some of the new rules under the recently passed healthcare law, which aims to expand consumers’ coverage while cracking down on discriminatory industry practices.
Repairs to key Canadian isotope reactor complete
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Repairs have been completed on a Canadian nuclear reactor that supplied a third of the world’s medical isotopes, and the operator says it is ready to restart production more than a year after a heavy water leak was discovered at the aging facility.
Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd said on Wednesday that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has scheduled a June 28 hearing on its application to restart the reactor in Chalk River, Ontario. AECL hopes to resume isotope production in late July.
The more than 50-year-old facility was shut down in May 2009 after a small leak of heavy water, used as a moderator and coolant in the reaction process, was discovered. The difficulty of the welding job to repair the leak forced planned restart dates to be repeatedly postponed.
US doctors say 1 in 5 insurance claims mishandled
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Claims-processing errors by health insurance companies create billions of dollars in unnecessary administrative costs, slow down payments to doctors and frustrate patients, the main U.S. doctor’s group said Monday.
The American Medical Association said one-fifth of all claims are mishandled by health insurers.
Begun in 2008, the association’s annual “National Health Insurer Report Card” rated the nation’s eight largest health insurers in how they handle claims, and concluded that if all problems were resolved the system would save $15.5 billion annually in administrative costs.
Russia registers first polio death in a decade
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Russia has confirmed its first death from polio in more than a decade, the country’s top public health official said on Sunday, Interfax news agency reported.
A citizen of the former-Soviet Central Asian country of Uzbekistan died of polio in the Urals Mountains city of Yekaterinburg in early June, Gennady Onishchenko was quoted as saying. “Tests have confirmed this,” he said.
Onishchenko’s spokeswoman was unavailable to comment on the report on Sunday.
Research: Answer to saliva mystery has practical impact
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Researchers at Rice University, Purdue University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have solved a long-standing mystery about why some fluids containing polymers—including saliva—form beads when they are stretched and others do not.
The findings are published online this week in the journal Nature Physics.
Study co-author Matteo Pasquali, professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering at Rice, said the study answers fundamental scientific questions and could ultimately lead to improvements as diverse as ink-jet printing, nanomaterial fiber spinning and drug dispensers for “personalized medicine.”
Poor health? Easier for some to blame bad genes than change lifestyle
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Does knowing that genes are partly responsible for your health condition mean you are less likely to be motivated to find out about the benefits of behavioral changes? According to Dr. Suzanne O’Neill from the National Human Genome Research Institute/National Institutes of Health, and her colleagues, people on the whole are still interested in how health habits affect disease risk. However, those with the greatest need to change their behaviors are more likely to favor genetic explanations for their diseases and the more behavioral risk factors they have, the less likely they are to be interested in behavior change information. The study1 is published online in Springer’s journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine.
The completion of the Human Genome Project has led to increased availability of genetic risk information linking gene variants to a number of common health conditions. There is some concern that this genetic risk information might prompt some individuals to give genetic causation undue importance while downplaying the contribution of well-known behavioral and environmental factors, leading to reduced motivation to make behavioral changes. This potential misinterpretation of genetic information may undermine public health efforts to promote the behavioral changes needed to prevent disease.
Innovative Technology Could Make Fat the Cure for What Ails You
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New technology developed by University of Virginia inventors involving adipose stem cells – adult stem cells found in fatty tissue – could one day be used to treat patients with severe wounds and other serious conditions.
The U.Va. Patent Foundation recently licensed a series of novel ways to identify, grow and use these cells to the GID Group, putting the U.Va. discoveries on the path to commercialization.
Over the past few years, researchers have determined that adipose stem cells have therapeutic potential in a variety of areas, including tissue engineering and treatment of chronic wounds, like those caused by diabetic ulcers; diseases characterized by poor blood flow, such as cardiac ischemia, which leads to heart attacks; and severe burns.
Help For Those Recently Diagnosed with Diabetes
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You can get free help this summer if you have diabetes—the Northern Kentucky Health Department is offering several free programs. Local 12’s Liz Bonis tells us about them.
It looks like a fancy toy—but Joan Geohegan—a diabetes educator uses this toy as a teaching tool to show patients such as Tom Mitts—how fat fat cells shrink when you better manage type two diabetes. “Type two diabetes is when either the insulin the person makes doesn’t work properly or you don’t make enough of it, and insulin is a hormone that helps you use the energy you get from food.”
Mitts was diagnosed with type two diabetes last year—Since then he’s dropped more than 60 pounds—and no longer has diabetes symptoms such as frequent urination, fatigue and increased thirst. “I was drinking I don’t know how many quarts of water just one after another.”
Min-Sheng General Hospital to host First Asian Diabetes Surgery Summit
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Min-Sheng General hospital in Taiwan will host the First Asian Diabetes Summit July16 and 17, 2010. The summit will look at the medical and surgical aspects of Incretin based Therapy. Bariatric surgery has recently been extended to metabolic surgery because of the associated gut hormone change and Incretin Effect.
Organized by Min-Sheng Hospital’s Bariatric & Diabetes Minimally invasive surgery center, the Diabetes Association of the Republic of China, and the Taiwan Association for Endoscopic Surgery, the summit is sponsored by the Taiwan Medical Association for the Study of Obesity, Taiwan Surgical Society of gastroenterology, and equipment maker Covidien. Speakers from across Asia and the United States will present the latest medical and surgical developments in the treatment of Diabetes Type II. Says Professor Lee Wei-Jei, Chairman of the organizing committee and Honorary President of the Asia Pacific Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Society, “It is an appropriate time for gastro-intestinal metabolic surgeons in Asia to work with endocrinologists and all colleagues involved in the treatment of diabetes, to get together and share personal and institutional experience in the management of this disease.”
U.S. doctor criticizes Arizona immigration law
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Arizona’s controversial new law cracking down on illegal immigration could put doctors into a pickle, an Arizona physician said in a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday.
Dr. Lucas Restrepo of the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix said because it specifies that anyone who “harbors” an illegal immigrant can be fined, it could affect medical personnel.
“The new Arizona state immigration bill signed into law on April 23 will seriously obstruct, if not undermine, the practice of medicine in the state of Arizona,” Restrepo wrote.
Low-income Californians especially vulnerable to obesity epidemic
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A new study has found a direct causal relationship between income and obesity rates in Americans. The lower one’s paycheck, the more likely they are to be overweight say researchers at the University of California at Davis.
Those conducting the study attributed the phenomenon to a lack of healthy eating options for low-income households.
According to a 2007 California Health Interview Survey conducted by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, 23 percent of Californians are obese. However, obesity rates in the Central Valley hover closer to one-third of the population. Taken together with U.S. Census data from 2008, the poverty rate of the region is at least 20 percent. Statewide, the poverty rate keeps the same proportional relationship at 13 percent.
New Cutting-edge Surgery Provides Relief for People with Foot Drop
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A new surgery that involves an expendable, functioning muscle from the top of the leg and a nerve below the knee can give people with foot drop a new bounce in their step.
“Foot drop is a condition where there is weakness in the muscles that raise the foot up at the ankle,” said Dr. Kevin Varner, an orthopedic surgeon with The Methodist Hospital in Houston. “People with foot drop are unable to clear their foot from the ground when swinging the foot forward. This condition is often very embarrassing and is usually caused by trauma such as a knee dislocation or penetrating injury that damages the nerve.”
People with foot drop can wear a brace that help pick their foot up, but it is often cumbersome. Another treatment is a tendon transfer, which involves moving the tendon from the back of the leg to the front and re-routing tendon function.
