A new study indicates that transplant centers that receive low scores on performance evaluations tend to remove more patients from the transplant waiting list. According to US data from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients on 315,796 candidates on the kidney transplant waiting list from 2007 to 2014, the rate of removal was approximately 60% higher for centers that received low performance evaluations compared with all other centers, even after adjusting for candidates' demographic and clinical characteristics.
Culture
WASHINGTON --While emergency department visits for young adults ages 19 to 25 decreased slightly overall following the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), visits for mental illnesses in this age group increased "significantly," as did diseases of the circulatory system, according to a study published online this month in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Relationship of ACA Implementation to Emergency Department Utilization Among Young Adults').
Four years after Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster that led to major releases of radioactivity to environment, questions still remain regarding the original sources of radioactive contamination. Investigators have now used rice, soil, mushroom, and soybean samples taken 100 to 250 km from the plant and tested them with a method called cesium isotopic analysis to help discriminate between environmental contamination from different nuclear reactor cores at the plant.
Many of the 1,300 species of bat are considered to be threatened and declining. A new analysis reveals trends and causes of death in bats around the world, shedding new light on the possible factors underlying population declines.
In the analysis, 1180 mortality events, each involving more than 10 bats, were represented in a detailed canvassing of the literature dating from 1790 to 2015, and could be divided into 9 categories.
Twice as many patients with non-serious injuries, such as fractures or neck strain, are undergoing CT scans in emergency departments at California hospitals, according to a UCSF-led study, which tracked the use of the imaging from 2005 to 2013.
While CT scans enable clinicians to swiftly pinpoint life-threatening conditions, exposure to its ionizing radiation is associated with an increased risk of cancer. According to a 2009 report by the FDA, a single CT scan may be associated with a fatal cancer in one in 2,000 patients.
A new study from Umeå University in Sweden shows that age plays a huge role when it comes to patients' access to psoriasis treatment. Researchers who have examined if patients of varying ages have the same access to the most efficient psoriasis treatment, found that an age increase of 30 years resulted in an average 65 per cent reduction in likelihood of obtaining treatment with biologics. The study is described in an article published in the British Journal of Dermatology.
For patients with mild to moderate Parkinson disease (PD) there were no clinically meaningful benefits to activities of daily living or quality of life associated with physiotherapy and occupational therapy in a study conducted in the United Kingdom, according to an article published online by JAMA Neurology.
PD causes problems with activities of daily living (ADL) that are only partially treated by medication and occasionally surgery. Physiotherapy (PT) and occupational therapy (OT) have been traditionally used later in the disease.
New research from the University of Birmingham has shown that physiotherapy and occupational therapy do not produce improvements in quality of life for patients with mild to moderate Parkinson's disease.
The findings of the PD REHAB trial, published in JAMA Neurology, show that combined physiotherapy and occupational therapy do not have a positive impact on 'activities of daily living', such as putting on clothes or brushing teeth, in the immediate to medium term.
PHILADELPHIA - Despite widespread perception, the United States does not provide the worst end-of-life care in the world. In the first international comparison of end-of-life care practices, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues from seven countries found that the United States actually has the lowest proportion of deaths in the hospital and the lowest number of days in the hospital in the last six months of life among the those countries, according to a new study published today in JAMA.
Among family members of older patients who died of advanced-stage cancer, earlier hospice enrollment, avoidance of intensive care unit (ICU) admissions within 30 days of death, and death occurring outside the hospital were associated with perceptions of better end-of-life care, according to a study in the January 19 issue of JAMA.
WASHINGTON (January 19, 2016) -- The debate over physician-assisted death (PAD) appears to be at a turning point, with a significant number of state legislatures across the country considering PAD, say two Georgetown University scholars, but, they caution, social and ethical safeguards are needed.
BOSTON -- Three Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers, writing in a special issue of JAMA published today, make the case for policies and practices that give terminally ill patients more control over how and where they will die.
Families' views of end-of-life care
Countries drastically underreport the number of fish caught worldwide, according to a new study, and the numbers obscure a significant decline in the total catch .
The new estimate, released today in Nature Communications, puts the annual global catch at roughly 109 million metric tons, about 30 per cent higher than the 77 million officially reported in 2010 by more than 200 countries and territories. This means that 32 million metric tons of fish goes unreported every year, more than the weight of the entire population of the United States.
The drug aclidinium bromide (aclidinium for short; trade name: Eklira, Bretaris) has been approved since July 2012 and is used to relieve the symptoms of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in adults. The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) has now reexamined the added benefit of the drug pursuant to the Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products (AMNOG).
For a team of Vanderbilt investigators trying to generate heart muscle cells from stem cells, a piece of broken equipment turned out to be a good thing.
The faulty equipment pushed the researchers to try a different approach. They recently reported their new method -- using a "Matrigel mattress" to rapidly generate cardiac cells suitable for heart disease studies and drug discovery -- in the journal Circulation Research.