Culture

Athens, Ga. – Age has little to do with how patients should be treated after suffering a stroke, according to new research from the University of Georgia.

Historically, younger stroke victims receive different after-stroke intervention strategies than those over a certain age. However, Neale Chumbler, a UGA professor and head of the department of health policy and management in the College of Public Health, found patients responded equally to care efforts.

Control of heart disease risk factors varies widely among outpatient practices, according to a study presented at the American Heart Association's Quality of Care and Outcomes Research Scientific Sessions 2013.

Researchers compared electronic health records of 115,737 patients in 18 primary care and cardiology practices participating in The Guideline Advantage™, a collaboration of the American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association and American Heart Association that aims to reduce risks for chronic diseases. They found:

The processes to allow people to self-manage their own illness are not being used appropriately by health professionals to the benefit of their patients, new research suggests.

ATLANTA - Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a procedure traditionally used during cardiac surgeries and in the ICU that functions as an artificial replacement for a patient's heart and lungs, has also been used to resuscitate cardiac arrest victims in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Now, a novel study of this technique in the U.S. has been completed by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, indicating a potential role for this intervention to save patients who are unable to be resuscitated through conventional measures.

  • Among patients with chronic kidney disease, those with very low kidney function had a higher risk of having a heart attack than those with higher kidney function over a four-year period.
  • The link between higher LDL cholesterol and heart attack risk was weaker for patients with very low kidney function than for patients with higher kidney function.
  • 60 million people globally have chronic kidney disease.

Massachusetts' healthcare reform didn't result in substantially more hospital use or higher costs, according to data presented at the American Heart Association's Quality of Care and Outcomes Research Scientific Sessions 2013.

The findings were true even among safety-net hospitals, which often have an open-door policy to accept patients regardless of the ability to pay. These hospitals are most likely to care for people who need free services, use Medicaid or must pay their own hospital bills.

HOUSTON ­­– African-American adults living closer to a fast food restaurant had a higher body mass index (BMI) than those who lived further away from fast food, according to researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and this association was particularly strong among those with a lower income.

In today's virtual world, it's easy to downplay the significance of place. Yet when it comes to regional prosperity, geography matters. Income and job growth is not random but rather spill over from one region to another, meaning that merely being next to a prosperous region will make your own economy more vibrant.

Whether we're listening to Bach or the blues, our brains are wired to make music-color connections depending on how the melodies make us feel, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley. For instance, Mozart's jaunty Flute Concerto No. 1 in G major is most often associated with bright yellow and orange, whereas his dour Requiem in D minor is more likely to be linked to dark, bluish gray.

Philadelphia, Pa. (May 16, 2013) – Like the general public, health care professionals may hold certain stereotypes regarding sexual activity and childbearing among women with disabilities. But a new study finds that women with chronic physical disabilities are about as likely as nondisabled women to say they are currently pregnant, after age and other sociodemographic factors are taken into account.

Do most climate scientists agree that human activity is causing global climate change? Yes, they do, according to an analysis of the abstracts or summaries of scientific papers published over the past 20 years rated by participants and the study authors on a site run by the lead author that is devoted to debunking climate skepticism. Public perception tends to be that climate scientists disagree over the fundamental cause of climate change but the results show that they do not.

People with strokes caused by blood clots fared better in hospitals participating in the Get With The Guidelines®-Stroke program according to a study presented at the American Heart Association's Quality of Care and Outcomes Research Scientific Sessions 2013.

Heart attack or heart failure patients may have a high risk of death or re-admission for a month or longer after leaving the hospital, researchers said at the American Heart Association's Quality of Care and Outcomes Scientific Sessions 2013.

Pioneering X-ray technology is making it possible to read fragile rolled-up historical documents for the first time in centuries.

Old parchment is often extremely dry and liable to crack and crumble if any attempt is made to physically unroll or unfold it. The new technology, however, eliminates the need to do so by enabling parchment to be unrolled or unfolded 'virtually' and the contents displayed on a computer screen.

Inspired by the structure of moth eyes, researchers at North Carolina State University have developed nanostructures that limit reflection at the interfaces where two thin films meet, suppressing the "thin-film interference" phenomenon commonly observed in nature. This can potentially improve the efficiency of thin-film solar cells and other optoelectronic devices.