Culture
WASHINGTON— A report released today finds that a wide variety of existing laws offer important opportunities to improve Americans' health. The first comprehensive study of its kind found an unexpectedly large number of laws that facilitate the consideration of health effects, in fields such as transportation, energy, and agriculture. Many of these legal requirements may be satisfied by conducting health impact assessments (HIAs), a type of study that helps decision makers identify and address the potential and often unrecognized health risks and benefits of their decisions.
Allegations of widespread, sustained torture and other human rights violations by the Government of Sudan and Janjaweed forces against non-Arabic-speaking civilians are corroborated in a study published in this week's PLoS Medicine. In the study medical forensic experts reviewed the medical records of patients seen at a clinic in Darfur.
CHICAGO – Although data indicate that between 2003-2009 there was a substantial decline in the U.S. in hospitalizations for pneumonia and inpatient deaths, analysis suggests that trends in documentation and diagnostic coding, rather than improvements in actual outcomes, may explain much of the observed changes, according to a study in the April 4 issue of JAMA.
Memory devices based on magnetism are one of the core technologies of the computing industry, and engineers are working to develop new forms of magnetic memory that are faster, smaller, and more energy efficient than today's flash and SDRAM memory.
Do an online search for sex offenders living in your neighborhood and you may be alarmed by how many you find. But a new study of sex-offender registries in five states shows that they overestimate the number of offenders actually living in the community by as much as 60 percent.
Higher-spending hospitals do have better outcomes for their emergency patients, including fewer deaths, according to a Vanderbilt study released as a working paper through the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Vanderbilt's John Graves, Ph.D., assistant professor of Preventive Medicine, along with colleagues from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cornell University, examined Medicare ambulance and hospital data from 2002-2008, finding that higher-cost hospitals have significantly lower one-year mortality rates compared to lower-cost hospitals.
Scientists have long believed that vitamin D, which is naturally absorbed from sunlight, has an important role in the functioning of the body's autoimmune system. Now Prof. Howard Amital of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Sheba Medical Center has discovered that the vitamin may also affect the outcomes of patients in intensive care.
OTTAWA, Canada -- Dr. Roger Zemek, Director of Emergency Research at the CHEO Research Institute and ED physician, and assistant professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa, has overseen the creation and implementation of a Medical Directive that now empowers nurses to administer an oral steroid treatment, which has reduced wait time and improved patient care. This research is published today in Pediatrics.
When we try to put ourselves in someone else's shoes, we usually go all the way, assuming that they feel the same way we do. But a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that we have limits: we don't extend this projection to people who have different political views, even under extreme circumstances.
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- You've been experiencing severe back pain and weakness in your right leg. Your doctor orders a spinal MRI to help determine the cause. The radiology report diagnoses cancer.
Would you rather read the detailed medical report right away at home or wait until your doctor was available to explain the test results, diagnosis and treatment options?
This scenario was part of a study at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center designed to determine if patients wanted online access to radiology test results and, if so, how quickly.
TORONTO, Ont. April 2, 2012— Doctors are more reluctant to start their patients on insulin than the patients are themselves, according to a new study led by researchers at St. Michael's Hospital.
"It is well-known that insulin is effective in lowering blood sugar," said Dr. Catherine Yu, a researcher at the hospital's Keenan Research Centre and senior author of the paper. "But there are no clear recommendations on the safest and most effective way to start patients on it, and so physicians are often hesitant to do so."
The American College of Rheumatology (ACR) has released the 2012 recommendations for the use of disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) and biologic agents in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The guidelines published today in the ACR journal, Arthritis Care & Research, are an update to the 2008 recommendations and address the issues of initiating and switching drugs, screening for tuberculosis (TB) reactivation, immunization, and the use of biologics in high-risk RA patients.
A working group convened by the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) has evaluated more than 60 disease activity measures for rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The group narrowed the number of RA disease activity measures and the recommended six for use in U.S. clinical practice are detailed in Arthritis Care & Research, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the ACR.
Hypnosis can be a highly effective treatment for the bowel disorder IBS. Studies involving a total of 346 patients conducted by researchers at The Sahlgrenska Academy of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, showed that hypnotherapy alleviated symptoms in 40 per cent of those affected – and that the improvement is long-term.
Around 15 per cent of the Swedish population is thought to suffer from IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), symptoms of which include abdominal pain and alteration of bowel habits, as well as abdominal distension and bloating.