Culture

At a time when the cost of the Affordable Care Act is only now being realized and most academics are offering ways services can be cut to keep budgets manageable, the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF)is going the other way and recommending more health care - that clinicians screen all adults 18 and over, including pregnant women, for alcohol misuse.

A study by Michael F. Jacobson, Ph.D., of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Washington, D.C., and colleagues suggest voluntary reductions in sodium levels in processed and restaurant foods is inconsistent and slow. (Online First)

A study by David Finkelhor, Ph.D., of the University of New Hampshire, and colleagues updates estimates and trends for childhood exposure to a range of violence, crime and abuse victimizations. (Online First)

The study used the National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence, which was based on a national telephone survey conducted in 2011. The participants included 4,503 children and teenagers between the ages of one month to 17 years.

BOSTON, MA (EMBARGOED UNTIL Monday, May 13, 2013, 4pm EDT) – As the restaurant industry prepares to implement new rules requiring chains with 20 or more locations to post calorie content information, the results of a new study suggest that it would be beneficial to public health for all restaurants to provide consumers with the nutritional content of their products.

Once famously described as "orphan diseases, too small to be noticed, too small to be funded" in the Hollywood drama Lorenzo's Oil, rare diseases are getting unprecedented attention today among drug manufacturers, who are ramping up research efforts and marketing new medicines that promise fuller lives for children and other patients with these heartbreaking conditions.

People with job stress and an unhealthy lifestyle are at higher risk of coronary artery disease than people who have job stress but lead healthy lifestyles, found a study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

Once famously described as "orphan diseases, too small to be noticed, too small to be funded" in the Hollywood drama Lorenzo's Oil, rare diseases are getting unprecedented attention today among drug manufacturers, who are ramping up research efforts and marketing new medicines that promise fuller lives for children and other patients with these heartbreaking conditions.

DENVER, May 9, 2013 – A new Canadian study shows that operating without interrupting warfarin treatment at the time of cardiac device surgery is safe and markedly reduces the incidence of clinically significant hematomas compared to the current standard of care. The new findings were released today at Heart Rhythm 2013, the Heart Rhythm Society's 34th Annual Scientific Sessions, and will be published online today in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

Why do brands such as Manchester United and Apple capture some hearts and minds while Arsenal and Samsung capture others?

When consumers feel a strong emotional attachment to a brand, they tend to be willing to pay more and defend it against detractors.

And why is brand attachment so rare? For all the millions of dollars spent on advertising and other efforts, consumers rarely feel an affinity for brands.

Denver, Colorado, USA, May 11, 2013 –Sorin Group, (Reuters Code: SORN.MI), a global medical company and a leader in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, announced findings from the landmark OPTION study1 demonstrating that patients with Sorin dual-chamber implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) experienced a significantly lower incidence of inappropriate shocks compared with patients with standard single-chamber devices (4.3% vs.10.3%, p=0.015).The study also found that there was no difference in all-cause mortality between the two groups.

The era is long gone when a romantic breakup meant ripped-up photos and burned love letters and moving on. Digital photos and emails can be quickly deleted but the proliferation of social media in an Internet where 'nothing is really deleted' has made forgetting a bigger chore.

What about the ubiquitous digital records of a once beloved that lurk on Facebook, tumblr, and flicker?

DETROIT – As hospitals look for ways to improve patient satisfaction and boost their Medicare reimbursement, a Henry Ford Hospital study found that an inpatient pharmacist-directed anticoagulation service (PDAS) might be an unexpected opportunity.

In a survey of 689 patients who received inpatient anticoagulant therapy, patient satisfaction increased significantly using the PDAS compared to patients' reviews of their care in a previous pharmacy model. Key findings:

A paper out today says that private insurance companies that participate in Medicare under the Medicare Advantage program and its predecessors have cost the publicly funded program for the elderly and disabled an extra $282.6 billion since 1985, most of it over the past eight years. They claim that in 2012 alone, private insurers were overpaid $34.1 billion.

That wasted money that should have been spent on improving patient care, shoring up Medicare's trust fund or funding the White House tours that had to be canceled due to the sequester.

Chicago (May 10, 2013): Ambient background noise—whether it is the sound of loud surgical equipment, talkative team members, or music—is a patient and surgical safety factor that can affect auditory processing among surgeons and the members of their team in the operating room (OR), according to a new study that appears in the May issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. The findings are the first to demonstrate that a surgeon's ability to understand spoken words in the OR is directly affected by noise in the environment.

Philadelphia, Pa. (May 10, 2013) – A new "alternative model" included in the upcoming Fifth Edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-5, lines up well with the current approach to diagnosis of personality disorder, according to a study in the May Journal of Psychiatric Practice.