Culture

April 11, 2013, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. -- Half of patients on high-dose, long-term opioid therapy had hormonal disturbances or signs of inflammation, while 100 percent reported improved pain control and mental outlook, new research shows. The results, reported today at the 29th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, present rare data on the effects of opioids beyond 10 years. Most clinical trials that examine opioid use are of short duration, and little is known about long-term outcomes, particularly in patients who suffer from noncancer pain.

April 11, 2013, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. -- Two innovative techniques in the placement of an implanted spinal cord stimulator (SCS) are expected to reduce common complications at the implant site, according to new research revealed today. Results from a case series highlighted an advanced lead anchoring technique and the emerging technology of using large single-port introducers, which enable placement of multiple neurostimulation leads through a single needle-entry point.

In 1972, a U.S. Senate committee reported, "Many of the great whales which once populated the oceans have now dwindled to the edge of extinction," due to commercial hunting. The committee also worried about how tuna fishing was accidentally killing thousands of dolphins, trapped in fishing gear. And they considered reports about seal hunting and the decline of other mammals, including sea otters and walruses.

In October of that year, Congress passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Four decades later, new research shows that the law is working.

April 11, 2013 -- The creation and use of information online and the widespread use of the Internet offer exciting new opportunities for patient care, but also require physicians to consider how to best protect patient interests and apply principles of professionalism to online settings, the American College of Physicians (ACP) and the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) said today in a newly released policy paper, "Online Medical Professionalism: Patient and Public Relationships."

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The widespread use of media among college students – from texting to chatting on cell phones to posting status updates on Facebook – may be taking an academic toll, say researchers with The Miriam Hospital's Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine.

WASHINGTON — Even with health insurance, ready access to preventive, specialty and behavioral health care and comprehensive electronic medical records, nearly 8 percent of patients in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) visit the emergency department two or more times per year, according to a study published online Tuesday in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("What Drives Frequent Emergency Department Use in an Integrated Health System: National Data from the Veterans Health Administration").

OAK BROOK, Ill. – April 11, 2013 – Researchers at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, report in a new study that average-risk screening adenoma detection rates (ADR) are significantly higher than current guidelines suggest for both men and women. The study found that the overall average-risk screening ADR was 33.7 percent for both genders combined. Women had a 25.4 percent risk in the study versus a 15 percent risk noted in guidelines; men had a 41.2 percent risk in the study versus a 25 percent risk noted in guidelines.

Web tools and social media are our key sources of information when we make decisions as citizens and consumers. But these information technologies can mislead us by magnifying social processes that distort facts and make us act contrary to our own interests – such as buying property at wildly inflated prices because we are led to believe that everybody else is. New research from the University of Copenhagen, which has just been published in the journal Metaphilosophy, combines formal philosophy, social psychology, and decision theory to understand and tackle these phenomena.

Clinical pharmacologists at Heidelberg University Hospital have achieved major progress for improving the reliability of drugs. In a pharmacological study, they showed for the first time that interactions between drugs can be detected with minute doses in the range of nanograms. However, at these low doses, the drugs are neither effective nor do they have side effects. This means that studies on interactions occurring in drug combinations can be conducted practically without posing risks or negative impacts on the participants.

The three-year study, the largest of its kind ever conducted in Australia, found about 3% of Australia's medical workforce accounts for nearly half of all complaints. Researchers also identified several risk factors, which could be used to help identify which doctors were at high risk of receiving further complaints in the near future.

The researchers worked closely with Health Complaints Commissioners in seven states and territories and collected information on nearly 19,000 complaints against 11,000 doctors over a decade.

Half of all formal patient complaints made in Australia to health ombudsmen concern just 3% of the country's doctors, with 1% accounting for a quarter of all complaints, finds research published online in BMJ Quality & Safety.

Doctors complained about more than three times are highly likely to be the subject of a further complaint - and often within a couple of years - the findings show.

The problem is unlikely to be confined to Australia, warn commentators, who point out that while regulators often know about these problem doctors, patients usually don't.

The study will be presented today (11 April 2013) at the Sleep and Breathing Conference in Berlin, organised by the European Respiratory Society and the European Sleep Research Society.

Previous research has demonstrated that people with sleep apnoea are less productive at work, usually due to excessive daytime sleepiness. This study aimed to assess whether continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) improved productivity at work.

SEATTLE – By the end of 2011, most of the 255 Washington residents who received a prescription for lethal medication to end their lives under the state's Death with Dignity Act had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Of those, 40 were patients at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, part of the Pacific Northwest's only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Virginia Tech scientists have provided new evidence that biofilms — bacteria that adhere to surfaces and build protective coatings — are at work in the survival of the human pathogen Salmonella.

One out of every six Americans becomes ill from eating contaminated food each year, with over a million illnesses caused by Salmonella bacteria, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Finding out what makes Salmonella resistant to antibacterial measures could help curb outbreaks.

New research reveals that advanced fibrosis is a significant predictor of mortality in patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), largely brought about by cardiovascular causes. NAFLD alone was not associated with increased mortality according to findings published in the April issue of Hepatology, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases.