Culture

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law by US President Barack Obama in 2010, can advance public health in the USA by supporting increased emphasis on prevention, and reversing the historic division between public health and private health care services, according to the authors of new research published in The Lancet as part of a new Series, The health of Americans.

In a new evidence-based clinical practice guideline being published in Annals of Internal Medicine (http://www.annals.org/article.aspx?doi=10.7326/M14-0701), the American College of Physicians (ACP) says physicians should not offer routine pelvic examinations to asymptomatic, average risk, non-pregnant women.

(Boston) – The results of a new study demonstrate that starting hospitalized patients who have an opioid (heroin) addiction on buprenorphine treatment in the hospital and seamlessly connecting them with an outpatient office based treatment program can greatly reduce whether they relapse after they are discharged.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — For patients with type 2 diabetes – especially those over age 50 – the negative impact of side effects like weight gain and burdens like frequent insulin shots trumps the benefits of drugs, says a new study by the University of Michigan Health System, the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, and University College London.

The findings, which appear in today's Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine, show that for many, the benefits of taking diabetes medications are so small that they are outweighed by the minor hassles and risks.

PULLMAN, Wash.—Washington State University researchers have sketched out one of the greatest baby booms in North American history, a centuries-long "growth blip" among southwestern Native Americans between 500 to 1300 A.D.

It was a time when the early features of civilization—including farming and food storage—had matured to where birth rates likely "exceeded the highest in the world today," the researchers write in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

CHICAGO --- The heart is more forgiving than you may think -- especially to adults who try to take charge of their health, a new Northwestern Medicine® study has found.

When adults in their 30s and 40s decide to drop unhealthy habits that are harmful to their heart and embrace healthy lifestyle changes, they can control and potentially even reverse the natural progression of coronary artery disease, scientists found.

The study was published June 30 in the journal Circulation.

CHICAGO (June 30, 2014): Surgical resection markedly improves survival among metastatic melanoma patients whose disease is isolated to a few areas in the liver, according to new study findings published in the July issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. These results mark a departure for melanoma, an aggressive form of skin cancer, that is most often considered fatal once it has spread to the liver and then, not amenable to surgical treatment.

A new study by demographer John Bongaarts, Population Council Vice President and Distinguished Scholar, has found that mortality projections from most low-mortality countries are more pessimistic than they should be. The reason for this flaw is that existing projections fail to recognize that fewer people smoke today than used to. As a result, there will be a future decline in smoking-related mortality. This suggests that with more people living longer, pension and health care costs in coming decades will likely be higher than previously estimated.

INDIANAPOLIS -- A child's illness and hospitalization are extremely stressful for both the child and the parents. A new study reports that the Four Habits Model of Highly Effective Clinicians, a core set of communication skills developed to help physicians communicate with patients, can successfully prepare inexperienced nurses for emotionally difficult conversations with parents of pediatric patients.

The research shows that managers hold more negative attitudes to private use of social media at work than subordinates. About 11,000 Norwegian employees participated in the researchers' study Predictors of Use of Social Network Sites at Work.

"It is very interesting that top executives, who are negative to private web-surfing during working hours, are the ones who surf the most for private purposes when at work," says Doctor Cecilie Schou Andreassen at UiB's Department of Psychosocial Science.

AURORA, Colo. (June 30, 2014)–As the American population continues to age, new research is showing significant barriers to evaluations important to the continued safety and competency of older drivers.

"The biggest barriers we found were the fact that the tests were often not covered by insurance," said study author Emmy Betz, MD, MPH, at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. "And there was a general lack of awareness that they even existed."

The study was published recently in the journal Occupational Therapy in Health Care.

Munich, 30 June 2014: A large multicentre trial seems finally to have resolved one of IVF's long-running controversies - whether the outlook for women with a poor IVF record can be improved by routine hysteroscopy performed before further IVF treatment.(1) For the TROPHY study, whose results are reported today at the 30th Annual Meeting of ESHRE in Munich by Dr Tarek El-Toukhy from Guy's and St Thomas's Hospital, London, has now found no significant difference in IVF success rates between those who had outpatient hysteroscopy performed before their IVF and those who didn't.

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) —To ease isolation during extended hospitalizations, UC Davis Children's Hospital offers secure videoconferencing for patients and families. While anecdotal accounts have suggested the Family-Link program enhances quality of life during long hospital stays, clinicians wondered if the technology also offered clinical benefits.

Researchers have estimated that in 2012-2013 there were 5.77 million A&E attendances in England that were preceded by an inability to get a timely GP appointment.

Clinical inertia does not allow healthcare professionals to diagnose cholesterol problems in the 65.3% of cases. The results warn of the need to adopt a more proactive attitude towards a complete dyslipidemia diagnosis in routine clinical practice, especially if it is taken into account that it is an illness related to an increase of cardiovascular risk. The study published in the journal Plos One is part of the ESCARVAL (Estudio Cardiometabólico Valenciano) programme, in which participate researchers at the Universitat Jaume I, Universitat de València and Universidad Miguel Hernández.