Culture

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – April 1, 2014 – New research from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center suggests that physicians are ordering vitamin D deficiency screening tests for preventive care purposes rather than after patients develop conditions caused by decreased bone density.

Bottom Line: The blood pressure medication angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs) appear to reduce major cardiovascular events and death, as well death from all other causes, in patients with diabetes, while angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs) appear to have no such effect on those outcomes.

Author: Jun Cheng, M.D., of the Medical School of Zhejiang University, China, and colleagues.

Bottom Line: An increasing workload for hospitalists (physicians who care exclusively for hospitalized patients) was associated with increased length of stay and costs at a large academic community hospital system in Delaware, which may undermine the efficiency and cost of care.

Author: Daniel J. Elliott, M.D., M.S.C.E, of the Christiana Care Health System, Newark, Del., and colleagues.

DARIEN, IL – A new study of older men found a link between poor sleep quality and the development of cognitive decline over three to four years.

Results show that higher levels of fragmented sleep and lower sleep efficiency were associated with a 40 to 50 percent increase in the odds of clinically significant decline in executive function, which was similar in magnitude to the effect of a five-year increase in age. In contrast, sleep duration was not related to subsequent cognitive decline.

(Boston) – Child and adolescent hematologists at Boston Medical Center (BMC) have developed a tool to gauge how ready young adults with sickle cell disease are for a transition into adult care. In a new article for the Journal of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, Amy Sobota, MD, MPH, and her collaborators have shown that a questionnaire geared to the needs of young adults with sickle cell disease can pinpoint areas of need before the patient goes into an adult clinic.

Wounds may heal more quickly if exposed to low-intensity vibration, report researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The finding, in mice, may hold promise for the 18 million Americans who have type 2 diabetes, and especially the quarter of them who will eventually suffer from foot ulcers. Their wounds tend to heal slowly and can become chronic or worsen rapidly.

The presence of African-American police officers has been shown to increase the perceived legitimacy of police departments; however, their depiction in film may play a role in delegitimizing African-American officers in real life, both in the eyes of the general public and the African-American community.

In the summer of 2009, Stanford Professor Chris Field embarked on a task of urgent global importance.

Field had been tapped to assemble hundreds of climate scientists to dig through 12,000 scientific papers concerning the current impacts of climate change and its causes.

The team, Working Group II, would ultimately produce a 2,000-page report as part of a massive, three-part U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, which details a consensus view on the current state and fate of the world's climate.

TORONTO, ON, March 31, 2014 --Improving hand hygiene compliance by healthcare professionals is no easy task, but a first-of-its-kind Canadian study by researchers at Women's College Hospital shows simply asking patients to audit their healthcare professional is yielding high marks.

A breakthrough in drug testing developed by a University of Huddersfield lecturer could lead to cheaper, more effective medicines. Dr Hamid Merchant is a member of the team that has created a device which accurately simulates the gastro-intestinal tract and how it absorbs medication. This means that the cost of clinical trials could be greatly reduced, with savings passed on to customers.

WASHINGTON (March 31, 2014) — In a comparison of two blood-thinning medications, heparin was associated with significantly fewer major cardiovascular events at 28 days than bivalirudin in patients receiving primary percutaneous coronary intervention after a heart attack, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 63rd Annual Scientific Session.

WASHINGTON (March 31, 2014) — Use of drug-eluting stents is associated with a lower risk of major cardiovascular events at one year compared to bare metal stents when followed by an individualized course of blood-thinning medication among patients previously thought to be uncertain candidates for drug-eluting stents due to their heightened risk of bleeding or blood clots, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 63rd Annual Scientific Session.

WASHINGTON (March 31, 2014) — Patients with severe ischemic heart disease and heart failure can benefit from a new treatment in which stem cells found in bone marrow are injected directly into the heart muscle, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 63rd Annual Scientific Session.

WASHINGTON (March 31, 2014) — The first one-year outcomes data of transcatheter heart valve replacement (TAVR) in nearly all U.S. patients undergoing this procedure shows that real-world outcomes are comparable to or slightly better than those found in clinical trials, according to registry data presented at the American College of Cardiology's 63rd Annual Scientific Session.

WASHINGTON (March 31, 2014) — A new stent covered with biodegradable coating continues to show statistical equivalence to Japan's market leader in cumulative second-year data and subgroup analyses, according to research from the NEXT trial presented at the American College of Cardiology's 63rd Annual Scientific Session. NEXT is the largest head-to-head randomized study of these two stents – the novel biolimus-releasing model with the degradable coating (BES) and the everolimus-releasing standard with a durable polymer (EES).