Articles
Early Stroke Risk After Hip Replacement
November 12, 2012 11:10 am | by Todd Neale | CommentsDanish patients who underwent the procedure over a 10-year period were more likely than those who had not received a hip or knee replacement to have an ischemic stroke or hemorrhagic stroke in the first 2 postoperative weeks.
Steroid During Heart Surgery Has No CV Benefit
November 9, 2012 12:49 pm | by Kristina Fiore | CommentsGiving high-dose dexamethasone as a prophylactic during heart surgery didn't reduce cardiovascular events, but it may diminish respiratory failure and infections, researchers found.
Efficacy Seen For Stents With Dissolving Parts
October 31, 2012 5:55 am | by Chris Kaiser | CommentsIn an effort to reduce the small but real risk of stent thrombosis associated with drug-eluting stents, stent makers have turned to devices whose polymer or scaffolding dissolves over time. A series of studies reported at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) meeting highlighted the latest results from bioabsorbable devices.
Strive To Maintain Our Compassion For Others
October 31, 2012 5:49 am | by Alex Lickerman, M.D. | CommentsI vividly remember the first day my medical school classmates and I met our cadavers in the anatomy lab. Large body bags lay on metal tables that had been bolted to the floor. I remember the sheer size of the bags best. No doubt existed in my mind that dead human bodies indeed lay within them. And yet part of me couldn’t quite grasp that I was actually going to soon be unzipping them and cutting into flesh through which blood had once flowed as freely as it now did in mine.
Wrist To Heart Access For Stent Bests Groin To Heart
October 30, 2012 6:16 am | by Ed Susman | CommentsAccessing the coronary arteries via the radial artery in the wrist reduced bleeding and other complications compared with femoral artery access in patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), a randomized trial found. The 30-day rate of bleeding and access site complications -- defined as a hematoma 15 cm or greater -- was 1.
Having Patient Satisfaction Data Isn't Enough To Choose A Hospital
October 30, 2012 6:09 am | by Trudy Lieberman | CommentsWhen I learned recently that I would need cataract surgery, I researched New York City hospital ratings from three well-known sponsors: US News & World Report , the federal government’s Hospital Compare and the Leapfrog Group. After writing about what I discovered , I wondered if perhaps a few measures might offer a clue or two about how to better honcho some of my care, like the one that asks hospital patients if a nurse explained medications given to them.
Abciximab Route Has No Effect On Cardiac Outcome
October 29, 2012 5:35 am | Commentsby Ed Susman In the largest trial ever conducted using cardiac magnetic resonance imaging, doctors said they observed an infarct size of 16 percent of the left ventricle using intracoronary delivery and 17 percent using IV administration of abciximab ( P =0.52). "This study demonstrates that, in ST-elevated myocardial infarction patients, intracoronary abciximab did not result in a difference in myocardial damage and/or reperfusion," said Jochen Wöhrle, MD, professor of medicine at the University of Ulm, Germany, in his presentation at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics annual meeting.
Law School Revamps Final Year Curriculum. Will Med Schools Ever Do The Same?
October 29, 2012 5:32 am | CommentsThe New York Times reports that NYU Law School is planning to change its third-year curriculum to better prepare its graduates for the realities of legal practice today. In case you don’t know, law school graduates are having a tough time finding work and many require on-the-job training to make up for what they didn’t learn in school.
Fewer Legs Lost To PAD
October 26, 2012 6:03 am | by Nancy Walsh | CommentsA significant drop in the numbers of lower extremity amputations among patients with peripheral artery disease has occurred since 2000, but wide geographic differences in this practice persist, a national study of Medicare recipients found. Between 2000 and 2008, the rate of amputation throughout the country declined from 7,258 to 5,790 per 100,000 ( P <0.
Preserving Fertility With Ovarian Tissue Transplants
October 25, 2012 6:29 am | CommentsFor younger women diagnosed with cancer, the treatments necessary to treat their disease can also make them infertile. But an experimental procedure is giving those women a second chance, by freezing ovarian tissue before cancer treatment begins.
Heart Attacks Twice As Deadly For Women
October 24, 2012 4:44 am | by Cole Petrochko | CommentsA heart attack is more likely to kill a woman than a man, perhaps because women are more likely to delay seeking treatment for myocardial infarction symptoms. Compared with men, women had a significantly higher rate of intra-hospital mortality from MI at 9 percent versus 4.4 percent ( P <0.0001), according to Guillaume Leurent, MD, of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire in Rennes, France, and colleagues.
Cheaper Drug Cuts Surgery Site Infections
October 23, 2012 5:20 am | by Ed Susman | CommentsThe use of povidone-iodine nasal solution immediately before surgery should be considered as an alternative option to five days use of mupirocin ointment to prevent Staphylococcus aureus and other deep surgical site infections. After 3 months follow-up in the intent-to-treat analysis, deep surgical site infections occurred in 14 patients on mupirocin and in six patients on povidone-iodine, said Michael Phillips, MD, clinical assistant professor of medicine at New York University Langone Medical Center, showing that the povidone-iodine solution was at least equally effective in infection control as standard of care mupirocin ( P =0.
Vaccine Fails To Prevent Infections In Heart Surgery
October 22, 2012 7:27 am | by Ed Susman | CommentsA vaccine developed to prevent surgical wounds from infection with Staphylococcus aureus failed to provide benefit to patients, and may actually have increased mortality when compared with placebo, researchers said here. In the study, 201 of 3,958 patients who were inoculated with the S.
Steroids Cut Transfusions In Heart Surgery
October 19, 2012 5:38 am | by Kristina Fiore | CommentsPatients given high doses of a steroid during heart surgery were less likely to need blood products, researchers said here. In a post-hoc substudy of a randomized controlled trial, significantly more patients who were given dexamethasone 1 mg/kg during coronary artery bypass (CABG) surgery did not receive transfusions (61 percent versus 57.
Muscle Relaxants In Surgery Hiked Hypoxia Risks
October 17, 2012 5:42 am | by Kristina Fiore | CommentsGiving neuromuscular blocking agents as part of the anesthetic package raised the risk of respiratory complications, a large single-center study showed. Use of intermediate-acting, non-depolarizing neuromuscular blocking agents increased the risk of both oxygen desaturation and reintubation ( P <0.
