News
3 Toxin Exposures, 2 Minor Electrocutions, 1 Gastrointestinal Tract A-Bleeding And A Few Less Ornaments For The Tree
December 16, 2009 2:43 am | CommentsA new study from Children's Hospital Boston's Division of Emergency Medicine has found that holiday decorations, particularly glass ornaments, are one more safety hazard parents must consider during the season. A review of records from Children's Emergency Department revealed an average of five ornament-related injuries per year, of which, more than half involve a child eating fragments of these ornaments, including batteries and pieces of glass.
SCIP Amends Patient Warming Recommendations
December 15, 2009 6:43 am | CommentsSurgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP) now includes conductive fabric warming in its recommendations to keep surgical patients warm December 15, 2009 The Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP) recently amended its guidelines for perioperative temperature management by changing the definition of active warming to now include “forced-air warming, conductive over-the-body active warming, or warm water garments.
FDA Grants Emergency Use For H1N1 Detection Device<
December 15, 2009 5:51 am | CommentsDxNA has announced that the United States Food and Drug Administration has granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for its 2009 H1N1 influenza virus diagnostic test for use in DxNA’s GeneSTATTM detection platform. According to the company, the new platform enables faster detection of the virus in a portable composition that weighs less than 10 pounds.
CNN's Top 10 Medical Innovations
December 15, 2009 5:40 am | CommentsAt www.cnn.com you can find what they feel are the top medical developments for 2009. Here are the first five, with the conclusion appearing tomorrow. 10. Warm Organ Perfusion Device. Currently, organs waiting to be transplanted are rushed to the patient in a freezer, but after five hours the heart or lung or liver has usually deteriorated so much that it becomes useless.
Americans Paying For Longer Life
December 15, 2009 5:10 am | CommentsJoAnne Allen, Reuters Americans may live significantly longer in the future than current U.S. government projections, and that could mean sharply higher costs than anticipated for Medicare and other programs, researchers have reported. By 2050 Americans may live as much as eight years longer than government forecasts, and that spending by Medicare and Social Security could rise by as much as $8.
The Highest Hospital Bills In The Nation
December 15, 2009 4:53 am | CommentsThe pain in Dan Abrams' leg throbbed so much he could barely stand. Still, the 60-year-old Somerville, NJ resident, who friends say had just canceled his health insurance because of the tough economy, debated from a hospital emergency room whether he should stay and run up thousands of dollars in debt, or take antibiotics from home and hope they arrested the mysterious infection in his leg.
Hotel In Hot Water
December 14, 2009 5:33 am | CommentsA Miami hotel has been evacuated after one guest died and two more fell ill from contaminated drinking water. The hotel in question is the Luxury Epic in downtown Miami – which was housing more than 300 guests at the time of the evacuation. On Sunday, all guests were relocated to surrounding hotels, following a cluster of physical illnesses.
Troops Shot Up Before Holidays
December 14, 2009 5:21 am | CommentsSusanne M. Schafer, AP Thousands of Army training recruits line up at least once more before heading home for the holidays, this time for mass inoculations against swine flu. The Army's largest training camp, Fort Jackson, just outside Columbia, S.C., and other posts are hurrying to finish the shots before the year-end break.
26 Operations And 13 Kidneys Later … The Ultimate Gift
December 14, 2009 5:07 am | CommentsLauran Neergaard, AP Doctors in the nation's capital have performed a record-setting kidney swap, part of a pioneering effort to expand transplants to patients who too often never qualify. These 26 operations put healthy kidneys into 13 desperately ill people. When relative after relative failed to be a match for his wife Irene, Tom Otten, a suburban St.
New Gas Keys MIS Success
December 14, 2009 4:47 am | CommentsAs good as laparoscopy is in preventing some of the stresses of open surgery on the body, it can have drawbacks, including reduced blood flow that can impact organ function. However, by adding another gas to the carbon dioxide used to inflate the surgical area during laparoscopy, researchers at Duke University Medical Center have found they can preserve more normal blood flow during noninvasive surgery.
Negative Pressure Wound Therapy Warnings
December 14, 2009 4:33 am | CommentsThe FDA recently advised healthcare providers over a growing concern related to rare, but potentially fatal complications from negative pressure wound therapy. The therapy involves a device that uses a vacuum pump to produce sub-atmospheric pressure over a chronic wound or burn. Although the procedure can aid healing and closing of wounds by creating a vacuum to remove excess fluid and infected material, the FDA noted that bleeding and infection can occur.
$600 Million Heading To Health Centers
December 11, 2009 6:16 am | CommentsPresident Barack Obama said pledged nearly $600 million from the $787 billion economic stimulus plan to help create jobs at 85 community health centers. Obama is under heavy pressure to generate job growth, with November unemployment rates at over 10 percent. The White House said the $600 million would awarded to help pay for major construction and renovation projects across the country and assist networks at the centers to move to electronic records.
Review Of Medical Marijuana Continues
December 11, 2009 6:06 am | CommentsThe Los Angeles City Council has delayed a vote on its medical marijuana ordinance until most likely into next year, worried that the draft proposal could eliminate most dispensaries and lead to just a few “big-box” pot stores in isolated industrial areas. The council has been on fast-forward since October, when a judge ruled that the city's moratorium on dispensaries was invalid, leaving Los Angeles with almost no power to shut down hundreds that have opened without permission in the last two years.
Robotic System Operates On Beating Heart
December 11, 2009 5:51 am | CommentsThe robotic technology predicts the movement of the heart as it beats, enabling surgical tools to move in concert with each beat. This development could be very important in developing less invasive surgical heart procedures, where stopping the heart from beating causes what might be unnecessary risks.
A Little Dirt Never Hurt Anyone – Especially Kids
December 11, 2009 5:31 am | CommentsA Northwestern University study suggests that American parents should ease up on antibacterial soap and perhaps allow their little ones a romp or two in the mud in getting more exposure to everyday germs. The exposure to infectious microbes early in life could actually protect individuals from cardiovascular diseases that can lead to death as an adult.
