News
CNN's Top Five Medial Innovations For 2009
December 16, 2009 4:05 am | CommentsAt www.cnn.com you can see their top picks for the most innovative medical developments of 2009. Here are the top 5: 5. NeuroStar’s Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Therapy system. Used for treatment of depression, the unit pulses magnetic fields into a patient’s prefrontal cortex, which is the area of the brain that regulates mood, to stimulate those neurons and increase the number of mood-enhancing chemicals that can be produced.
Medical Call Spooks Home Intruder
December 16, 2009 3:47 am | CommentsA man who broke into an 89-year-old woman's Knoxville home was scared off when a monitoring company answered her medical alert call. The woman activated a medical alert device on her neck and the voice of an operator responded over the intercom. She told police the intruder ripped the device off her, causing a slight abrasion and a cut finger, but he fled taking nothing.
Many Still Fearful Of Electronic Records Systems
December 16, 2009 3:39 am | CommentsAlthough physicians support the use of electronic health records, concerns about potential privacy breaches remain an issue, according to two research articles published in the January 2010 issue of the Journal of the American Informatics Association (JAMIA). One published study is based on views of more than 1,000 family practice and specialist physicians in Massachusetts who were asked whether they thought electronic health information exchange (HIE) would drive down costs, improve patient care, free up their time and preserve patient confidentiality.
Stroke Surgery Safe for Kidney Patients
December 16, 2009 3:06 am | CommentsDoctors may now have more reason to refer their chronic kidney disease patients to surgery for a blocked carotid artery. A University of Western Ontario study suggests that a carotid endarterectomy can reduce the risk of stroke in kidney disease patients by 82 percent. Additionally, researchers concluded that the risk of death was not increased for patients who underwent the surgery.
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.
