News
New Catheter Placement Could Ease Bleeding, Pain, Costs
November 16, 2009 3:47 am | CommentsTim Schäufele, MD at the MediClin Heart Center Lahr/Baden in Germany offered a report at the recent American Heart Association meeting that suggested the routine use of the radial artery as an access point resulted in fewer bleeding complications and less pain without substantial increases in procedure time.
End-Of-Life Decisions Often A Mystery
November 13, 2009 5:53 am | CommentsMatt Sedensky, AP Lillian Landry always said she wasn't afraid to die. So when death came, the 99-year-old was lying peacefully in a hospice with no needles or tubes. Her final days saw her closest friend at her side and included occasional shots of her favorite whiskey. Landry is an exception.
Michigan Steering Defunct Auto Suppliers Towards Medical
November 13, 2009 5:52 am | CommentsThe struggles of automotive OEMs in Michigan have been well precedented. Now, to help weather the economic storm, business organizations in the region have begun to champion their transition to the more stable medical device industry. Crain’s Detroit Business featured coverage of the 5th-annual MichBio Expo last week, specifically highlighting a panel discussion on how to diversify and better serve the medical device industry.
Kidney Angioplasty Brings Risk Without Benefit
November 13, 2009 5:47 am | CommentsLinda A. Johnson, AP A recent report states that hundreds of thousands of Americans with clogged kidney arteries might want to consider trying medicines before rushing into angioplasty to open them up. The pricey procedure is no more effective and carries surprisingly big risks, a study found.
Cardiology Innovator Passes
November 13, 2009 5:46 am | CommentsWilliam Ganz, MD, and co-inventor of the Swan-Ganz catheter for measuring blood flow, died Tuesday of natural causes at the age 90 in Los Angeles. “Dr. Ganz was a giant in medicine and in life,” said Prediman Shah, MD, director of the Cardiology Division at the Cedar-Sinai Heart Institute.
Chest Pain Patients Wait Their Turn
November 11, 2009 6:55 am | CommentsEmory University Rollins School of Public Health researchers recently presented a study that examined compliance with recommendations that a physician screen chest pain patients within 10 minutes of their arrival in the Emergency Department. The American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association recommend an electrocardiogram be performed and shown to a physician within 10 minutes of a chest pain patient's arrival to the emergency department.
New Course For Med Schools
November 11, 2009 6:45 am | CommentsWhen Aaron Laviana started medical school at Georgetown University in 2007, he dissected a cadaver in his first week, in anatomy class. Today, classes such as “Physician-Patient Communication” and “Social and Cultural Issues in Health Care” come first. Dissection doesn't begin until month four at Georgetown -- as part of a unit on limbs -- and anatomy class no longer exists.
Plastic Surgeon Eliminating Traditional Methods
November 11, 2009 6:28 am | CommentsDr. Oleh Slupchynskyj, Director of The Aesthetic Institute of New York and New Jersey, recently announced he’ll be using a new rhinoplasty procedure that eliminates traditional packing and the subsequent painful removal. The pain associated with the post-operative removal of nasal packing is a commonly cited fear among rhinoplasty candidates.
Pain Continues After Cancer Surgery
November 11, 2009 6:16 am | CommentsAccording to a study published in the November 11 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association by Rune Gärtner, MD, and colleagues, pain for two to three years after auxillary lymph node dissection surgery continues to be common. Loretta S. Loftus, MD, MBA, and Christine Laronga, MD, both of the H.
What Health Care Reform Means To Our Taxes
November 10, 2009 6:15 am | CommentsStephen Ohlemacher, AP All of the health care packages are expensive, as the House bill is projected to cost $1.2 trillion over 10 years and the Senate Finance Committee bill is projected to cost $829 billion. But President Barack Obama has pledged that overhauling health care will not add to the growing federal budget deficit.
Actor James Woods Sues Over Brother's Wrongful Death
November 10, 2009 6:03 am | CommentsEric Tucker, AP A hospital did not do enough to care for the brother of James Woods when he went to the emergency room complaining of a sore throat and vomiting in 2006, a lawyer told jurors at the wrongful death lawsuit. Michael Woods died from heart disease at Kent Hospital in Warwick, RI on July 26, 2006, after going into cardiac arrest on a gurney.
Animal Tissue Growth Arouses Hope For Human Surgical Procedures
November 10, 2009 5:44 am | CommentsIn an advance that could one day enable surgeons to reconstruct and restore function to damaged or diseased penile tissue in humans, researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine have used tissue engineering techniques to completely replace penile erectile tissue in animals.
Plasma-In-A-Bag Offers New Sterilization Approach
November 10, 2009 5:33 am | CommentsThe practice of sterilizing medical tools and devices, and the resulting reduction in surgery-related infections, helped revolutionize health care in the 19th century. Through the years, numerous sterilization techniques have been developed, but the old mainstay remains the 130-year-old autoclave.
iPhone App Aids Surgical Prep
November 9, 2009 6:07 am | CommentsDr. Frederic Jacquot, an orthopedic surgeon from France, has developed an innovative iPhone application that can measure spine curvature angles “on the fly”. Just like other spine clinicians, Dr. Jacquot was trained to measure the Cobb angle, kyphosis angle and the sacral slope on spine radiographs.
He Shoots, He Scores, He's Fired
November 9, 2009 5:55 am | CommentsReuters Senior health officials in Alberta, Canada said they had fired an unidentified worker for giving National Hockey League players preferential access to the flu vaccine. The controversy boiled over when it was revealed that players for the Calgary Flames and their families received shots on an exclusive basis one day before the province closed public flu clinics due to a shortage of the vaccine.
