Too often, communication barriers exist between those who can hear and those who cannot. Sign language has helped bridge such gaps, but many people are still not fluent in its motions and hand shapes.
Thanks to a group of University of Houston students, the hearing impaired may soon have an easier time communicating with those who do not understand sign language. During the past semester, students in UH
Children and young adults scanned multiple times by computed tomography (CT) have a small increased risk of leukaemia and brain tumours in the decade following their first scan.
The findings from a study of more than 175,000 children and young adults was led by researchers at Newcastle University and at the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, USA.
The researchers emphasise that when a child suffers a major head injury or develops a life-threatening illness, the benefits of clinically appropriate CT scans should outweigh future cancer risks.
Lead author Dr Mark Pearce, Reader in Lifecourse Epidemiology at Newcastle University said: ‘CT scans are accurate and fast so they should be used when their immediate benefits outweigh the long-term risks. However, now we have shown that CT scans increase the risk of cancer, we must ensure that when they are used they are fully justified from a clinical perspective.’
The study represents the culmination of almost two decades of research in this area at Newcastle University, and is jointly funded by the UK Department of Health and NCI/NIH.
CT imaging is a vital and commonly used diagnostic technique and it is used more frequently in countries such as the USA and Japan. However, CT scans deliver a dose of ionising radiation to the body part being scanned and to nearby tissues. Even at relatively low doses, ionising radiation can break the chemical bonds in DNA, causing damage to genes that may increase a person
People who are seriously injured in a car accident are more than 30 per cent more likely to survive at least 48 hours if they are taken directly to a trauma centre than those who are taken first to a non-trauma centre, new research has found.
However, fewer than half of people seriously injured in car accidents in Ontario are taken directly from the scene to a trauma centre. In addition, only half of those taken to the nearest hospital are later transferred to a trauma centre after being assessed and stabilise.
These findings are by Dr. Avery Nathens, trauma director at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.
Ontario has nine Level 1 or Level 11 adult trauma centres. A trauma centre is a hospital with a trauma team that includes specially trained personnel available 24 hours a day, every day, to provide immediate treatment for the most critically injured patients. Higher levels of trauma centres also have the staff and highly sophisticated medical diagnostic equipment to provide specialised emergency care such as neurosurgery and orthopaedics.
Dr. Nathens and his team looked at data from 6,341 car accidents in Ontario from 2002 to 2010. Of those, 45 per cent were transported from the scene to a trauma centre. Of patients who were taken first to a non-trauma centre, only 57 per cent were transferred to a trauma centre.
Patients are taken to non-trauma centres for one of two reasons, Dr. Nathens said. First, the potential severity of their injuries might not be recognised by EMS personnel, so they might be transported to a non-trauma centre if it is the closest hospital. . Second, transport to a trauma centre might take too long, so patients are taken to a non-trauma centre unless air transportation is available.
When patients are taken first to a non-trauma centre, Dr. Nathens said it’s important that the emergency physician recognises the potential severity of their injuries and transfers them to a trauma centre as soon as possible.
Taken together, he said the findings point to the need to make sure all health care workers, especially EMS personnel and Emergency Department physicians, are trained to recognise who needs to be treated at a trauma centre. In addition, the health care system needs the resources to transport those patients quickly, he said.
‘Minutes matter and severely injured patients can’t advocate for themselves so we have the responsibility to ensure that the system works optimally,’ he said.
St. Michael
Nursing homes that foster an environment in which workers feel they are valued contributors to a team of caregivers provide better care to their residents. That is the conclusion of a study.
‘We know from other fields of medicine that teamwork
For patients undergoing surgery for spinal stenosis, the risk of complications is higher when the surgeon performs very few such procedures
Regular meditation could decrease the risk of developing cardiovascular disease in teens who are most at risk, according to Georgia Health Sciences University researchers.
In a study of 62 black teens with high blood pressure, those who meditated twice a day for 15 minutes had lower left ventricular mass, an indicator of future cardiovascular disease, than a control group, said Dr. Vernon Barnes, a physiologist in the Medical College of Georgia and the Georgia Health Sciences University Institute of Public and Preventive Health.
Barnes, Dr. Gaston Kapuku, a cardiovascular researcher in the institute, and Dr. Frank Treiber, a psychologist and former GHSU Vice President for Research, co-authored the study.
Half of the group was trained in transcendental meditation and asked to meditate for 15 minutes with a class and 15 minutes at home for a four-month period. The other half was exposed to health education on how to lower blood pressure and risk for cardiovascular disease, but no meditation. Left ventricular mass was measured with two-dimensional echocardiograms before and after the study and the group that meditated showed a significant decrease.
‘Increased mass of the heart muscle
Heart cells bio-engineered at University of Michigan Center for Arrhythmia Research display activity similar to most people’s resting heart rate
A cutting-edge method developed at the University of Michigan Center for Arrhythmia Research successfully uses stem cells to create heart cells capable of mimicking the heart
Transplant patients are among those at highest risk of adverse outcomes when receiving a stent to address a blockage in an artery. Compared with the general public, these patients have a much higher rate of restenosis, a side effect of stenting in which the artery becomes re-blocked because of an exaggerated scarring process at the stenting site.
New research by UCLA researchers and colleagues has found that heart transplant patients who develop restenosis after receiving a stent have poor long-term survival.
‘The findings point to the need for improvements in prevention and treatment of transplant coronary artery disease that may help reduce restenosis for patients who require later cardiac procedures like stenting,’ said Dr. Michael Lee, an assistant professor of cardiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
A stenting procedure begins with an angioplasty, in which a catheter is placed in an artery of the groin and a tiny wire is snaked up through the artery to the blocked area of the heart. The clogged artery is cleaned out, and then a stent
Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found new clues to why some urinary tract infections recur persistently after multiple rounds of treatment.
Their research, conducted in mice, suggests that the bacteria that cause urinary tract infections take advantage of a cellular waste disposal system that normally helps fight invaders. In a counterintuitive finding, they learned that when the disposal system was disabled, the mice cleared urinary tract infections much more quickly and thoroughly.
‘This could be the beginning of a paradigm shift in how we think about the relationship between this waste disposal system, known as autophagy, and disease-causing organisms,’ says senior author Indira Mysorekar, PhD, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynaecology and of pathology and immunology. ‘There may be other persistent pathogens that have found ways to exploit autophagy, and that information will be very useful for identifying new treatments.’
Urinary tract infections are very common, particularly in women. In the United States alone, annual treatment costs are estimated to run as high as $1.6 billion. Scientists believe 80 percent to 90 percent of these infections are caused by the bacterium Escherichia coli (E. coli).
Data from the new study and earlier results have led Mysorekar and her colleagues to speculate that E. coli that cause recurrent urinary tract infections may hide in garbage-bin-like compartments within the cells that line the urinary tract.
These compartments, found in nearly all cells, are called autophagosomes. They sweep up debris within the cell, including harmful bacteria and worn-out cell parts. Then, they merge with other compartments in the cell that are filled with enzymes that break down the contents of autophagosomes.
‘We think, but can
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