Emergency physicians can safely reduce x-rays in children with hurt ankles by as much as 23 percent and save emergency patients both money and time. The results of a cost analysis of the Low Risk Ankle Rule (LRAR) were published online Tuesday .
Examining post-mortem tissue from the brains of people with Alzheimer
Advances in technology have spurred better outcomes for infants treated in neonatal intensive care units, but parents and physicians need to work together to avoid unnecessary and potentially harmful tests and treatments, according to new Choosing Wisely recommendations developed by neonatologists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC).
People with a common form of hearing loss not helped by hearing aids achieved significant and sometimes profound improvements in their hearing and understanding of speech with hybrid cochlear implant devices, according to a new multicenter study led by specialists at NYU Langone Medical Center.
In the study researchers at 10 medical centres and private clinics in the United States implanted hybrid cochlear implants into one ear of 50 men and women. All study volunteers had badly damaged high-frequency, inner-ear hair cells, which prevented them from understanding speech, especially in the presence of background noise. All still had sufficient low-frequency hearing, which allowed them to tell apart some sounds and forestalled any use of a regular cochlear implant.
A year after receiving the device, 45 study participants showed overall improvement in their hearing and speech recognition, and no one
A new laser sensor that monitors blood glucose levels without penetrating the skin could transform the lives of millions of people living with diabetes.
Currently, many people with diabetes need to measure their blood glucose levels by pricking their fingers, squeezing drops of blood onto test strips, and processing the results with portable glucometers. The process can be uncomfortable, messy and often has to be repeated several times every day.
The new technology, developed by Professor Gin Jose and a team in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Leeds, uses a small device with low-powered lasers to measure blood glucose levels without penetrating the skin. It could give people a simpler, pain-free alternative to finger pricking.
The technology has continuous monitoring capabilities making it ideal for development as a wearable device. This could help improve the lives of millions of people by enabling them to constantly monitor their glucose levels without the need for an implant.
It is also good news for healthcare providers as it could provide a simpler and cheaper alternative to both of the current methods
Surgical robots allow doctors to improve recovery time and minimise scarring. A study into the safety of surgical robots has linked the machines’ use to at least 144 deaths and more than 1,000 injuries over a 14-year period in the US.
The events included broken instruments falling into patients’ bodies, electrical sparks causing tissue burns and system errors making surgery take longer than planned. The report notes that the figures represent a small proportion of the total number of robotic procedures.
But it calls for fresh safety measures. ‘Despite widespread adoption of robotic systems for minimally invasive surgery, a non-negligible number of technical difficulties and complications are still being experienced during procedures,’ the study states. ‘Adoption of advanced techniques in design and operation of robotic surgical systems may reduce these preventable incidents in the future.’
Robotic surgery can reduce the risk of infections and help patients heal more quickly.
The work was carried out by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center.
Their paper says 144 deaths, 1,391 injuries and 8,061 device malfunctions were recorded out of a total of more than 1.7 million robotic procedures carried out between January 2000 and December 2013. This was based on reports submitted by hospitals, patients, device manufacturers and others to the US Food and Drug Administration, and the study notes that the true number could be higher.
Surgeons face the risk of broken parts causing injury or lengthening procedures
Its authors say the number of injuries and deaths per procedure has remained relatively constant since 2007. But due to the fact that the use of robotic systems is increasing ‘exponentially’, they add, this means that the number of accidents is increasing every year.
They highlight that when problems do occur, people are several times more likely to die if the surgery involves their heart, lungs, head and/or neck rather than gynaecological and urological procedures.
They acknowledge that the data does not pinpoint why, but suggest it is because the former are more complex types of operations for which robots are less commonly used, so there is less experience and expertise available.
The researchers did not, however, compare accident rates with similar operations in which robots were not used. Their study has not been peer reviewed.
Surgical robotic devices are typically expensive – costing millions of pounds – but offer advantages.
They can allow surgeons to use smaller instruments, letting them make smaller and more nimble cuts. That can mean patients recover faster, with less risk of infection and the promise of smaller scars.
In addition, the development of remote surgery means that doctors do not always need to be in the same room as their patients, allowing specialists who are in demand to treat more people.
The report acknowledges that the ‘vast majority of procedures’ involving robots were successful BBC
Home births lead to higher infant mortality than hospital births, at least for mothers living in poorer areas. This is the conclusion of a new study conducted by N. Meltem Daysal (University of Southern Denmark and IZA), Mircea Trandafir (University of Southern Denmark and IZA) and Reyn van Ewijk (VU University Amsterdam and University of Mainz) that examines 356,412 low-risk Dutch women who delivered between 2000 and 2008 and who were allowed to choose between a home and a hospital birth.
The safety of home births for low-risk women is a hotly debated topic in the Western world. In this context, the Netherlands stands out as one of the few developed countries with a health care system geared toward home births, with more than half of all low-risk deliveries taking place at home. This makes it one of the best settings to study the safety of home births.
The study shows that home births lead to higher infant mortality among the poorer half of Dutch women. The researchers suggest that the infant mortality rate may be lower in hospitals because of the availability of advanced medical treatments (such as neonatal intensive care units). In the richer half of the Dutch population, on the other hand, home births are as safe for the child as hospital births. The researchers suspect that low-income women profit from hospital births because it is more difficult to assess whether they are low-risk or high-risk, for example due to a more difficult communication with their midwife.
One of the major challenges when investigating the effect of home births is that even among low-risk women, those who give birth at home or in a hospital may have different risk factors, with riskier deliveries usually taking place in the hospital. Therefore, babies born in a hospital often have more health problems than babies born at home and simple comparisons of these two groups are misleading.
In the present study, the researchers came up with an innovative solution to circumvent this problem. They noticed that some women gave birth at home or in a hospital depending on how far they lived from the nearest obstetric ward. The researchers then compared two groups of low-risk women who were identical, except that the women in one group had a higher probability of delivering in a hospital only because they lived closer to a hospital.
This study demonstrates that home births can lead to higher infant mortality for certain women, even in a country where the health care system is geared toward home births. In the context of the Netherlands, these women are those who live in the poorer half of the country and whose decision to deliver in a hospital or at home is affected by how far they live from the nearest hospital. The authors emphasize that no conclusion can be drawn for other groups. VU University Amsterdam
Patients suffering from chronic cardiopulmonary diseases could soon have a solution to help them accurately monitor their health and warn doctors at the first sign of trouble.
By simply carrying their cellphone, equipped with the health-tracking app, MoveSense, developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a patient
At a median follow-up of 10.9 years, an EORTC study has shown that irradiation of regional nodes in patients with stage I, II, or III breast cancer has a marginal effect on overall survival, the primary endpoint (at 10 years, overall survival was 82.3 % for regional irradiation versus 80.7% for no regional irradiation, (HR=0.87 (95%CI: 0.76, 1.00), p=0.06). The results also showed that disease-free survival, distant-disease-free survival, and breast cancer mortality were significantly improved. Side effects were very limited, although very long-term toxicity of radiation remains unknown.
The phase III EORTC 22922-10925 trial was conducted to evaluate what effect regional node irradiation, i.e., irradiation of the internal mammary and medial supraclavicular lymph nodes, would add to whole breast or chest wall irradiation following surgery in patients with stage I, II, and III breast cancer.
Prof Philip Poortmans of the Radboud university medical center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands says:
Thrombosis is a common side-effect occurring with graft or stent placement because of inevitable damage of the blood vessel wall and it leads to partial or complete blockage of the vessel. To eliminate this consequence the new thrombolytic sol
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