A new study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has linked two seemingly unrelated cancer treatments that are both now being tested in clinical trials.

One treatment is a vaccine that targets a structure on the outside of cancer cells, while the other is an altered enzyme that breaks apart RNA and causes the cell to commit suicide.

The new understanding could help both approaches, says UW-Madison professor of biochemistry Ronald Raines, who has long studied ribonucleases

Fluke Biomedical, the global leader in medical device quality assurance systems, launched Advantage Training, an online centre aimed at providing accessible training to the biomedical engineering community. The Advantage Training Centre features curriculum that covers the full spectrum of medical device preventive maintenance and quality assurance for biomedical and diagnostic imaging equipment. Training is available for all skills levels, and course topics range from introduction to basic terminology to advanced technical applications. The curriculum was developed by subject matter experts, including faculty from the Biomedical Engineering School at the University of Vermont.

For the patient, surgery involves extreme physical stress, and in older patients especially this can lead to disorders of consciousness or cognition. The acute confusional state known as delirium, however, can often be prevented by specialist nursing care after the operation, as Torsten Kratz and co-authors show. In their study delirium liaison nurses were employed to help care for surgical patients aged 70 years and over. In every patient, the risk of postoperative delirium was reduced compared to patients who received routine care.

Delirium is a frequent occurrence after surgery in older patients: among those aged 70 and older, up to one in two is affected. Besides age, risk factors for delirium include mental illness-such as dementia-and infections. The approach to care assessed by Torsten Kratz and co-authors focuses on patients’ cognitive problems. Specially trained nurses support patients to achieve early self-feeding, improved cognitive activity, and restorative sleep. In this study in a Berlin hospital, one patient in five receiving routine care suffered from postoperative delirium, whereas in the group receiving support from delirium liaison nurses, fewer than 1 in 20 developed cognitive disorders. The authors point out that the study was unable to identify which specific measures reduced the risk for delirium-that would require more studies in larger numbers of patients. EurekAlert

Researchers at Thomas Jefferson University showed that a simple questionnaire, evaluation and pulse-oximetry monitoring can lead to early detection of sleep apnea in patients hospitalized for congestive heart failure (CHF).

A recent study led by DCRI Fellow Jacob Doll found that approximately two-thirds of the patients who were referred to rehabilitation did not attend an initial session.
Cardiac rehabilitation programmes include a mixture of exercise regimens, health education, and cardiovascular risk reduction and medication adherence support. These programmes, which typically comprise 2 to 3 weekly sessions for a total of 36 sessions, are associated with improvements in lifestyle, functional capacity, and quality of life for older adults. Despite this, rates of referral and adherence have traditionally been low, particularly in older adults.
In this study, Doll and his colleagues used data from the National Cardiovascular Data Registry Acute Coronary Treatment Intervention Outcomes Network Registry and Medicare claims to identify 58,269 patients 65 years or older who had a heart attack between 2007 and 2010. Of these patients, 36,376 (62.4 percent) were referred to cardiac rehabilitation. Only 11,862 patients (32.6 percent) attended at least one rehab session during the year following hospital discharge. Of those who had not been referred, 1,795 (8.2 percent) attended at least one session.
Only about 5 percent of the patients completed all 36 sessions, even though the sessions are usually covered by insurance.
These findings, the study