The 43rd World Hospital Congress of the International Hospital Federation will bring health leaders from around the globe together in Oman in November to discuss the importance of people-centered health services in times of peace and crisis.
The World Hospital Congress is a unique global forum where leaders of national and international hospital and healthcare organizations convene to share knowledge, expertise, experiences and best practices in leadership in hospital and healthcare management and service delivery.
Hosted this year by the Ministry of Health of the Sultanate of Oman, the event will be held on 6-9 November in Muscat with the theme ”People at the heart of health services in peace and crisis”.
To respond to peoples’ expectations, health services must be supported by investments contributing to the prosperity of the nation, resilience to all possible issues, and innovation to increase health gain. The Congress will explore how health services can be more responsive through better resilience, supportive through appropriate health investments and prospective through health impactful innovations.
More than 100 health leaders and professionals from over 40 countries will be sharing insights, best practices and experiences in a diverse program.
Keynote topics will include:

• How hospitals and health services can protect people in situation of crisis like outbreaks, conflicts and natural disasters
• How hospitals and health services contribute locally and nationally to prosperity
• How health services can support better well-being
• How to identify real innovation that will effectively support healthcare
• The role of patients in time of peace and crisis from self-empowerment to social mobilization

The congress will provide an amazing opportunity to learn from some of the best in the industry, broaden their network, plus explore the hidden beauty of Oman. Early bird registration is now open and will end on 15 August 2019. Delegates can already secure their slots at the best rates by registering online.

Membranous nephropathy (MN) is a progressive kidney disease which is characterized by the accumulation of immune complexes within the kidney. It often leads to a so-called nephrotic syndrome with proteinuria, hypoalbuminemia, and edema, it can even result in kidney failure. MN can occur without any known causes (primary MN), but can also be acquired via other diseases. Antibodies against phospholipase A2 receptor (PLA2R) are highly specific for the primary form of the disease, but do not occur in secondary forms.
An Indian working group published five cases of nephrotic syndrome caused by MN with evidence of chronic mercury poisoning due to consumption of traditional Indian medicines such as Siddha and Ayurveda. The article was published in “Clinical Kidney Journal” (ckj), an official journal of the ERA-EDTA, in June 2018, and is the first report of its kind showing that traditional Indian medicines can cause MN, proven by renal biopsy. All patients received this kind of medicine and the index patients were seronegative for antibodies against phospholipase A2 receptor (PLA2R), giving evidence that they did not suffer from the primary form of the disease.
Very few cases of mercury-induced MN have been reported in the literature so far and most known cases have developed due to traditional Chinese medicine, skin-lightening creams, inhalation containing mercury and hair dye containing mercury. Traditional Indian medicines have so far not been “on the radar”, although mercury has been an ingredient in several traditional medicines such as Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha, Tibetan and Chinese medicines. Traditional Indian medicines are sold over the Internet and have found a global market. However, these drugs sold by some traditional medicine manufacturers may not be rigorously tested for the contents and their sale is not regulated. However, despite the widespread consumption of traditional Indian medicines, no renal toxicity has been reported so far. According to the authors of this case report, it might be possible that it is underreported due to a lack of awareness among physicians and nephrologists or to a lack of knowledge: very often, patients do not even mention that they are taking traditional medicines in addition to what their family doctor or nephrologist prescribes.
The authors suggest that mercury poisoning should be considered in patients with anti-PLA2R antibody-negative MN, and that these patients should be asked, if they had taken traditional Indian medicines.
“The publication of these case reports is important. It shows that seemingly harmless traditional medicine can harm people a lot and that it is high time that controls and regulations concerning the ingredients of any medicine are needed”, explains ckj editor-in-chief, Professor Alberto Ortiz. “As long as there are no quality controls for substances used in traditional medicine, we have to warn our patients: Mercury poisoning can lead to MN as well as to many other severe health problems, because it is affecting the brain, the gut and the kidneys.”
www.era-edta.org 

The International Day of Radiology (IDoR) will be celebrated for the seventh time on November 8, this year focusing on cardiac imaging.
Cardiac imaging is a fast-growing subspecialty of diagnostic radiology that plays a huge part in the assessment and management of heart patients throughout the world. Cardiac radiologists – the experts in charge – supervise or perform imaging examinations, using technology such as computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and then interpret the resulting images to diagnose and monitor a wide range of diseases of the heart.
For IDoR 2018, we are highlighting the increasingly important role of radiologists in cardiac care, contributing to the diagnosis, pre-procedural work-up and follow-up of patients with a wide variety of cardiac pathology, from coronary artery disease and leaky heart valves to defects in the size and shape of the heart.
To underline the significance of cardiac imaging in various regions of the world and to show its current place in today’s medical healthcare spectrum, the ESR has conducted numerous interviews with experts throughout Europe, Latin America and Asia, as well as with individuals from Canada, South Africa and Egypt.
The stunning IDoR 2018 poster can again be downloaded on the IDoR website; this year it is available in 30 languages, covering a great variety from Icelandic to Nepalese.
A publication on this year’s main theme is currently in the making; books from previous years on emergency radiology, breast imaging, pediatric imaging, brain imaging and thoracic imaging are still available for download on the IDoR website.
As in previous years, more than 160 radiology-related professional societies from around the world will participate in the International Day of Radiology, holding a range of different events to celebrate, such as public lectures, department open days, conferences, and press events.
The International Day of Radiology was launched in 2012 and is a joint initiative of the European Society of Radiology (ESR), the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) and the American College of Radiology (ACR). It is an annual event held with the aim of building greater awareness of the value that radiology contributes to safe patient care, and improving understanding of the vital role radiologists play in the healthcare continuum.
November 8, the day that Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered the existence of x-rays in 1895, was chosen as a day of action and awareness. The organizers hope to alert the world to the stunning medical, scientific and even artistic possibilities of medical imaging, the essential role of the radiologist as a part of the healthcare team in countless medical scenarios, and the high educational and professional standards required of all staff working in medical imaging.

Machine learning – a field of artificial intelligence that uses statistical techniques to enable computer systems to ‘learn’ from data – can be used to analyse electronic health records and predict the risk of emergency hospital admissions, a new study from The George Institute for Global Health at the University of Oxford has found.
The research suggests that using these techniques could help health practitioners accurately monitor the risks faced by patients and put in place measures to avoid unplanned admissions, which are a major source of healthcare spending.
‘There were over 5.9 million recorded emergency hospital admissions in the UK in 2017, and a large proportion of them were avoidable,’ said Fatemeh Rahimian, former data scientist at The George Institute UK, who led the research.
‘We wanted to provide a tool that would enable healthcare workers to accurately monitor the risks faced by their patients, and as a result make better decisions around patient screening and proactive care that could help reduce the burden of emergency admissions.’
The study, of 4.6 million patients from 1985 to 2015, was conducted using linked electronic health records from the UK’s Clinical Practice Research Datalink. A wide range of factors was taken into account, including age, sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, family history, lifestyle factors, comorbidities, medication and marital status, as well as the time since first diagnosis, last use of the health system and latest laboratory tests.
Using more variables combined with information about their timing, machine learning models were found to provide a more robust prediction of the risk of emergency hospital admission than any models used previously.
‘Our findings show that with large datasets which contain rich information about individuals, machine learning models outperform one of the best conventional statistical models,’ Rahimian said. ‘We think this is because machine learning models automatically capture and ‘learn’ from interactions between the data that we were not previously aware of.’
Whether machine learning models can lead to similarly strong improvements in risk prediction in other areas of medicine requires further research.

University of Oxford www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-11-21-machine-learning-can-be-used-predict-which-patients-require-emergency-admission

The evidence is clear: Cervical cancer is best treated with brachytherapy, a form of radiation therapy. Yet the use of this potentially lifesaving treatment has been declining, and a new study from the University of Virginia School of Medicine may explain why.
UVA researchers have determined that offering brachytherapy for locally advanced cervical cancer ends up costing hospitals money. After accounting for the costs and time involved, the researchers found that Medicare reimburses four times more per minute required for a less effective alternative than it does for brachytherapy. Ultimately, providing brachytherapy results in a net loss for the providing healthcare facility, the researchers determined. This can leave hospitals – particularly smaller hospitals that don’t do a lot of brachytherapy – in the lurch.
“Studies have time and time again shown that brachytherapy is the most important part of cervical cancer treatment, because it is essential to eradicating the tumour,” said Timothy Showalter, MD, a radiation oncologist at UVA Cancer Center. “A decline in brachytherapy utilization is associated with a higher rate of mortality in cervical cancer, so there’s a direct relationship.”
The problem stems partly from the amount of physician time brachytherapy requires: It takes 80+ percent more personnel time to administer brachytherapy than it does to deliver the increasingly popular alternative, external beam radiation. Both methods deliver radiation to the tumour, but brachytherapy delivers much greater doses in a much more targeted manner. Another key difference, the researchers found: Medicare reimbursement makes external beam radiation profitable, while brachytherapy is not.
Overall, the researchers determined that it costs hospitals more than twice as much to provide brachytherapy as it does to provide external-beam radiation. But the reimbursement doesn’t reflect that.
“Brachytherapy requires a lot of physician effort and expertise and reimburses poorly for that effort,” Showalter said. “I can certainly imagine how the comparatively poor reimbursement rates compared to external beam radiation could contribute in some environments to not establishing a service for brachytherapy or just not committing physician time to it.”
He noted that healthcare providers face a cold, hard truth when deciding whether to offer brachytherapy, or any other treatment: “If practices don’t run at least a profit greater than zero,” he said, “then they fold.”
The researchers concluded that hospitals that see a high volume of patients, such as UVA, are best equipped to provide brachytherapy – and to absorb the major resource commitment that comes with it. “My job specifically involves brachytherapy,” Showalter said. “We’re at this big hospital with all the equipment we need at the ready and a wonderful streamlined process that enhances the patient experience and reduces patients’ time on the table. That makes it easier to provide efficient and effective care.”

EurekAlerthttps://tinyurl.com/y9oqfbe4