Thousands more American senior citizens with kidney disease are good candidates for transplants and could get them if physicians would get past outdated medical biases and put them on transplant waiting lists, according to a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers.
The Hopkins investigators estimate that between 1999 and 2006, roughly 9,000 adults over 65 would have been ‘excellent’ transplant candidates and approximately 40,000 more older adults would have been ‘good’ candidates for new kidneys. None, however, were given the chance.
‘Doctors routinely believe and tell older people they are not good candidates for kidney transplant, but many of them are if they are carefully selected and if factors that really predict outcomes are fully accounted for,’ says transplant surgeon Dorry L. Segev, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and leader of the study. ‘Many older adults can enjoy excellent transplant outcomes in this day and age,’ he says, and should ‘be given consideration for this lifesaving treatment.’
Those ages 65 and older make up over one-half of people with end-stage renal disease in the United States, and appropriately selected patients in this age group will live longer if they get new kidneys as opposed to remaining on dialysis, Segev says. The trouble is, he adds, that very few older adults are even put on transplant waiting lists. In 2007, only 10.4 percent of dialysis patients between the ages of 65 and 74 were on waiting lists, compared to 33.5 percent of 18- to 44-year-old dialysis patients and 21.9 percent of 45- to 64-year-old dialysis patients.
Segev cautions that some older kidney disease patients are indeed poor transplant prospects, because they have other age-related health problems. But he says his team’s new findings, in addition to other recent research, show that new organs can greatly improve survival even in this age group.
Segev and his team constructed a statistical model for predicting how well older adults would be expected to do after kidney transplantation by taking into account age, smoking, diabetes and 16 other health-related variables. Using those data to define an ‘excellent’ candidate, the information was then applied to every person 65 and older on dialysis during the seven-year study period. The researchers also determined whether these candidates were already on the waiting list.
‘We have this regressive attitude toward transplantation in older adults,’ Segev says, ‘one based on historical poor outcomes in older patients, which no longer hold up. Anyone who can benefit from kidney transplantation should at least be given a chance. They should at least be put on the list.’ Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions

According to a new report* by business intelligence expert GBI Research patient care is improving at home and in remote areas, as rising rates of chronic disease, a growing elderly population, and advancements in wireless and sensor technologies continue to drive the global patient monitoring market.

The new report shows that efficient patient management through the use of wireless technology will help to reduce the rising healthcare burden which now affects many developed and developing countries, as large elderly populations who have increased life expectancy further add to the global patient pool.

Wireless technology has a wide range of applications in remote patient monitoring. Remote monitoring enables a patient to undergo hospital visits of reduced length, and have constant monitoring at home. This not only improves the quality of life for elderly and chronically ill patients, but also leads to a significant reduction in healthcare expenditure.

Wireless remote patient monitoring can also provide continuous and real time data to physicians from remote locations such as the home, hospice, ambulance, or other outpatient settings, thereby offering the advantage of convenience to both physicians and patients, while hospitalization costs are massively reduced.

Over the past few years, the number of cases of chronic diseases such as Cardiovascular Disease (CVDs), diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases has increased, due to the growing population in developing nations. According to the World Diabetes Foundation (WDF), 80% of the diabetic population is expected to come from low and middle income countries by 2025.

Emerging economies such as India and China, with huge patient bases and an under-served market, are expected to act as potentially lucrative markets for remote patient monitoring devices. The global patient monitoring devices market is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 4% to reach $8 billion in 2017 from $6.1 billion in 2010.

  
*Patient Monitoring Devices Market to 2017 – Increasing Use of Wireless Remote Patient Monitoring to be the Key Technology Trend

For patients undergoing surgery for spinal stenosis, the risk of complications is higher when the surgeon performs very few such procedures

The humble aspirin may soon have a new role. Scientists from The City College of New York have developed a new aspirin compound that has great promise to be not only an extremely potent cancer-fighter, but even safer than the classic medicine cabinet staple.

The new designer aspirin curbed the growth of 11 different types of human cancer cells in culture without harming normal cells, reported a team from the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education of The City College of New York in a paper published this month in the journal ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters. The cancers controlled included colon, pancreatic, lung, prostate, breast, and leukaemia. ‘The key components of this new compound are that it is very, very potent and yet it has minimal toxicity to the cells,’ said Associate Professor Khosrow Kashfi, the principal investigator.

The aspirin compound also shrank human colon cancer tumours by 85 percent in live animals, again without adverse effects, according to a second paper in press by the City College researchers and colleague Kenneth Olson of Indiana University School of Medicine, South Bend. ‘If what we have seen in animals can be translated to humans,’ said Professor Kashfi, ‘it could be used in conjunction with other drugs to shrink tumours before chemotherapy or surgery.’

Long the go-to drug for minor aches and pains, aspirin and other so-called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen and naproxen, are known primarily for their ability to calm inflammation. Studies in the 1980