Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have developed a new laboratory test that can rapidly identify the bacterium responsible for staph infections. This new test takes advantage of unique isotopic labelling combined with specific bacteriophage amplification to rapidly identify Staphylococcus aureus.
Quickly and accurately detecting infections caused by S. aureus is critical because the pathogenic bacterium causes a broad spectrum of infections, ranging from acute to chronic disease, which need to be treated in a prompt manner with the correct antibiotic.
The test uses mass spectrometry to quantify the number of S. aureus organisms in a large number of samples in just a few hours, compared to a day or two for culturing techniques typically used to detect this bacterium.
‘Our method for detecting staph infections using mass spectrometry will be valuable in a variety of situations, but will be crucial when a large number of people need to be tested very quickly, which will ultimately improve treatment,’ said Facundo Fern

New research showing that almost half of 13,000 patients with head and neck cancers had other health-related problems at the same time is one of the presentations in a special session at the 31st conference of the European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology (ESTRO 31). The session will highlight the effect of the demographic time bomb caused by an increasingly ageing population. Dr Charlotte Rotb

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

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

A new electronic medical record tool that tallies patients’ previous radiation exposure from CT scans helps reduce potentially unnecessary use of the tests among emergency room patients with abdominal pain, according to a study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The new study shows that when the tool is in use, patients are 10 percent less likely to undergo a CT scan, without increasing the number of patients who are admitted to the hospital.
Abdominal pain is the most common reason why people seek care in emergency rooms in the United States, accounting for 10 million visits each year. But the symptoms may be caused by myriad problems, from those that can be fixed with a single dose of an over-the-counter drug to those that could prove life-threatening within hours: from a bout of GI distress to an ectopic pregnancy; from constipation to an appendix about to burst; from a hernia to signs of a chronic condition like Crohn’s disease.
This complex diagnostic face-off plays a huge role in why emergency physicians tend to lean heavily on tests like CT scans, even though they expose patients to radiation and there are few clear guidelines on which patients should get them. Since the mid-1990s, the use of CT scans to diagnose ER patients has surged, increasing ten-fold. Today, 14 percent of all emergency room patients get scanned