Normal everyday life for parents requires organisation. Parents of children who require ventilators, oxygen, IVs and other tools to live, those day-to-day tasks can be time-consuming, difficult and stressful on the family. But researchers from Case Western Reserve University found that mothers who successfully integrate the care of the technology-dependent child into family life have families that function better.
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A new study testing the benefits of a virtual exercise partner shows the presence of a moderately more capable cycling partner can significantly boost the motivation
Attitude may play an important role in how exercise affects menopausal women, according to Penn State researchers, who identified two types of women — one experiences more hot flashes after physical activity, while the other experiences fewer.
‘The most consistent factor that seemed to differentiate the two groups was perceived control over hot flashes,’ said Steriani Elavsky, assistant professor of kinesiology. ‘These women have ways of dealing with (hot flashes) and they believe they can control or cope with them in an effective way on a daily basis.’
Women who experienced fewer hot flashes the day after participating in vigorous to moderate physical activity were more likely to be part of the group that felt they had control over their hot flashes. Women who had more hot flashes following exercise were likely to be those who felt they had very few ways of coping with their hot flashes, Elavsky and her colleagues report in a recent issue of Maturitas.
Elavsky suggested that cognitive behavioural therapy may help some women feel they have more control over their bodies and reactions to hot flashes.
The participants with fewer hot flashes the day after vigorous exercising were also less likely to experience anxiety and depression. However, women who had fewer hot flashes the day after only light or moderate physical activity had higher levels of pessimism and depression than others.
‘The bottom line for research is that people need to look at individual differences,’ said Elavsky. ‘It’s not enough anymore to do a study and look at overall impact of an exercise program on symptoms. It’s very clear that we need to look at the different responses that women might have, and try to understand these individual differences more.’
Elavsky and her colleagues followed 24 menopausal women for the length of one menstrual cycle, or for 30 days if they were no longer menstruating. Each woman used a personal digital assistant to record hot flashes and wore an accelerometer at the hip to track physical activity. The women in the study regularly had hot flashes before the start of the study, experiencing from five to 20 a day.
‘The real-time reporting of symptoms and the objective measurement is a strength of the study,’ said Elavsky. ‘There aren’t any studies out there that use both of these approaches.
A recent report in The Lancet has concluded that blood pressure should be measured in both arms as the difference between left and right could indicate underlying health problems such as vascular disease.
Dr Christopher Clark and colleagues, from the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Exeter, reviewed 28 previous study papers on this subject.
According to the study, the difference between arms is important, although the arm with the higher pressure can vary between individuals. Most people in the study had an elevated blood pressure risk and about one-third had a normal level of risk.
The study concluded that a difference in systolic blood pressure of 10 millimetres of mercury (mm Hg) between arms could identify patients at high risk of asymptomatic peripheral vascular disease. A difference of 15 mm Hg would also indicate an increased risk of cerebrovascular disease, a 70% increased risk of cardiovascular mortality and 60% increased risk of death from all causes, the authors said.
Peripheral vascular disease (PVD) is the narrowing and hardening of the arteries that supply blood to the legs and feet. There are often no symptoms. Early detection of PVD is important because these patients could then benefit from stopping smoking, lowering their blood pressure or being offered statin therapy.
Writing in The Lancet, Prof Richard J McManus, department of primary care health sciences at the University of Oxford and Prof Jonathan Mant, from the department of public health and primary care at the University of Cambridge, said the review supports existing guidelines.
Prof Bryan Williams, from the Blood Pressure Association and the University of Leicester, said the study reinforced the message already in the guidelines from health watchdog NICE.
www.lancet.comFertility treatment has a strong emotional impact on women who want to have children. A study of European countries with the highest number of assisted reproduction cycles identifies which aspects of reproduction treatment contribute to psychological stress.
Inability to conceive is extremely stressful for women who want to have a family. This notion is shown by a study published in the ‘Human Reproduction’ journal on patients in four countries with the highest number of cases of assisted reproduction cycles in Europe: France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
‘Infertility causes a series of varied emotions that have a negative impact on important aspects of a woman’s life,’ as explained to SINC by Juan Garc
When a stroke patient is discharged from the hospital, they often must cope with a new disability or lack of function, so changes in their medications or a new dosing prescription can be particularly confusing. This can lead the patient to overmedicate, take the wrong medication or skip medications entirely and can result in being readmitted to the hospital.
But a pilot study that is looking at a new discharge strategy and being led by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, indicates that phone calls and conversations with a ‘stroke coach’ seem to keep a patient on the road to recovery.
Cheryl D. Bushnell, M.D., associate professor of neurology and director of Wake Forest Baptist
With the University of Pittsburgh’s development of a cell-free, biodegradable artery graft comes a potentially transformative change in coronary artery bypass surgeries: Within 90 days after surgery, the patient will have a regenerated artery with no trace of synthetic graft materials left in the body.
Research published highlights work led by principal investigator Yadong Wang, a professor in Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering and School of Medicine’s Department of Surgery, who designed grafts that fully harness the body’s regenerative capacity. This new approach is a philosophical shift from the predominant cell-centred approaches in tissue engineering of blood vessels.
‘The host site, the artery in this case, is an excellent source of cells and provides a very efficient growth environment,’ said Wang. ‘This is what inspired us to skip the cell culture altogether and create these cell-free synthetic grafts.’
Wang and fellow researchers, Wei Wu, a former Pitt postdoctoral associate (now a postdoctoral associate at Yale University), and Robert Allen, a PhD student in bioengineering, designed the graft with three properties in mind. First, they chose a graft material
The precision and three-dimensional view provided by robots can enable essentially scar-free surgery for some women needing hysterectomies, physicians report.
The case is of a 46-year-old physically fit female with a history of excessive bleeding and benign growths on her uterus. Her surgery was performed through a two inch-long incision in the belly button, the thinnest part of the abdomen, using the robotic arms in a ‘chopstick’ fashion, said Dr. John R. Lue, Chief of the Medical College of Georgia Section of General Obstetrics and Gynecology at Georgia Health Sciences University.
‘This paper helps show it can be done,’ said Lue, corresponding author. ‘Now we need to do large studies to find which women would most benefit and whether it can be done for more significant pathology such as large fibroids and cancer.’ Cost effectiveness also needs to be assessed, he noted.
A multi-inch incision across the pubic hair line is the approach for the majority of hysterectomies in the United States. Another option
University of Iowa researchers have determined that thigh size in obese people is a reason their hip implants are more likely to fail.
In a study, the team simulated hip dislocations as they occur in humans and determined that increased thigh girth creates hip instability in morbidly obese patients (those with a body mass index (BMI) greater than 40). The researchers propose that surgeons modify surgical procedures to minimise the chance of dislocation in obese patients and consider other designs for hip replacement implants.
‘We have shown that morbidly obese patients
Researchers at the Center for Laser Applications at the University of Tennessee Space Institute in Tullahoma have developed a technology that goes on a ‘seek and destroy’ mission for cancerous tumours. They have harnessed the power of lasers to find, map, and non-invasively destruct cancerous tumours.
Christian Parigger, associate professor of physics, and Jacqueline Johnson, associate professor of mechanical, aerospace, and biomedical engineering, along with Robert Splinter of Splinter Consultants, have developed the invention. The technology uses a femtosecond laser, which means it pulses at speeds of one-quadrillionth of a second. The high speed enables the laser to focus in on a specific region to find and acutely map a tumour.
‘Using ultra-short light pulses gives us the ability to focus in a well confined region and the ability for intense radiation,’ said Parigger. ‘This allows us to come in and leave a specific area quickly so we can diagnose and attack tumorous cells fast.’
Once the cancerous area is precisely targeted, only the intensity of the laser radiation needs to be turned up in order to irradiate, or burn off, the tumour. This method has the potential to be more exact than current methods and to be done as an outpatient procedure replacing intensive surgery.
‘Because the femtosecond laser radiation can be precisely focused both spatially and temporally, one can avoid heating up too many other things that you do not want heated,’ said Parigger. ‘Using longer laser-light pulses is similar to leaving a light bulb on, which gets warm and can damage healthy tissue.’
The technology can be especially helpful to brain cancer victims. The imaging mechanism can non-invasively permeate thin layers of bone, such as the skull, and can help define a targeted treatment strategy for persistent cancer. The method also overcomes limitations posed by current treatments in which radiation may damage portions of healthy brain tissue. It also may overcome limitations of photodynamic therapy that has restricted acceptance and surgery that may not be an option if not all carcinogenic tissue can be removed.
‘If you have a cancerous area such as in the brain, the notion is if you see something and take care of it, it won
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