Medical Information

New Breast Cancer Drug Approval!

Sources: US Food & Drug Safety Administration; MedScape Pertuzumab ( Perjeta, Genentech/Roche), has been approved in the United States. Perjeta targets HER2-positive breast cancer.  About 1/4 of all cases of breast cancer are HER2-positive.  It is indicated for use in patients with metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer who have not received previous treatment with either chemotherapy or [...]

Surgical Malpractice "Never Events"? Never say Never.

Sources: Surgery, December, 18, 2012; MedScape Surgical Malpractice is more common than we think.  More than 4000 surgical "never events" occurred each year between 1990 and 2010 in the United States, according to the findings of a retrospective study of national malpractice data. Winta T. Mehtsun, MD, MPH, from the Johns Hopkins University School of [...]

Hospital Oops, They Did it Again…and Again.

Sources: Archives of Surgery 2010;145:978-984; MedScape Hospitals continue to experience wrong-site and wrong-patient surgeries, which are more common than the medical community might care to admit.  Investigators have found that clinicians in both surgical and nonsurgical disciplines share equal responsibility for the unacceptable errors. Dr. Stahel and colleagues in Colorado and at the Geisinger Medical Center in [...]

New Biomarker for Metastatic Prostate Cancer?

Sources:  Medical News Today; Thomas Jefferson University An inter-institutional team effort, initiated by Thomas Jefferson Unversity's Michael A. Augello of the Department of Cancer Biology at Thomas Jefferson University, has found a potential biomarker for determining who will get the metastatic (and lethal) form of prostate cancer, which is usually contained or containable if caught in [...]

Breast Cancer Mammography Recommendations Confuse

Sources: New England Journal of Medicine; American Cancer Society THE LATEST study on the the controversial guidelines for mammography in the U.S., issued in 2009, calling for screening every two years rather than annually for women over 50 years old, suggests that breast cancers may be missed.  The study assessed the impact of revised guidelines issued [...]

Hospital Malpractice 1 in 10 Patient’s Readmitted in 30 Days

Source: Journal of the American College of Surgeons, Volume 215, Issue 3 , Pages 322-330, September 2012 Hospital Malpractice Hospital Malpractice continues to be a problem.  An article published recently in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons sheds some rare light on hospital care and legislation aimed at reimbursing Medicare and Medicaid for [...]

Hospital Malpractice -Medicare Penalties

Sources:  Kaiser Health News; Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Is Hospital Malpractice a problem? The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services thinks so.  It wants hospitals to curb its patient re-admissions starting this fall, or pay the price, Kaiser Health News reported. CMS will hope to recoup about $280 million in payments from about 2,200 [...]

Vitamin D May Help with Alzheimer’s Disease

Sources: Journal of Alzheimer's Disease; Medscape Dementia is a loss of brain function that occurs with certain diseases. Alzheimer's disease (AD), is one form of dementia that gradually gets worse over time. It affects memory, thinking, and behavior.  One of it's hallmarks is the presence of amyloid plaques which show up on imaging of the [...]

Tort Reform -The Big Lie

Source: Public Citizen Report -Congress Watch Division (Public Citizen is a national non-profit consumer organization with more than 300,000 members and supporters). Medical malpractice payments were at their lowest level on record in 2011 In contrast to the hundreds of thousands of annual avoidable adverse events (and tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths) that [...]

Dialysis Centers and Products Under Investigation

Source: US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) The FDA has recently updated its March 29, 2012 Class I recall of the dialysis products, Naturalyte Liquid and Granuflo Acid Concentrate.  On March 29, 2012, the firm sent an Urgent Product Notification to their clinics and customers. This notification provided clinicians with prescribing information regarding the Naturalyte [...]