Sources: The British Journal of Psychiatry; BBC Health News Notwithstanding the belief that smoking can relieve stress, a study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry has found that smokers who successfully quit feel less anxious than their smoking peers. Researchers found a "significant" decrease in anxiety levels among the 68 smokers who had quit after [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Sources: Harvard School of Public Health; Annals of Internal Medicine online; BBC Health News; Case experience RESEARCHERS from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) have recently suggested that routine mammography screening, the current essential tool in detecting early breast cancers, may lead to a significant amount of overdiagnosis of disease that would otherwise have proved harmless. Analyzing [...]
Sources: Danish Medical Journal -Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica; MEDLINE; Years of Medical Malpractice Litigation Experience with Women's Health Issues URETERAL injury is one of the most serious complications of obstetric and gynecologic surgery. Injuries to the urinary tract, particularly the ureter, are the most common cause for legal action against obstetric and gynecologic surgeons. Iatrogenic [...]
Source: Danish Medical Journal -Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica DANISH researchers, in connection with the Department of Anesthesia of the University of Copenhagen and the Insurance Association of Denmark, have studied reports of 136 ureteral injuries which constitute surgical malpractice in gynecological and obstetrical surgeries which resulted in litigation and insurance claims. Their findings? Failure to dissect and identify the [...]