Showing posts with label doctors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label doctors. Show all posts

Monday 20 January 2020

Using Non-Recommended Drugs For The Treatment Of Diabetes

Using Non-Recommended Drugs For The Treatment Of Diabetes.
Using the doubtful diabetes stupefy Avandia as an example, new research finds that doctors' prescribing patterns reshape across the country in response to warnings about medications from the US Food and Drug Administration. The denouement is that patients may be exposed to different levels of risk depending on where they live, the researchers said. "We were looking at the results black-box warnings for drugs have at a national level, and, more specifically, at a geographical level, and how these warnings are incorporated into practice," said office guide researcher Nilay D Shah, an assistant professor of health services research at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

In 2007, the FDA required that Avandia come with a "black-box warning" - the strongest foretoken admissible - alerting consumers that the drug was associated with an increased imperil of heart attack. Before the warning, Avandia was widely prescribed throughout the United States, although regional differences existed. "There was about a two-fold inequality in use before the warning - around 15,5 percent use in Oklahoma versus about 8 percent in North Dakota".

Right after the warning, the use of Avandia dropped dramatically, from a nationwide leading of 1,3 million monthly prescriptions in January 2007 to cruelly 317000 monthly prescriptions in June 2009. "There was a monumental decrease in use across the country. But there was absolutely a bit of residual use".

After the FDA warning, the researchers still found as much as a three-fold difference in use across the nation. In Oklahoma, Avandia use dropped to about 5,6 percent, but in North Dakota it tumbled to 1,9 percent. The reasons for the differences aren't clear. Some factors might take in how doctors are made apprised of FDA warnings and how they react.

Another piece could be the policy of state health guaranty plans, including Medicaid, in terms of covering drugs. Also, prominent doctors in given areas can pressurize the choice of drugs other doctors make. And drug-company marketing may play a role. "At this unit we don't have good insight into these differences".

Wednesday 8 January 2020

Painkillers Are One Of The Causes Of Death

Painkillers Are One Of The Causes Of Death.
Abuse of tranquillizing painkillers and other recipe drugs is a growing problem in the United States, and a leading doctors' series is urging members to exercise tighter control on the medications. The American College of Physicians (ACP) says its recommended changes will compel it tougher for prescription drugs - painkillers such as Oxycontin and Vicodin, as well as drugs occupied for sleep problems and weight loss - to be ill-treated or diverted for sale on the street. Prescription drug abuse may now be a prime cause of accidental demise in the United States, according to a recent tally of preliminary data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

One 2010 survey, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, found that 16 million Americans superannuated 12 and older had in use a prescription painkiller, sedative, tranquilizer or urge for purposes other than their medical care at least once in the prior year. One of the ACP's 10 recommendations highlighted the penury to educate doctors, patients and the public about the dangers of prescription drug abuse. The guidelines also suggested that doctors take to be the full range of available treatments before prescribing painkillers. Among the other recommendations.

Evidence-based, nonbinding guidelines should be developed to worker guide doctors' care decisions. A national prescription-drug-monitoring program should be created, so doctors and pharmacists can check almost identical programs in their own and neighboring states before writing and filling prescriptions for substances with high misapplication potential. Two experts said the ACP recommendations are welcome, but more must be done.

Doctors Strongly Recommend That All Pregnant Women To Have A Blood Test For HIV

Doctors Strongly Recommend That All Pregnant Women To Have A Blood Test For HIV.
A babe born two-and-a-half years ago in Mississippi with HIV is the basic casing of a so-called "functional cure" of the infection, researchers announced Sunday. Standard tests can no longer spot any traces of the AIDS-causing virus even though the child has discontinued HIV medication. "We allow this is the first well-documented case of a functional cure," said look lead author Dr Deborah Persaud, associate professor of pediatrics in the class of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore. The finding was presented Sunday at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, in Atlanta.

The lass was not part of a study but, instead, the beneficiary of an unexpected and partly unplanned cycle of events that - once confirmed and replicated in a strict study - might help more children who are born with HIV or who at risk of contracting HIV from their parent eradicate the virus from their body. Normally, mothers infected with HIV take antiretroviral drugs that can almost murder the odds of the virus being transferred to the baby. If a mother doesn't be familiar with her HIV status or hasn't been treated for other reasons, the baby is given "prophylactic" drugs at birth while awaiting the results of tests to infer his or her HIV status.

This can take four to six weeks to complete. If the tests are positive, the child starts HIV drug treatment. The fuss over of the baby born in Mississippi didn't know she was HIV-positive until the time of delivery.

But in this case, both the primary and confirmatory tests on the baby were able to be completed within one day, allowing the baby to be started on HIV medicine treatment within the first 30 hours of life. "Most of our kids don't get picked up that early". As expected, the baby's "viral load" - detectable levels of HIV - decreased progressively until it was no longer detectable at 29 days of age.

Theoretically, this young gentleman (doctors aren't disclosing the gender) would have bewitched the medications for the lay of his or her life, said the researchers, who included doctors from the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Instead, the toddler stayed on the regimen for only 18 months before dropping out of the medical combination and discontinuing the drugs.

Ten months after stopping treatment, however, the youth was again seen by doctors who were surprised to find no HIV virus or HIV antibodies with customary tests. Ultrasensitive tests did detect infinitesimal traces of viral DNA and RNA in the blood. But the virus was not replicating - a influentially unusual occurrence given that drugs were no longer being administered, the researchers said.

Saturday 4 January 2020

Choice Of Place Of Death From Cancer

Choice Of Place Of Death From Cancer.
Doctors who would opt hospice anguish for themselves if they were dying from cancer are more likely to discuss such care with patients in that situation, a different study finds in Dec 2013. And while the majority of doctors in the study said they would essay hospice care if they were dying from cancer, less than one-third of those said they would discuss hospice care with terminally vile cancer patients at an early stage of care. Researchers surveyed nearly 4400 doctors who charge for cancer patients, including primary care physicians, surgeons, oncologists, dispersal oncologists and other specialists. They were asked if they would want hospice care if they were terminally ill with cancer.

They were also asked when they would examine hospice care with a patient with terminal cancer who had four to six months to persevere but had no symptoms: immediately; when symptoms first appear; when there are no more cancer treatment options; when the patient is admitted to hospital; or when the valetudinarian or family asks about hospice care. In terms of seeking hospice punctiliousness themselves, 65 percent of doctors were strongly in favor and 21 percent were less in favor.

Thursday 11 January 2018

Mortality From Lung Cancer Is Several Times Higher Than From Cancer Of Other Organs

Mortality From Lung Cancer Is Several Times Higher Than From Cancer Of Other Organs.
Lung cancer is the most noxious acquire of cancer in the United States, destruction about 157,300 people every year - more than colon, breast and prostate cancer combined, according to the US National Institutes of Health. It is also the nation's instant greatest cause of death, second only to heart disease. And yet lung cancer attracts fewer federal examination dollars per death than the other leading forms of cancer demise. Doctors have yet to happen a reliable method for screening for lung cancer.

And new treatments for lung cancer scone out at a snail's pace compared with therapies for other cancers. So why does the top cancer killer fascinate so little attention? Largely because people are perceived to have done this to themselves, garnering little public sympathy, said Kay Cofrancesco, chief of advocacy relations for the Lung Cancer Alliance, a patriotic nonprofit group dedicated to lung cancer support and advocacy. About 90 percent of men and 80 percent of women who hanker from lung cancer are current or former smokers, according to NIH.

And "In demonizing the tobacco companies, we've then demonized the smoker. So there is that blame-the-victim inclination when it comes to lung cancer patients". Yet some advances are being made. Clinical trials are being conducted on one capability screening contrivance for lung cancer.

Targeted therapies are being developed based on the genetics of lung cancer. But understandably more can be done, experts say. Survival rates for lung cancer are woeful compared with other cancers, largely because lung cancer is most often not detected until it has metastasized.

And "Some lung cancers have a propensity to spread widely throughout the body," said Dr Len Lichtenfeld, agent chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. "By the time they have symptoms, the cancer has spread". Because smoking is so closely linked to lung cancer, most specie aimed at impedance has gone into programs to promote smoking cessation.

These programs have not made a lot of headway. Between 1998 and 2008, the piece of US residents who currently smoked declined just 3,5 percent, from 24,1 to 20,6 percent, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even as some relations quit, maybe encouraged by strict smoke-free laws and public anti-smoking campaigns, others accept up the habit. Quitting smoking does provide numerous health benefits - improved lung affair and decreased blood pressure among them - but former smokers will always have an elevated endanger for developing lung cancer.

Sunday 8 January 2017

Teens Need Regularly Make Medical Examination

Teens Need Regularly Make Medical Examination.
Doctors often shirk to have a examination with their teen patients about sexuality issues during their annual physical, a new study reveals. This results in missed opportunities to apprise and counsel young people about ways to help impede sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted teen pregnancies, the researchers suggested. The study, published Dec 30, 2013 in JAMA Pediatrics, confused 253 teens and 49 doctors from 11 clinics from the Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina area.

One-third of these teens did not query questions about congress or discuss their sexual activity, sexuality, dating or sexual identity during their yearly check-ups, the work found. The researchers, led by Stewart Alexander of the Duke University Medical Center, recorded conversations between the teens and their doctor, and analyzed how much span was spent talking about sex. They also considered the involvement of teens in these discussions.

Monday 25 April 2016

How Many Doctors Will Tell About The Incompetence Of Colleagues

How Many Doctors Will Tell About The Incompetence Of Colleagues.
A humongous look at of American doctors has found that more than one-third would hesitate to turn in a mate they thought was incompetent or compromised by substance abuse or mental health problems. However, most physicians agreed in maxim that those in charge should be told about "bad" physicians. As it stands, said Catherine M DesRoches, aid professor at the Mongan Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, "self-regulation is our best alternative, but these findings suggest that we unqualifiedly emergency to strengthen that. We don't have a good alternative system".

DesRoches is lead author of the study, which appears in the July 14 copy of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The American Medical Association (AMA) and other skilled medical organizations hold that "physicians have an ethical obligation to report" impaired colleagues. Several states also have requisite reporting laws, according to background information in the article.

To assess how the widely known system of self-regulation is doing, these researchers surveyed almost 1900 anesthesiologists, cardiologists, pediatricians, psychiatrists and blood medicine, general surgery and internal medicine doctors. Physicians were asked if, within the history three years, they had had "direct, personal knowledge of a physician who was impaired or inept to practice medicine" and if they had reported that colleague.

Of 17 percent of doctors who had direct cognition of an incompetent colleague, only two-thirds actually reported the problem, the survey found. This regardless of the fact that 64 percent of all respondents agreed that physicians should report impaired colleagues. Almost 70 percent of physicians felt they were "prepared" to record such a problem, the study authors noted.

Sunday 7 December 2014

Americans With Excess Weight Trust Doctors Too With Excess Weight More

Americans With Excess Weight Trust Doctors Too With Excess Weight More.
Overweight and chubby patients espouse getting advice on weight loss from doctors who are also overweight or obese, a novel study shows June 2013. "In general, heavier patients assign their doctors, but they more strongly trust dietary advice from overweight doctors," said cramming leader Sara Bleich, an associate professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in Baltimore. The check out is published online in the June circulation of the journal Preventive Medicine.

Bleich and her team surveyed 600 overweight and abdominous patients in April 2012. Patients reported their height and weight, and described their primary mind doctor as normal weight, overweight or obese. About 69 percent of adult Americans are overweight or obese, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The patients - about half of whom were between 40 and 64 years preceding - rated the bulldoze of overall trust they had in their doctors on a mount of 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest. They also rated their trust in their doctors' diet advice on the same scale, and reported whether they felt judged by their practise medicine about their weight. Patients all reported a relatively high care level, regardless of their doctors' weight.

Normal-weight doctors averaged a score of 8,6, overweight 8,3 and pudgy 8,2. When it came to trusting diet advice, however, the doctors' weight repute mattered. Although 77 percent of those seeing a normal-weight doctor trusted the diet advice, 87 percent of those whereas an overweight doctor trusted the advice, as did 82 percent of those conjunctio in view of an obese doctor.

Patients, however, were more than twice as likely to feel judged about their weight issues when their drug was obese compared to normal weight: 32 percent of those who saw an obese doctor said they felt judged, while just 17 percent of those who gnome an overweight doctor and 14 percent of those since a normal-weight doctor felt judged. Bleich's findings follow a report published last month in which researchers found that portly patients often "doctor shop" because, they said, they were made to feel uncomfortable about their heaviness during office visits.

Tuesday 4 March 2014

Family Doctors Will Keep Electronic Medical Records

Family Doctors Will Keep Electronic Medical Records.
More than two-thirds of dynasty doctors now use electronic vigorousness records, and the percentage doing so doubled between 2005 and 2011, a untrodden study finds. If the trend continues, 80 percent of family doctors - the largest categorize of primary care physicians - will be using electronic records by 2013, the researchers predicted. The findings provision "some encouragement that we have passed a critical threshold," said workroom author Dr Andrew Bazemore, director of the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Primary Care, in Washington, DC "The significant preponderance of primary care practitioners appear to be using digital medical records in some contrive or fashion".

The promises of electronic record-keeping include improved medical tribulation and long-term savings. However, many doctors were slow to adopt these records because of the turned on cost and the complexity of converting paper files. There were also privacy concerns. "We are not there yet," Bazemore added. "More exert oneself is needed, including better information from all of the states".

The Obama delivery has offered incentives to doctors who adopt electronic health records, and penalties to those who do not. For the study, researchers mined two resident data sets to see how many family doctors were using electronic robustness records, how this number changed over time, and how it compared to use by specialists. Their findings appear in the January-February emergence of the Annals of Family Medicine.

Nationally, 68 percent of family doctors were using electronic fitness records in 2011, they found. Rates varied by state, with a low of about 47 percent in North Dakota and a excessive of nearly 95 percent in Utah. Dr Michael Oppenheim, sinfulness president and chief medical information officer for North Shore Long Island Jewish Health System in Great Neck, NY, said electronic record-keeping streamlines medical care.