Showing posts with label medical. Show all posts
Showing posts with label medical. Show all posts

Tuesday 25 February 2020

Cancer Is One Of The Most Expensive Disease, And It Is Becoming More And More Expensive

Cancer Is One Of The Most Expensive Disease, And It Is Becoming More And More Expensive.
Millions of Americans with a recapitulation of cancer, uniquely common man under age 65, are delaying or skimping on medical care because of worries about the fetch of treatment, a new study suggests. The finding raises troubling questions about the long-term survival and mark of life of the 12 million adults in the United States whose lives have been forever changed by a diagnosis of cancer. "I mark it's concerning because we recognize that cancer survivors have many medical needs that linger for years after their diagnosis and treatment," said study lead inventor Kathryn E Weaver, an assistant professor in the Department of Social Sciences & Health Policy at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, NC.

The explosion was published online June 14 in Cancer, a memoir of the American Cancer Society. Cost concerns have posed a risk to cancer survivorship for some time, particularly with the advent of new, life-prolonging treatments. Dr Patricia Ganz, a professor in the Department of Health Services at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Public Health, served on the Institute of Medicine commission that wrote the 2005 report, From Cancer Patient to Cancer Survivor: Lost in Transition. "One of the things that we in effect emphasized was shortage of insurance, strikingly for follow-up care".

CancerCare, a New York City-based nonprofit champion group for cancer patients, provides co-payment assistance for assured cancer medications. "Cancer is a vey expensive disease and it's becoming more and more expensive," said Jeanie M Barnett, CancerCare's maestro of communications. "The costs of the drugs are wealthy up. So, too, is the proportion that the patient pays out of pocket".

A March 17 commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association, titled "Cancer's Next Frontier - Addressing High and Increasing Costs," reported that the unreflected costs of cancer had swelled from $27 billion in 1990 to more than $90 billion in 2008.

Tuesday 21 January 2020

FDA Will Strengthen The Supervision Of Used Home Medical Equipment

FDA Will Strengthen The Supervision Of Used Home Medical Equipment.
As the citizenry ages and medical technology improves, more subjects are using complex medical devices such as dialysis machines and ventilators at home, adding to the requisite for better-educated patients. To join this growing need, the US Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday that it has started a unfamiliar program to ensure that patients and their caregivers use these devices safely and effectively.

So "Medical gubbins home use is becoming an increasingly important public health issue," Dr Jeffrey Shuren, chief of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health said during an afternoon news conference. The US populace is aging, and more people are living longer with chronic diseases that demand home care. "In addition, more patients of all ages are being discharged from the hospital to continue their supervision at home".

Meanwhile, medical devices have become more portable and sophisticated, making it possible to treat and monitor long-lived conditions outside the hospital. "A significant number of devices including infusion pumps, ventilators and mortification care therapies are now being used for home care".

Given the growing number of home medical devices, the intervention plans on developing procedures for makers of home-care equipment. Procedures will incorporate post-marketing follow-up, and other things that will encourage the safe use of these devices. The FDA is also developing eye-opening materials on the safe use of these devices, the agency said.

Saturday 21 December 2019

Shortage Of Physicians First Link Increases In The United States

Shortage Of Physicians First Link Increases In The United States.
Amid signs of a growing paucity of pure care physicians in the United States, a green study shows that the majority of newly minted doctors continues to gravitate toward training positions in high-income specialties in urban hospitals. This is occurring without considering a government opening move designed to lure more graduating medical students to the field of primary care over the past eight years, the scrutiny shows. Primary care includes family medicine, general internal medicine, normal pediatrics, preventive medicine, geriatric medicine and osteopathic general practice.

Dr Candice Chen, manage study author and an assistant research professor in the department of healthfulness policy at George Washington University in Washington, DC, said the nation's efforts to encourage the supply of primary care physicians and encourage doctors to practice in rural areas have failed. "The organized whole still incentivizes keeping medical residents in inpatient settings and is designed to labourer hospitals recruit top specialists".

In 2005, the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act was implemented with the aspiration of redistributing about 3000 residency positions in the nation's hospitals to underlying care positions and rural areas. The study, which was published in the January issue of periodical Health Affairs, found, however, that in the wake of that effort, care positions increased only marginally and the relative growth of specialist training doubled.

The goal of enticing more new physicians to agrarian areas also fell short. Of more than 300 hospitals that received additional residency positions, only 12 appointments were in exurban areas. The researchers used Medicare/Medicaid data supplied by hospitals from 1998 to 2008. They also reviewed details from teaching hospitals, including the add of residents and primary care, obstetrics and gynecology physicians, as well as the number of all other physicians trained.

The US domination provides hospitals almost $13 billion annually to help support medical residencies - training that follows graduation from medical principles - according to study background information. Other funding sources embody Medicaid, which contributes almost $4 billion a year, and the US Department of Veterans Affairs, which contributes $800 million annually, as of 2008. Together, the expenditure of funding scale medical education represents the largest public investment in health protection workforce development, the researchers said.

Wednesday 4 December 2019

The American Oncologists Work More Than 50 Hours Per Week

The American Oncologists Work More Than 50 Hours Per Week.
Most cancer doctors are satisfied with their career, but nearly half pronounce they have expert at least one indication of work-related burnout, a new study finds in June 2013. Researchers surveyed 3000 US oncologists between October 2012 and January 2013, and found that they worked an undistinguished of 51 hours a week. Oncologists in erudite medical centers saw an average of 37 cancer patients per week, while those in withdrawn practice saw an average of 74 patients per week. Those in scholarly settings spent much of their time doing research and teaching.

While 83 percent of the oncologists in the on said they were satisfied with their career, 45 percent reported experiencing at least one grapheme of burnout, including emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. The study was presented Sunday at the annual intersection of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.

Thursday 28 November 2019

In Some Regions Of The US Patients Spend On Medicine Is Much More

In Some Regions Of The US Patients Spend On Medicine Is Much More.
Medicare patients in some regions of the United States allot significantly more on drugs than older folks abroad in the country, a reborn report finds. But higher downer spending doesn't mean they spend less on doctor visits or hospitalizations, the researchers say. "Our findings support the importance of understanding the drivers of geographic variation, since increases in medical spending or pharmaceutical spending do not appear to be associated with offsetting savings in the other realms," said potential researcher Yuting Zhang, an aide-de-camp professor of health economics at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.

So "Spending on pharmaceuticals itself is unsteady and thus warrants scrutiny similar to that given to medical spending in rule to glean lessons about optimal prescribing, insurance characteristics, and resource allocation". The boom is published online June 9 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

For the study, Zhang's yoke looked at spending on drugs and other medical services among Medicare patients in 2007 at 306 hospital-referral regions across the country. "Widespread geographic variations exist, with some regions spending almost twice as much as others".

As party of their calculations, the researchers considered factors such as differences in costs, cover and overall robustness in the different geographic areas. Overall, drugs accounted for more than 20 percent of unconditional medical costs, but the researchers found substantial regional variations in drug spending.

Manhattan, in New York City, had the highest Medicare spending on drugs at $2973 per sufferer a year, while Hudson, Fla, had the lowest at $1854, the investigators found. Los Angeles, Montana, Alaska and Hawaii were other areas of heinous treatment spending by Medicare beneficiaries, while regions of down spending include parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon and Maine, according to the report.

Sunday 11 March 2018

Flying With Prosthetic Limbs And Meds Can Alert Airport Security

Flying With Prosthetic Limbs And Meds Can Alert Airport Security.
Adjusting to the necessary, but believably ever-changing surveillance rules when traveling can be tough for anyone, but for someone traveling with a bagful of needles and vials of insulin or someone who's had a knowing or knee replaced, the course can be fraught with extra worry. But Ann Davis, a spokeswoman for the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the energy responsible for ensuring the safety of the US skies, says that travelers with long-lasting conditions need not be concerned.

Davis said that TSA officers are well-trained and friendly with the odd baggage or screening requirements that may come with certain medical conditions. What's most powerful is that you let the screeners know what medical condition you have. "We have screening procedures to make trustworthy that everything and everyone is screened properly".

For example people with pacemakers or implanted cardiac defibrillators shouldn't go through the metal detectors, but if they intimate the TSA officers, there are other ways for them to be screened. Davis said that the TSA doesn't desire a doctor's note verifying a medical condition, but that it doesn't hurt to have one.

However it is recommended that man with pacemakers carry a pacemaker ID card that they can get from their doctors. She also advised keeping drugs, specially liquid medications, in the original packaging with the label that shows your name, if it's a preparation medication. But that's not a requirement, either.

The TSA recently launched what it's line "self-select" lanes, including one for families with small children and people with medical issues. Davis said that this is the lane kinfolk should definitely be in if they need to carry with them liquids, such as insulin, that are relieved from the regulations restricting the amount that can be taken onboard.

Tuesday 6 February 2018

Autism Is Not Associated With Childhood Infections

Autism Is Not Associated With Childhood Infections.
Infections during dawn or puberty do not seem to raise the risk of autism, new research finds. Researchers analyzed blood records for the 1,4 million children born in Denmark between 1980 and 2002, as well as two citizen registries that keep track of infectious diseases. They compared those records with records of children referred to psychiatric wards and later diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder.

Of those children, almost 7400 were diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. The cramming found that children who were admitted to the health centre for an contagious disease, either bacterial or viral, were more likely to receive a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. However, children admitted to the sickbay for non-infectious diseases were also more likely to be diagnosed with autism than kids who were never hospitalized, the look found.

And the researchers could point to no particular infection that upped the risk. They therefore conclude that minority infections cannot be considered a cause of autism. "We find the same relationship between hospitalization due to many different infections and autism," distinguished lead study author Dr Hjordis Osk Atladottir, of the departments of epidemiology and biostatistics at the Institute of Public Health, University of Aarhus in Denmark. "If there were a causal relationship, it should be closest for restricted infections and not provide such an overall pattern of association".

The study was published in the May emerge of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is characterized by problems with societal interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication, and restricted interests and behaviors. The currency of autism seems to be rising, with an estimated 1 in 110 children affected by the disorder, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Despite significant effort, the causes of autism wait unclear, although it's believed both genetic and environmental factors contribute, said Dr Andrew Zimmerman, manager of medical experimentation at the Center for Autism and Related Disorders at Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore. Previous dig into has suggested that children with autism are more likely to have immune system abnormalities, chief some to theorize that autism might be triggered by infections.

Thursday 16 November 2017

Awareness Against The Global Problem Of Antibiotic Resistance

Awareness Against The Global Problem Of Antibiotic Resistance.
Knowing when to play antibiotics - and when not to - can worker fight the rise of deadly "superbugs," about experts at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About half of antibiotics prescribed are expendable or inappropriate, the agency says, and overuse has helped create bacteria that don't respond, or rejoin less effectively, to the drugs used to fight them. "Antibiotics are a shared resource that has become a few and far between resource," said Dr Lauri Hicks, a medical epidemiologist at the CDC.

She's also medical manager a of new program, Get Smart: Know When Antibiotics Work, that had its launch this week. "Everyone has a situation to play in preventing the spread of antibiotic resistance". The stakes are high, said Dr Arjun Srinivasan, CDC's affiliated director for health care-associated infection barring programs. Almost every type of bacteria has become stronger and less responsive to antibiotic treatment.

The CDC is urging Americans to use the drugs decently to help prevent the global problem of antibiotic resistance. To that end, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), numerous resident medical and controlled associations, as well as state and local health departments have collaborated on the CDC's Get Smart initiative.

Most strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria are still found in form care settings, such as hospitals and nursing homes. Yet superbugs, including MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus) - which kills about 19000 Americans a year - are increasingly found in community settings, such as haleness clubs, schools, and workplaces, said Hicks.

Community-associated MRSA (CA-MRSA), a purify that affects nutritious people outside of hospitals, made headlines in 2008, when it killed a Florida costly school football player. Referring to new reports of sinusitis caused by MRSA, Hicks said that "people who would normally be treated with an pronounced antibiotic are requiring more toxic medications or, in some instances, admission to a hospital. We've seen this with pneumonia, too, and I problem we'll start to see it with other types of infections as well".

Monday 22 May 2017

Some Postmenopausal Women From Breast Cancer Can Protect Hormonal Therapy

Some Postmenopausal Women From Breast Cancer Can Protect Hormonal Therapy.
In a conclusion that seems to token the prevailing wisdom that any form of hormone replacement cure raises the risk of breast cancer, a new look at some old data suggests that estrogen-only hormone group therapy might protect a small subset of postmenopausal women against the disease. "Exogenous estrogen such as hormone treatment is actually protective" in women who have a low risk for developing heart tumors, said study author Dr Joseph Ragaz, a medical oncologist and clinical professor in the School of Population & Public Health at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. With his colleagues, Ragaz took another glance at text from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) study, a nationalistic trial that has focused on ways to prevent breast and colorectal cancer, as well as guts disease and fracture risk, in postmenopausal women.

The team planned to present its findings Thursday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in Texas. Research presented at medical meetings is not analyzed by appearance experts, unequal studies that appear in peer-reviewed medical journals, and all such findings should be considered preliminary. Launched in 1991, the WHI includes more than 161000 US women between the ages of 50 and 79.

Two groups were part of the trial run - women who had had hysterectomies and took estrogen unassisted as hormone replacement therapy and a group that took estrogen plus progestin hormone replacement therapy. The confederation therapy trial was halted in 2002 after it became clear those women were at increased peril for heart disease and breast cancer.

In the new look at the estrogen-only group "we looked at women who did not have high-risk features". They found that women with no ex history of benign heart of hearts disease had a 43 percent reduction breast cancer risk on estrogen; women with no kinsfolk history with a first-degree relative with breast cancer had a 32 percent risk reduction and women without foregoing hormone use had a 32 percent reduced risk.

Monday 22 August 2016

Reduction The Hormone Estrogen Leads To Mental Decline

Reduction The Hormone Estrogen Leads To Mental Decline.
The younger a chick is when she undergoes surgical menopause, the greater her chances of developing thought problems at an earlier age, additional research suggests. Surgical menopause describes the end of ovarian act as due to gynecological surgery before the age of natural menopause. It involves the removal of one or both ovaries (an oophorectomy), often in claque with a hysterectomy, the removal of a woman's uterus. "For women with surgically induced menopause, near the start age at menopause was associated with a faster decline in memory," said cram author Dr Riley Bove, an instructor in neurology at Harvard Medical School and an friend neurologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

However "These are very preliminary data". Bove said other inspection suggests a link between a decrease in the hormone estrogen during menopause and mental decline, and the sighting of this study was to better understand the relationship between reproductive-health factors and memory changes. The study results will be presented in March at the American Academy of Neurology' annual meeting, in San Diego.

For the study, the researchers analyzed medical records of more than 1800 women ancient 53 to 100 who were taking or on in one of two studies conducted by Rush University Medical Center in Chicago: the Religious Orders Study and the Memory and Aging Project. The researchers assessed reproductive variables, such as when women had their chief period, the gang of years menstrual cycles lasted, and use of hormone replacement therapies. Measurements from several types of assessment and reminiscence tests were analyzed, too.

The scientists also assessed the results of intellect biopsies after death, some of which showed the presence of Alzheimer's plaques. "We had approximately 580 brains convenient for analysis - this speaks to the very unique and rich nature of the data". Thirty-three percent of the lessons participants had undergone surgical menopause.

Reasons for these surgeries may include fibroids (noncancerous uterine tumors), endometriosis (growth of uterine series outside the womb), cancer of the uterus and ovaries, and unusual vaginal bleeding. When the ovaries are gone, ovarian production of estrogen stops, said Bove. However, this investigation did not include reasons why the women underwent surgical menopause.

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.

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.

Sunday 15 December 2013

Within 6 Months After The Death Of A Loved One Or Child Has An Increased Risk Of Heart Attack.
In the months following the extirpation of a spouse or a child, the surviving spouse or facetiousmater may sheathe a higher jeopardy of heart attack or sudden cardiac death due to an increased heart rate, budding research suggests. The risk tends to dissipate within six months, the study authors said. "While the core at the time of bereavement is naturally directed toward the deceased person, the fitness and welfare of bereaved survivors should also be of concern to medical professionals, as well as family and friends," study prima donna author Thomas Buckley, acting director of postgraduate studies at the University of Sydney Nursing School in Sydney, Australia, said in an American Heart Association announcement release.

And "Some bereaved," he added, "especially those already at increased cardiovascular risk, might better from medical review, and they should hope medical assistance for any possible cardiac symptoms". Buckley and his colleagues are scheduled to present their observations Sunday at the annual engagement of the American Heart Association, in Chicago. While prior delving has indicated that heart health may be compromised among the bereaved, it has remained unclear what exactly drives this increased chance and why the risk diminishes over time.

The new study suggests that there is a psychological dimension to the dynamic, one centered around a stand-by increase in the incidence of stress and depression. The study authors examined the exit by tracking 78 bereaved spouses and parents between the ages of 33 and 91 (55 women and 23 men) for six months, starting within the two-week age following the squandering of their child or spouse.

Thursday 4 July 2013

Reducing Mortality From Coronary Heart Disease

Reducing Mortality From Coronary Heart Disease.
Improved treatment, coupled with more useful curb measures, may be having a convincing impact on the death rate from coronary sensitivity disease. Death rate data from the United States and Canada both say a drop in cardiovascular deaths buying. According to the American Heart Association, the annual eradication rate from coronary centre disease from 1996 to 2006 declined 36,4 percent and the tangible death rate dropped 21,9 percent.

In Canada, according to a lessons in the May 12 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the annihilation rate from coronary heart disease in the responsibility of Ontario fell by 35 percent from 1994 to 2005. "The overall goodness news is that coronary heart mortality continued to go down in defiance of people growing older," said study novelist Dr Harindra C Wijeysundera, a cardiologist at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre Schulich Heart Centre in Toronto. "Risk determinant changes appear to against a very important role," he said, "accounting for just under half the increase despite increasing availability of better treatments". And, he added, "the strange therapies are being well-used".

But there is a cloud on the view that darkens the generally cheery report, Wijeysundera noted. "Diabetes and avoirdupois are on the increase," he said. "It doesn't entertain much of a negative trend in diabetes and obesity to drop the good trends". A 1 percent increase in diabetes correlates to a 6 percent raise in mortality, he said.