This so-called research gets the fickle finger of fate award Published in Archives of Internal Medicine;this needed research to validate it? And there are those who say we need to spend more on research!
October 2009 Archives
Drawing on years of experience in cancer research and patient care, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center released today the most comprehensive, risk-based screening guidelines publicly available to date for breast, cervical and colorectal cancers (also see the MDAC Screening Guides). The new recommendations represent the first wave of an effort by M. D. Anderson to improve the effectiveness of efforts to prevent and detect cancer at its earliest, most treatable stage by reconstructing and expanding its screening, risk reduction and diagnostic guidelines across eight disease sites. According to the American Cancer Society
- New cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed in 192,370 women and 40,170 will die from breast cancer
- 11,270 new cases of cervical cancer will be diagnosed in women and 4,070 women will die from cervical cancer
- New cases of colorectal cancer will be diagnosed in 106,100 men and women and 49,920 men and women will die from colorectal cancer
Patients who die in the hospital in the United States are almost five times as likely to have spent part of their last hospital stay in the ICU than patients in England. What's more, over the age of 85, ICU usage among terminal patients is eight times higher in the US than in England, according to new research that compared the two countries' use of intensive care services during final hospitalizations.
A study released today in Pediatrics by The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia offers updated evidence that children ages 4 to 8 who are restrained in the rear seat of a car in a belt-positioning booster seat are 45 percent less likely to be injured in a crash compared with children using a seat belt alone. Furthermore, the study showed there was no difference in the level of protection offered by backless versus high back booster seats. Of those riding in booster seats, children involved in side-impact crashes saw the greatest reduction in injury risk. Comment: Both stories suggest that far more education on proper use of children’s car seats is needed, both for infants and children.
More than 8,700 infants end up in the emergency room each year because their car seats are used improperly outside the car, according to study presented Monday at the American Academy of Pediatrics' annual meeting in Washington. Babies are spending more time in car seats, which have saved nearly 9,000 lives in the past three decades, both in and out of the car, says author Shital Parikh, a pediatric orthopedist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.
A new report from the Guttmacher Institute identifies how improved access to family planning services has reduced the use of abortion services worldwide although problems if access to either opportunities varies widely among different countries, particularly in the developing countries..
In a report issued by the Institute of Medicine "It's clear that smoking bans work," said Lynn Goldman, professor of environmental health sciences, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, and chair of the committee of experts that wrote the report. "Bans reduce the risks of heart attack in nonsmokers as well as smokers. Further research could explain in greater detail how great the effect is for each of these groups and how secondhand smoke produces its toxic effects. However, there is no question that smoking bans have a positive health effect." The full report is available on line and clearly supports the new legislative ban in smoking in restaurants in Virginia. .
Researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have demonstrated that it is possible to successfully recruit and retain a large number of adolescent smokers from the general population into a smoking intervention study and, through personalized, proactive telephone counseling, significantly impact rates of six-month continuous quitting. The trial, funded by the National Institutes of Health, involved 2,151 teenage smokers from 50 high schools in Washington. Half of the schools were randomly assigned to the experimental intervention; teens in these schools were invited to take part in confidential, personalized telephone counseling designed to help motivate them to quit. COMMENT. Despite the praise for the study, the difference in quit rates for test and control groups was only 4%. This was despite a highly intensive effort. No Cost[benefit analysis was done but it is highly unlikely for the process to work in the general population because of cost.
The Los Angeles Times (10/14, Stein) "Booster Shots" blog reported that as bicycles ride a wave of popularity, "cyclists may be suffering more injuries," according to University of Colorado researchers. After looking at "accident rates and severity from 1996 to 2006," they noted that "among 329 bicycle accident cases admitted to the Rocky Mountain Regional Trauma Center at Denver Health Medical Center, the length of stay increased substantially over those years." What's more, "an increase was seen in chest injuries (up 15 percent), and abdominal injuries tripled over the last five years of the study. About one-third of 118 patients had head injuries." Comment: Cycling is certainly more dangerous in the US than Europe where most roads have dedicated bicycle lanes, There are very few such lanes on US roads, particularly in housing areas. This absence in planning oversight contributes to obesity by limiting opportunities for exercise, the same neighborhoods usually lack sidewalks for walking safely, as well.
In a new study, Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers found that if vaccine coverage and efficacy are high in girls, a universal recommendation to vaccinate young boys is unlikely to provide comparatively good value for resources, compared with vaccinating girls only. The study was reported in the BMJ October 9..
The Commonwealth Fund just released its State Scorecard on Health System Performance.
The scorecard points to substantial opportunities to improve. If all states could reach the level achieved by the top performing states:
•Twenty-nine million more people would have health insurance—cutting the number of uninsured by more than half;
•Nearly 78,000 fewer adults and children would die prematurely every year from conditions that could have been prevented with timely and effective health care;
•Nine million more adults age 50 and older would receive recommended preventive care, and almost 800,000 more children would receive key vaccinations;
•Five billion dollars could be saved annually by avoiding preventable hospital admissions and readmissions for vulnerable elderly and disabled residents.
In an op-ed in The Hill (10/8), former FDA commissioner Andrew C. von Eschenbach, now a senior adviser at the Center for Health Transformation, and Wayne W. Oliver, a CHT vice president, write that despite A plan to spend $5 billion of stimulus funds on government grants to increase medical research, "not one dollar of stimulus money will be used to enhance the capacity and capability of the FDA." Despite "decades of neglect" the agency continues to have “a diminished capacity to embrace new scientific technologies and meet the demands needed to protect the public health." Von Eschenbach and Oliver call for new resources and "the design and implementation of a 21st century regulatory framework" that will help the FDA "drive innovation, dramatically shorten the time between discovery and delivery, and allow Americans everywhere to have access to safe, effective and miraculous discoveries" Comment: In previous Blogs I have said the FDA was severely restricted by funds yet Congress keeps adding duties, including the most recent tobacco responsibilities.
