Culture

MAYWOOD, Ill. - Eighty percent of kidney dialysis patients surveyed were not adequately prepared in the event of an emergency or natural disaster that shut down their dialysis center.

But after receiving individualized education from a multidisciplinary team of doctors, nurses, dieticians and social workers, 78 percent of these patients had become adequately prepared, according to a Loyola University Medical Center study.

Anuradha Wadhwa, MD, and colleagues, reported findings during the ASN Kidney Week 2014 meeting.

Minimum legal drinking age legislation in Canada can have a major impact on young drivers, according to a new study from the Northern Medical Program at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC). Drivers just older than the legal age had a significant increase in motor vehicle crashes compared to those immediately under the restriction.

In the past years, there have often been cases of fraud in the banking industry, which have led to a considerable loss of image for banks. Are bank employees by nature less honest people? Or does the business culture in the banking sector favor dishonest behavior? These questions formed the basis for a new study by Alain Cohn, Ernst Fehr, and Michel Maréchal from the Department of Economics at the University of Zurich. Their results show that bank employees are in principle not more dishonest than their colleagues in other industries.

Washington, DC--The Endocrine Society today issued a Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG) for the diagnosis and treatment of Paget's disease of the bone, a condition where one or more bones in the body become oversized and weak.

The CPG, entitled "Paget's Disease of Bone: An Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline," will appear in the December 2014 issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (JCEM), a publication of the Endocrine Society.

South Asian boys are three times as likely to be overweight compared to their peers, according to a new Women's College Hospital study.

The report, which was recently published in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, was one of the first to look at ethnic group differences in overweight children living in Canada.

"Our findings are alarming. From a young age, South Asian boys appear to be on a path towards developing serious health conditions," said Ananya Banerjee, PhD, lead researcher of the study.

Recently published research by U.S. Forest Service economist Jeff Prestemon supports the contention that the 2008 Lacey Act Amendment reduced the supply of illegally harvested wood from South America and Asia available for export to the United States.

Using monthly import data from 1989 to 2013, Prestemon, Project Leader of the Forest Service Southern Research Station Forest Economics and Policy unit, applied alternative statistical approaches to evaluate the effects of the 2008 amendment. The Journal of Forest Policy and Economics recently published the results online.

Residential treatment may be an appropriate first-line option for young adults who are dependent on opioid drugs - including prescription painkillers and heroin - that may result in higher levels of abstinence than does the outpatient treatment that is currently the standard of care. A study from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Addiction Services found that a month-long, 12-step-based residential program with strong linkage to community-based follow-up care, enabled almost 30 percent of opioid-dependent participants to remain abstinent a year later.

An experimental 3-dimensional printed model of the heart may help surgeons treat patients born with complicated heart disorders, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2014.

Most heart surgeons use 2D images taken by X-ray, ultrasound and MRI for surgical planning. However, these images may not reveal complex structural complications in the heart's chambers that occur when heart disease is present at birth (congenital heart defects), as opposed to developing later in life within a structurally normal heart.

Chicago, Ill. - November 19, 2014 - A powerful new app is directly connecting single ventricle heart defect patients to their doctors, dramatically improving their monitoring while they recover from heart surgery at home. Girish Shirali, MBBS, FACC, FASE, Co-Director of the Ward Family Heart Center at Children's Mercy Kansas City, will report today on how the technology is changing patient care at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2014.

A study at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) finds that a support group addressing the psychological and educational needs of people recently diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) has a strong positive impact on their lives.

Ninety percent of participants indicated that as a result of the free group, they could make informed choices about their RA. The study findings were presented in the "Innovations in Rheumatologic Care" session at the American College of Rheumatology annual meeting on November 19 in Boston.

Barcelona, Spain: A new drug that targets not only common cancer-causing genetic mutations in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), but also a form of the mutation that causes resistance to treatment, has shown promising results in patients in a phase I/II clinical trial. The research will be presented today (Friday) at the 26th EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Barcelona, Spain.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- A national effort to shave minutes off emergency heart attack treatment time has increased the chance that each patient will survive, a new study suggests. But yet the survival rate for all patients put together hasn't budged.

It seems like a paradox. But wait, say the authors of the new report: the paradox vanishes with more detailed analysis of exactly who has been getting this treatment.

In a breakthrough that could substantially improve physicians' ability to rapidly evaluate patients with suspected Ebola, physicians and nurses specializing in infectious diseases at Emory University Hospital have outlined a successful protocol for obtaining chest radiographs using portable computed radiography. The protocol not only limits the exposure of personnel and equipment to body fluids, it also minimizes the risk of contaminants leaving the isolation unit by use of thorough decontamination procedures.

Home exercise can ease feelings of hopelessness in people with coronary heart disease, according to a small study presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2014.

Feeling hopeless can be dangerous because it can discourage people from taking healthful steps such as exercising or quitting smoking, said Susan L. Dunn, Ph.D., R.N., lead author of the study and a professor of nursing at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.

People with hopelessness may also suffer from depression, which is marked by a loss of interest in activities they normally enjoy.

A new trans-satellite wireless 12-lead ECG can identify the most severe type of heart attack swiftly and save significant time from ambulance to angioplasty, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2014.

An ECG measures the electrical activity of the heart and helps medical personnel determine if a person had an ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Angioplasty, also known as percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), is a procedure in which an inflatable balloon opens a blocked artery to restore blood flow to the heart.