Culture

When crime rates drop, politicians like to give themselves pats on the back for being "tough on crime." But a new theory explaining why violence has declined across the country since the 1990s is gaining credence, and it has nothing to do with the criminal justice system. An article in Chemical & Engineering News details the mounting data that suggests taking lead out of gas and paint has played a critical role.

Philadelphia, Pa. (February 4, 2014) - Patients with massive burns causing complete loss of the facial skin pose a difficult challenge for reconstructive surgeons.

Risk scores for diseases such as CVD are usually presented as the percent chance of contracting the disease within the next ten years. The Heart Age Calculator, http://www.heartage.me, uses the same well established risk factor data, but expresses an individual's risk score as their estimated Heart Age to make it more personally relevant to the individual.

Dr Kinesh Patel and Dr Kate Tatham say most medications prescribed in primary care contain animal derived products and it is unclear whether they are suitable for vegetarians.

They call for improved labelling, similar to those on food, to help inform doctors, pharmacists and patients about the content of medicines. And they stress that concerned patients should not stop taking their medication without consulting their doctor first.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) generally is associated with increased risk for cardiovascular (CV) disease. OSA is usually measured using the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI), the number of times that breathing pauses or severely slows per hour of sleep. However, sleep studies using to diagnose OSA produce a number of other measures. Whether those measures are associated with CV disease, and whether they predict CV disease as well or better than AHI, is not known.

An educational toolkit designed to improve care of patients with diabetes was not effective, Baiju R Shah and colleagues (University of Toronto) found in a cluster randomized trial conducted in 2009-2011. During 10 months of follow-up, patients of Canadian family physicians who had been cluster-randomized to receive the toolkit did not receive improved care and their outcomes did not differ compared with patients of physicians who did not receive the toolkit.

Boston, MA -- Among a large group of Midwestern firefighters, greater adherence to Mediterranean-style diet was associated with lower risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to a new study led by researchers from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA). The study is the first to assess the effects of Mediterranean-style diet among a group of young, working U.S. adults.

The study will appear online in PLOS ONE on February 4, 2014.

Akron, Ohio, Feb. 4, 2014 — The Sochi Winter Olympics, Feb. 7-23, are expected to generate a dramatic rise in Web and mobile viewing, but that does not mean viewers will abandon the traditional television-viewing experience for digital media, says a communication professor from The University of Akron. In fact, the opposite is true — TV benefits from social media viewing.

Scarring of tissue in the upper chamber of the heart (atrium) was associated with recurrent rhythm disorder after treatment, according to a study in the February 5 issue of JAMA.

Left atrial fibrosis (formation of scar tissue in the heart) is prominent in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF), according to background information in the article. Extensive atrial tissue fibrosis identified by delayed enhancement magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been associated with poor outcomes of AF catheter ablation, a procedure in which electrical energy is used to treat AF.

MAYWOOD, Il. – A new type of contrast MRI can predict which heart patients with atrial fibrillation are most likely to benefit from a treatment called catheter ablation, according to a landmark multi-center study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Feb. 4, 2014 — Clinicians and patients should use shared decision-making to select individualized treatments based on the new guidelines to prevent cardiovascular disease, according to a commentary by three Mayo Clinic physicians published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association.

MULTIMEDIA ALERT: Video and audio are available for download on the Mayo Clinic News Network.

One might think that after years of seeing people at their worst, mental health workers would harbor negative attitudes about mental illness, perhaps associating people with mental health issues as less competent or dangerous. But a new study suggests the opposite.

In a survey of 731 mental health professionals in Washington state, the more seniority employees had on the job, the more positively they viewed people with mental illness. The survey also linked mental health workers' positive attitudes with having advanced degrees and reporting a mental illness themselves.

BOSTON – (February 4, 2014) – A new study conducted by Robert A. Gabbay, M.D., Ph.D., FACP, Senior Vice-President and Chief Medical Officer at Joslin Diabetes Center and Harvard Medical School, and colleagues identified three core factors and thirteen strategies that increase the probability of getting buy-in from the practice teams within a medical practice to becoming a fully-functioning patient-centered medical home (PCMH). This study was published in the January/ February issue of the Annals of Family Medicine.

ANN ARBOR—In the first national look at how broadly web-based technologies are being used to provide health care, a University of Michigan researcher has found that 42 percent of U.S. hospitals use some type of "telehealth" approach.

The study, published in the February issue of the journal Health Affairs, breaks down adoption rates by state. It also pinpoints state policies that might encourage more hospitals to adopt telehealth.

People seriously injured by violence are no more likely to die in the years after they are shot, stabbed or beaten than those who are seriously injured in accidents, Johns Hopkins researchers have found.