Physicians can reduce the number of heart failure deaths and unnecessary hospital admissions by using a new computer-based algorithm developed at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) that calculates each patient's individual risk of death. Published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the algorithm improves upon clinical decision-making and determines whether or not a patient with heart failure should be admitted to hospital.
Culture
Half of adults over age 65 made at least one emergency department (ED) visit in the last month of life, in a study led by a physician at the San Francisco VA Medical Center (SFVAMC) and UCSF.
Three quarters of ED visits led to hospital admissions, and more than two-thirds of those admitted to the hospital died there.
In contrast, the 10 percent of study subjects who had enrolled in hospice care at least one month before death were much less likely to have made an ED visit or died in the hospital.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Nobody wins when patients stay in the hospital unnecessarily, so the federal government in recent years has pushed hospitals to be careful about admitting Medicare recipients as inpatients. The apparent result is that more patients are being "held for observation" instead, according to a new study by Brown University gerontologists. While the shift in how hospitals care for elderly patients in the emergency department may reduce costs to Medicare, it can also increase out-of-pocket expenditures for patients.
North Carolina's coordinated, regional systems for rapid care improved survival rates of patients suffering from the most severe heart attack, according to research in the American Heart Association's journal, Circulation.
DURHAM, N.C.— An ambitious effort to coordinate heart attack care among every hospital and emergency service in North Carolina improved patient survival rates and reduced the time from diagnosis to treatment, according to Duke University Medical Center researchers who spearheaded the program.
CHICAGO – An observational study that examined the comparative effectiveness of rhythm control vs. rate control drug treatment on mortality in patients with atrial fibrillation (a rapid, irregular heart beat) suggests there was little difference in mortality within four years of treatment, but rhythm control may be associated with more effective long-term outcomes, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication.
Using a Johns Hopkins-developed program that allows medical professionals to provide acute hospital-level care within a patient's home, a New Mexico health system was able to reduce costs by roughly 20 percent and provide equal or better outcomes than hospital inpatients, according to new research.
As voters increasingly rely on websites of presidential primary candidates for news, they run a risk because candidates' online attacks are not vetted through traditional "watchdog journalists" and other gatekeepers to determine accuracy or fairness, according to a study by Baylor University researchers.
"The primary danger is that constituents often use this one-sided information to decide how to vote," said Mia Moody, Ph.D., study co-author and an assistant professor of journalism, public relations and new media in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences.
The mosquito is possibly summer's biggest nuisance. Sprays, pesticides, citronella candles, bug zappers — nothing seems to totally deter the blood-sucking insect. And neither can rain apparently.
Even though a single raindrop can weigh 50 times more than a mosquito, the insect is still able to fly through a downpour.
Georgia Tech researchers used high-speed videography to determine how this is possible. They found the mosquito's strong exoskeleton and low mass render it impervious to falling raindrops.
St. Louis, MO, June 4, 2012 – The dental profession needs to build a stronger connection between oral health and general health—not only for individual patients, but also at the community level, according to the special June issue of The Journal of Evidence-Based Dental Practice (JEBDP), the foremost publication of information about evidence-based dental practice, published by Elsevier.
TORONTO, June 4, 2012—Researchers who examined the income levels of patients at central Toronto hospitals found that people in the highest and lowest income brackets are being hospitalized for different reasons and that different hospitals serve different income groups.
(WASHINGTON, June 4, 2012) – Results from a study published online today in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), demonstrate that inclusion of carfilzomib, a novel targeted therapy for multiple myeloma, in combination with lenalidomide and low-dose dexamethasone, resulted in complete or near complete remission in a
A three-drug treatment for the blood cancer multiple myeloma provided rapid, deep and potentially durable responses, researchers report today online in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology, and yesterday, Sunday, June 3, 2012, at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL, USA.
MAYWOOD, Il. -- Lower-income cancer patients are less likely to participate in cancer clinical trials, according to a study co-authored by Loyola University Medical Center oncologist Kathy Albain, MD, FACP.Patients with incomes of less than $50,000 per year were 27 percent less likely than higher-income patients to participate in clinical trials, and those with incomes less than $20,000 were 44 percent less likely to participate.Fifty-three percent of patients with incomes less than $20,000 per year expressed concerns about their costs of participating in clinical trials.
Analyzing medical records from thousands of patients, statisticians have devised a statistical model for predicting what other medical problems a patient might encounter.
Like how Netflix recommends movies and TV shows or how Amazon.com suggests products to buy, the algorithm makes predictions based on what a patient has already experienced as well as the experiences of other patients showing a similar medical history.