Culture

• MR enterography reduces exposure to ionizing radiation
• Revising protocol may reduce costs, complexity while maintaining integrity of diagnosis
• Use of anti-peristalitc agent may not be necessary to obtain high-quality images

CHICAGO (June 15, 2011) – A study of Canadian home-care patients suggests doctors may be overprescribing antibiotics for patients receiving ongoing medical care at home. The study, published in the June issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, suggests that more should be done to monitor antibiotic use in home-care patients to avoid misuse that could decrease the efficacy of the drugs over time.

A University of Iowa study found that women who make their sexual debut as young teens are more likely to divorce, especially if "the first time" was unwanted, or if she had mixed feelings about it.

Published in the April issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family, the analysis found that 31 percent of women who had sex for the first time as teens divorced within five years, and 47 percent divorced within 10 years. The divorce rate for women who delayed sex until adulthood was far lower: 15 percent at five years, and 27 percent at 10 years.

New York, NY, June 15, 2011—A new Commonwealth Fund report finds that Medicaid managed care plans that are owned by publicly traded for-profit companies whose primary line of business is managing Medicaid enrollees spent an average of 14 percent of premiums on administrative costs, compared with an average of only 10 percent spent by non-publicly traded plans owned by groups of health care providers, health systems, community health centers, or clinics.

PredictAD is an EU-funded research project that develops objective and efficient methods for enabling earlier diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. Diagnosis requires a holistic view of the patient combining information from several sources, such as, clinical tests, imaging and blood samples.

New York, NY, June 15, 2011—A new Commonwealth Fund report finds that Medicaid managed care plans that are owned by publicly traded for-profit companies whose primary line of business is managing Medicaid enrollees spent an average of 14 percent of premiums on administrative costs, compared with an average of only 10 percent spent by non-publicly traded plans owned by groups of health care providers, health systems, community health centers, or clinics.

Over the next few years, even popular daily deal sites will have to settle for lower shares of revenues from businesses compared with current levels and it will be harder for them to find viable candidates to fill their pipelines of daily deals because there is very little difference between companies and it will be difficult for any one site to stand out from the others, according to Utpal Dholakia, associate professor of management at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business.

Telling your partner to watch her weight is not recommended-unless you're a male cleaner fish, reports a new study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Cleaner fish feed in male-female pairs by removing parasites from larger 'client' fish. While providing this cleaning service, cleaners may get greedy and bite clients rather than sticking to parasites. This cheating by cleaners causes mealtimes to come to an abrupt end as the disgruntled client fish swims off. Females that bite clients receive aggressive punishment from their male partners for such greedy behaviour.

This observational cohort study, by Andrew Edmonds and colleagues, reports that treatment with highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) markedly improves the survival of HIV-infected children in Kinshasa, DRC, a resource-deprived setting. The findings presented suggest that HAART is as effective for improving the survival of HIV-infected children in a severely resource-deprived country (still recovering from civil war) as in more resource-privileged settings.

With an increased emphasis on grading hospitals and a push to withhold payments from hospitals who don't meet certain standards, two Johns Hopkins researchers argue that more attention needs to be paid to the quality of the measurement tools used to praise and punish.

In an examination of trends of malpractice claims, there has been a greater decline in the rate of paid claims for inpatient settings than outpatient settings, and in 2009, the number of malpractice claims for events resulting in paid malpractice claims in outpatient and inpatient settings were similar, according to a study in the June 15 issue of JAMA.

In an analysis of data from several studies, watching television for 2-3 hours per day or more was associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, fatal and nonfatal cardiovascular disease and all-cause death, according to a study in the June 15 issue of JAMA.

Patients in the early stages of chronic kidney disease who had elevated levels of the endocrine hormone fibroblast growth factor 23 (that regulates phosphorus metabolism) had an associated increased risk of end-stage renal disease and death, according to a study in the June 15 issue of JAMA.

Boston, MA – Watching television is the most common daily activity apart from work and sleep in many parts of the world, but it is time for people to change their viewing habits. According to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers, prolonged TV viewing was associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and premature death.

The study appears in the June 15, 2011, edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

NEW YORK (June 15, 2011) -- Ever since the Institute of Medicine issued its landmark report "To Err Is Human" in 1999, significant attention has been paid to improving patient safety in hospitals nationwide.

However, a high number of adverse events, including major injury and even death, occur in private physician offices and outpatient clinics as well. In a new study -- the first of its kind -- researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College found that the number and magnitude of events resulting from medical errors is surprisingly similar inside and outside hospital walls.