Culture

CHICAGO – Patients with obstructive sleep apnea who undergo surgery for their condition should be closely monitored after their procedures are performed but may not need to be in an intensive care unit, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

A study by the Wildlife Conservation Society, the ARC Centre for Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, and other groups on more than 40 coral reefs in the Indian and Pacific Oceans indicates that "co-management"—a collaborative arrangement between local communities, conservation groups, and governments—provides one solution to a vexing global problem: overfishing.

"Anyone who has been admitted into a hospital or undergone a procedure, even if cared for in the most appropriate way, can feel as though they were treated like an animal or object," says Harvard University psychologist and physician Omar Sultan Haque. Health care workers enter their professions to help people; research shows that empathic, humane care improves outcomes. Yet dehumanization is endemic. The results can be disastrous: neglect of necessary treatments or prescription of excessive, painful procedures or dangerous drugs.

University of Granada researchers have developed a software tool that makes an accurate estimation of the risk that a person has to suffer a heart disease. In addition, this software tool allows the performance of massive risk estimations, i.e. it helps estimating the risk that a specific population group has of suffering a heart condition. The researchers employed a sample including 3 000 patients.

Heart conditions increasingly affect working age population, which can make individuals loss potential years of work and productivity.

SAN DIEGO -- Obesity appears to significantly increase the risk of death tied to sleeping pills, nearly doubling the rate of mortality even among those prescribed 18 or fewer pills in a year, researchers reported Friday.

"Obesity emerged as a marker of increased vulnerability," said Robert Langer, M.D., M.P.H., at the annual American Heart Association's Epidemiology and Prevention | Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism 2012 Scientific Sessions in San Diego.

Who wouldn't pay a penny for a sports car? That's the mentality some popular online auctions take advantage of -- the opportunity to get an expensive item for very little money.

In a study of hundreds of lowest unique bid auctions, Northwestern University researchers asked a different question: Who wins these auctions, the strategic gambler or the lucky one? The answer is the lucky. But, ironically, it's a lucky person using a winning strategy.

• The study's objective was to identify which skills and competencies are considered most critical for primary care providers (PCPs) to learn in order to effectively manage opioid risk in patients treated for chronic pain
• Study participants included experts in primary care, pain management, and addiction
• Experts in this study identified the most important skills for PCPs managing opioid risk in chronic pain patients as how to monitor opioids and how to assess for risk factors

Montreal, March 16, 2012 – A clinical study co-led by the Montreal Heart Institute and Innovaderm Research Inc., which was presented today at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology, shows that a new treatment for psoriasis could be associated with a significant decrease in vascular inflammation, a major risk factor of cardiovascular disease.

The addition of changes in inflammatory biomarkers to established clinical variables improves the prediction of mortality in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to a new study.

One in three older people who have difficulty reading and understanding basic health related information may be at increased risk of death, concludes a study published on bmj.com today.

The findings have important implications given rising levels of long term conditions and the UK government's plans for patients to become responsible and active partners in their care.

Highlights

Smoking, the leading preventable cause of mortality in the United States, continues to disproportionately impact lower income members of racial and ethnic minority groups. A new study published in the American Journal of Public Health, looked at how perceived discrimination influences smoking rates among these groups.

NEW YORK (March 15, 2012)—New evidence on the link between suicide and the economy shows that the monthly suicide rate in New York City from 1990 to 2006 was 29% higher at the economic low point in 1992 than at the peak of economic growth in 2000.

The study, conducted by researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, the McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy, the University of California San Francisco School of Nursing, and Weill Cornell Medical College, appears in the February 22 American Journal of Epidemiology and is available online.

• Childhood trauma experience (CTE) can include sexual, physical, and emotional abuse as well as physical or emotional neglect.
• CTE may be an environmental factor for developing psychiatric disorders such as alcohol dependence.
• A new study has found significant rates of CTE among AD inpatients.

New evidence that physician attitudes and stereotypes about race, even if unconscious, affect the doctor-patient relationship in ways that may contribute to racial disparities in health care

Primary care physicians who hold unconscious racial biases tend to dominate conversations with African-American patients during routine visits, paying less attention to patients' social and emotional needs and making these patients feel less involved in decision making related to their health, Johns Hopkins researchers report.