Culture

In this week's PLoS Medicine, Jay Berry of Harvard Medical School, USA and colleagues report findings from an analysis of hospitalization data in the United States, examining the proportion of inpatient resources attributable to care for children with neurological impairment (NI). Their results indicate that children with NI account for a substantial proportion of inpatient resources and that the impact of these children is growing within children's hospitals, necessitating adequate clinical care and a coordination of efforts to ensure that the needs of children with NI are met.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new approach to motion capture technology is offering fresh insights into tennis injuries – and orthopedic injuries in general.

Researchers studied three types of tennis serves, and identified one in particular, called a "kick" serve, which creates the highest potential for shoulder injury.

The results, published in a recent issue of Annals of Biomedical Engineering, could aid sports training and rehab, said Alison Sheets, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio State University.

With the prodding of new federal legislation, electronic health records (EHRs) are rapidly becoming part of the daily practice of hospital nurses – the frontline providers of care. In the first large study of its kind, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing determined that nurses working with EHRs consistently reported more improvements to nursing care and better health outcomes for patients than nurses working in hospitals without this technology.

People with mental illness have gotten a bad rap in past research studies, being labeled the group of people with the highest return rates to prison. But a researcher from the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University counters those findings in a new study—demonstrating that inmates with severe mental illnesses alone actually have lower rates of recidivism than those with substance abuse issues or no mental or substance abuse issues.

How does a doctor determine whether or not an emergency-room patient has acute kidney injury? Using tests currently available in the hospital, this question is often difficult to answer. In many emergency cases, however, early diagnosis of the severity of the disease picture is crucial. A large multicenter study by clinicians of the Experimental and Clinical Research Center (ECRC), a joint cooperation between the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch and the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the Helios Hospital Berlin, and two hospitals in the U.S.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Research from the University of Michigan Health System shows the risk for kidney failure among liver transplant recipients is higher following the implementation of Model of End Stage Liver Disease (MELD), a policy change in 2002 that altered how liver transplant allocation is decided.

Observational epidemiologic studies relating wine and alcohol to health all suffer from the fact that they, of necessity, compare people who prefer certain beverages, but not the beverages themselves. While there have been many intervention trials in animals, randomized trials in humans are less common. Randomized crossover trials, in which each subject receives all interventions in sequence, can be especially important as they tend to avoid baseline differences among subjects and can detect effects of different interventions with smaller numbers of subjects.

WASHINGTON, DC, January 17, 2012 — While the percentage of obese children in the United States tripled between the early 1970s and the late 2000s, a new study suggests that—at least for middle school students—weight gain has nothing to do with the candy, soda, chips, and other junk food they can purchase at school.

Yale School of Medicine researchers have found that the likelihood of becoming disabled with age increases with the following factors: having a chronic condition or cognitive impairment; low physical activity; slower gross motor coordination; having poor lower-extremity function; and being hospitalized. Women are also more likely than men to become disabled in their later years.

• Alcohol screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) refers to clinical strategies that identify and manage unhealthy alcohol use.
• A new study has assessed potential delivery of SBIRT by nurses to hospitalized patients.
• Results suggest hospitalized patients find nurse-delivered SBIRT-related care acceptable during their stay.

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- A study about how wearing contact lenses affects glaucoma measurements has been named the top presentation at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine's annual St. Albert's Day research symposium.

First author of the study is Marie Brenner, a fourth-year student at Stritch School of Medicine.

A study at the University of Alcalá, Spain has compared the employment crisis of 1991-1994 with the current crisis from 2007 to 2010, as well as the labour reforms that took place in 1994 and 2010 respectively. Its results show that both the evolution of labour market indicators and the response of financial authorities have been quite similar in terms of timing and the design of measures.

BINGHAMTON, NY – Heart attacks in women go largely unrecognized 30 to 55 percent of the time and those who miss the warning signs and fail or delay getting help, run the risk of death or grave disability. But researchers at Binghamton University and SUNY Upstate Medical University have developed an educational program they believe will shorten the time to treatment and ultimately, save lives.

Thousands more American senior citizens with kidney disease are good candidates for transplants and could get them if physicians would get past outdated medical biases and put them on transplant waiting lists, according to a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers.

The Hopkins investigators estimate that between 1999 and 2006, roughly 9,000 adults over 65 would have been "excellent" transplant candidates and approximately 40,000 more older adults would have been "good" candidates for new kidneys. None, however, were given the chance.

New Orleans, LA – A study led by Russell R. Russo, MD, a third-year Orthopaedic Surgery resident at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans School of Medicine, has identified a new source of life-threatening necrotizing fasciitis – "bath salts." The study, describing the first known case of necrotizing fasciitis from an intramuscular injection of the street drug known as "bath salts," is published in the January 2012 issue of Orthopedics, now available online.