The prevention, treatment, and management of illness and the preservation of mental and physical well-being through the services offered by the medical and allied health professions.
Clostridium Bacteria Infecting Increasing Numbers of Hospitalized Children – Hospitalized children in the United States are more frequently becoming infected with the bacteria Clostridium difficile. A report about this study will appear in the May print issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
Private room intensive care units associated with lower infection rates – Converting hospital intensive care units (ICUs) to private rooms is associated with a reduction in the rate at which patients acquire infections, according to a report in the January 10 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Researchers: Pay more attention to epilepsy, affects millions of people – Epilepsy, a common and serious neurologic disorder that affects millions of people, is not getting the public attention and funding for research it deserves, according to an editorial on a study published in the January_4, 2011, print issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
FDA: Gardasil approved to prevent anal cancer – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved the vaccine Gardasil for the prevention of anal cancer and associated precancerous lesions due to human papillomavirus (HPV) types 6, 11, 16, and 18 in people ages 9 through 26 years.
Electronic medical records not always linked to better care in hospitals, study finds – Use of electronic health records by hospitals across the United States has had only a limited effect on improving the quality of medical care, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
Expansion of HIV screening cost-effective in reducing spread of AIDS, Stanford study shows – An expanded U.S. program of HIV screening and treatment could prevent as many as 212,000 new infections over the next 20 years and prove to be very cost-effective, according to a new study by Stanford University School of Medicine researchers.
UCLA researchers find that Medicaid-funded ADHD treatment for children is failing – Whatever its final incarnation, the recently enacted landmark Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will expand Medicaid eligibility and is expected by 2013 to provide coverage, including mental health care, to an estimated 4.1 million children currently uninsured.
NIH-sponsored panel issues comprehensive US food allergy guidelines — Guidelines recommend uniform standards in the diagnosis and management of food allergy – An expert panel sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, has issued comprehensive U.S. guidelines to assist health care professionals in diagnosing food allergy and managing the care of people with the disease.
New report: Employer health insurance premiums increased 41 percent from 2003 to 2009 — Effective Affordable Care Act implementation could save up to $3,000 per year for family policies by 2020 – Premiums for employer-sponsored family health insurance increased an average of 41 percent across states from 2003 to 2009, more than three times faster than median incomes, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report. Yet, insurance is buying less.
Childhood asthma foundation invests millions to implement best practices to manage the disease – The Merck Childhood Asthma Network, Inc. (MCAN), announced it is targeting four high risk cities with nearly $4 million for programs that will combine evidence-based science, case management and asthma trigger removal plans to manage a disease that requires more than the right medical care.
Study shows extreme form of pregnancy-related morning sickness could be genetic — Pregnant women whose sisters had condition are 17 times more likely to have it – Approximately 60,000 pregnant women are hospitalized each year due to hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), an extreme form of nausea and vomiting that endangers their lives and often forces them to reluctantly terminate their pregnancies.
Despite highest health spending, Americans’ life expectancy falls behind other countries’ — Obesity, smoking, traffic fatalities and homicide ruled out as causes of failure of US to keep up with gains in life expectancy in other countries – America continues to lag behind other nations when it comes to gains in life expectancy, and commonly cited causes for our poor performance-obesity, smoking, traffic fatalities and homicide-are not to blame, according to a study by researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
