Genetics may hold the key to a disfiguring and disabling --but surgically treatable-set of birth anomalies, a condition known as craniosynostosis. The chief of pediatric plastic surgery at NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan, David Staffenberg, MD said craniosynostosis, a problem in which the bones of a newborn's skull fuse prematurely, appears to usually be related to a spontaneous mutation. The condition occurs in 1 of every 2,000 births, he sai
Fears about toxic mold have spawned unqualified and useless testing, both of buildings and people, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. In a case history of an incident last year, Melody Kawamoto and Elena Page MD describe a costly case that yielded no proof of mold.
More than 13,000 US residents froze to death from 2003 to 2013, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC.) The CDC has a name for that, environmental hypothermia.In an attempt to determine just how common that is in the US, CDC researcher Jon Meiman, MD and colleagues looked at such deaths. The team also did a more focused study on environmental hypothermia deaths in Wisconsin in 2014, after a period of record low temperatures there from Jan. 1 to April 1, 2014.
Dehydrated stroke patients tend to do worse than those who are hydrated, a Johns Hopkins team found. The next question is whether all such ischemic stroke patients should get fluids when they arrive at the hospital, contrary to current recommendations.
Gynecomastia-the growth of breast tissue in men-can be an embarrassment for adolescents, but for professional bodybuilders it can be a career-ender. Two plastic surgeons said steroid use is to blame and surgery-not liposuction-is the best treatment.
When it comes to ordering the correct test for Vitamin D, too many doctors just can't get it right, a new study found. A Seattle team found 66% of tests ordered for one type of test were made in error, delaying care and potentially putting patients at risk. But it took the laboratory specialists 2 years of trial and error--and a lot of patience--to get the doctors to order the right tests.
Women tend to become addicted to drugs and relapse faster than men. In a study in the Journal of Neuroscience, Helen Scharfman and Teresa Miller write that high levels of estrogen may be responsible for this difference.
Since children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) may also have epileptic disorders, physicians usually want electroencephalograms (EEGs) of their brains.One sign of autism is staring spells. That can also be a form of epilepsy, an absence seizure.But an Australian study of children referred for these episodes showed EEGs offer little diagnostic benefit.
Opioids can be effective in controlling back pain, but their use carries risk of complications, misuse, and abuse. Clinicians have to decide when it is a good idea to prescribe them and when it is not.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a polypill for hypertension, a combination of perindopril arginine and amlodipine (Prestalia/ Symplmed Pharma-Servier).
The hospital shooting death of Boston cardiac surgeon Michael Davidson, MD, 44, has shocked the cardiology world-far beyond his colleagues at Brigham and Women's Hospital where he was director of endovascular cardiac surgery. On a remembrance page and in formal statements, tributes are pouring in. Davidson, a respected innovator in heart valve replacement, died late Jan. 20, hours after he was shot by the son of a former patient who then turned his gun on himself.He leaves his wife Teri Davidson, who is 7 months pregnant, and 3 children ages 2 to 9.
Just weeks after JAMA published a National Institutes of Health study refuting the idea that there are "good carbs" and "bad carbs' a new study in the journal finds eating whole grains is associated with lower overall mortality and death from heart disease
The role of the hormone leptin in promoting obesity is a growing area of research. In a case study from Germany reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, Martin Wabitsch, MD, PhD and colleagues report success in treating an obese toddler with recombinant human leptin.
Waiting lists for donor organs are shorter in some parts of the US, creating a geographic disparity that The US Department of Health and Human Services would like to eliminate. There are currently 58 Donor Service Areas in 11 US regions and donor organs go first to patients within each one. That has created a system where transplant patients often travel to regions where the waits are shorter, a hardship for them and a barrier to poor patients.
Capitalizing on the infatuation many parents-to-be have with their babies-to-be, commercial enterprises are making and selling "keepsake " ultrasound images. In a related trend, some consumers are purchasing Doppler ultrasound heartbeat monitors over the counter and without the required prescription for their use.
Changing kids' diets has been shown to help control epileptic seizures. But until recently there was little data on whether strict dietary regimens are beneficial for adults with epilepsy. Reporting at the American Epilepsy Society's annual meeting in Seattle, WA today, two research teams said they have had some success with diet modification as a way to reduce seizures in adults with drug-resistant epilepsy.
Patients with irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea (IBS-D) suffer not only the pain and discomfort of frequent loose stools, but fear of incontinence. For many patients, that results in panic and anxiety.
The most common cause of sudden cardiac death in young people is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, an inherited condition that can lead to heart failure, angina, arrhythmia and sudden cardiac death. There is no medical treatment shown to halt or reverse the progression of the disease-just palliative care or surgery.
Undetected neonatal heart defects can cause a variety of serious problems, including an increased risk of death. A recently enacted New Jersey law mandating screening for congenital heart defects has uncovered cases of congenital heart problems and likely saved lives.
Could hospitals be a bad place to have heart attacks? That's the finding of a North Carolina research team that looked at data from 303 California hospitals. Patients who had heart attacks while hospitalized for a non-cardiac ailment had a more than 3-fold greater in-hospital mortality than patients taken to a hospital.
The family of Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who died at Texas Presbyterian Health Hospital, announced today it has settled its wrongful death claim against the facility. There will not be a lawsuit. Monetary terms were not disclosed.
In what he says is the first objective evidence that migraine headaches are caused by defects in the trigeminal nerve's myelination process, a Cleveland, Ohio plastic surgeon shows why migraine surgery works.
In older adults, mild control of systolic pressure is good enough, an Oregon research team has found. Writing in Drugs & Aging, Leah Goeres and colleagues at the College of Pharmacy at Oregon State University and Oregon Health & Science University said that for adults age 60 and over, said a reading of 150 for systolic blood pressure (SPB) is adequate-upsetting the conventional wisdom that these patients should get enough medications or other treatments to bring SPB down to 140.
Heart patients who have bouts of hypotension while hospitalized for acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF) have an increased risk of an adverse outcome within 30 days, a multi-institutional study found. Priyesh Patel, MD, and colleagues, writing in Circulation reported on their analysis of results of the ASCEND-HF study.
Stress cardiomyopathy is a unique cardiac syndrome in which transient left ventricular (LV) systolic dysfunction mimics acute myocardial infarction (AMI). It is usually brought on by acute emotional or physical stress (or both) and has 3 distinctive features: acute LV wall dysfunction, absence of significant obstructive coronary artery disease, and rapid improvement of LV systolic function within days or weeks.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Oct. 10 approved a new drug combining ledipasvir and sofosbuvir (Harvoni/Gilead) as a treatment for chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. The approval is the third drug approved for chronic HCV in the past year. The others are simeprevir (Olysio/Janssen) and sofosbuvir (Sovaldi/Gilead).
As part of federal efforts to curb prescription drug abuse, the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is reclassifying hydrocodone-combination drugs (Vicodin/AbbVie) as a schedule 2 controlled substance. But even if the tighter controls mean some doctors will switch appropriate patients to schedule 3 drugs, like acetaminophen with codeine, alternative painkillers have a long way to go to topple the market leader, according to data from IMS Health.
In an article in Annals of Surgery, Debbi Li, MD and colleagues at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada report on a retrospective study of 14,124 diverticulitis patients cared for without surgery. The research goal was to quantify the risks of readmission and emergency surgery when patients did not get a prophylactic colectomy.
Concerned about a mysterious outbreak of pediatric paralysis, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has asked physicians to report any similar cases. In Denver, CO, 10 children have been admitted to Children's Hospital Colorado with limb weakness and paralysis since Aug. 1, according to the hospital.
Is one beta blocker better than another for patients born with long QT syndrome? In a report published in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Abeer Abu-Zeitone, PhD, and colleagues found that in their study group, nadolol worked best at preventing a recurrent serious cardiac event and that propranolol, the oldest beta-blocker available, did the worst.