News

In light of the fact that one-third of patients with heart failure are not receiving the most effective medications, the Mayo Clinic provides and overview of treatments recommended by national guidelines.

In an article published in JAMA, researchers surveyed over 3,200 breast cancer survivors who are 2-3 years out from treatment were surveyed to determine how often these women experienced and continued to suffer from pain.

The media has a field day with this statistic.

The FDA has sent a letter to 30 companies warning that it hasn’t approved beverages containing both caffeine and alcohol, and that it intends to begin removing such products from store shelves in 30 days if the companies can’t explain why such products are safe and legal.

Participants in a recent study who took the full 30 minutes to finish a test meal had higher concentrations of gut hormones that induce satiety and meal termination.

At PAINWeek 09, Howard Heit, MD, FACP, FASAM, began his presentation "The Patient-centered Approach to Urine Drug Testing in the Chronic Pain Patient" by briefly discussing the concept of Universal Precautions in pain medicine, noting that the term originated from the infectious disease model.

The fourth quarter has been busy in oncology, with the US Food and Drug Administration issuing approvals for new drugs and clinical trials and pharmaceutical companies announcing various filings. Here are some recent FDA updates from the world of oncology.

The “putting out to pasture” of seasoned, experienced nurses is happening more often and for a variety of reasons.

If you've been intrigued by those ads for $300 netbooks touted by AT&T and Verizon Wireless, here's the information you need to know before buying.

The pundits are going to have their field day with this one. "The danger [with this Bill] is that as costs continue to rise and coverage becomes less comprehensive, people will conclude that we've tried health reform and it didn't work. But the real problem will be that we didn't really try it.

Jeffrey Borenstein wrote an interesting article published this month in IEEE Spectrum musing on our attempts to trump the pill as a drug delivery system. He introduces an implantable drug delivery device designed to hold up to a year's worth of medication, after which the patient could go through minor surgery to refill the reservoir.

Products endorsed by the Arthritis Foundation’s Ease-of-Use Commendation Program are universally accessible, which means that the products don’t have to be specially designed for people with a disability, but they should be designed in way that all consumers can use them.

The AMA adopted a resolution calling on the federal government to enact new policies to decrease the public’s exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals through a single regulatory overseer to ensure coordination among agencies.

New research from a plastic surgeon reveals that migraine sufferers may have another treatment option—surgery.

The results from a study that evaluated the side effects of smoking in people with systemic lupus erthematosus found they clearly experienced skin damage and rashes.

Though researchers observed improvement among patients as early as four weeks following their first infusion, they caution that the results came from a small case series. However, given the substantial benefits for patients treated with rituximab, they see good reason to proceed with a large-scale clinical trial.

A $1.8 million grant will help the University of Michigan investigate the use of herpes simplex virus-based vectors to deliver genes to sensory nerves from application in the skin, which researchers believe hold promise not only for the treatment of pain but also ultimately for the treatment of peripheral neuropathy itself.

Researchers have found that patients who experience an adverse event while hospitalized are more satisfied with their care if hospital staff members discuss the adverse event with them.

In older patients, decreased muscle strength is related to an increased risk for Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment.

New research presented at CHEST 2009 shows that statins may have negative effects in some cardiac patients.

The Institute of Medicine released its "To Err is Human" report in 2000. Now that we're nearing the end of 2009, safety experts are examining the extent to which the IOM's recommendations have been implemented.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) raises the risk of subsequent epilepsy (post-traumatic epilepsy: PTE). The risk also correlates with TBI severity, and is higher in the presence of a preexisting seizure disorder. These are fairly well accepted principles. However, much about the relationship between TBI and epilepsy remains unclear.

We rank 19th among industrialized countries in preventable deaths in such conditions as diabetes, epilepsy, stroke, influenza, ulcers, pneumonia, infant mortality, and appendicitis.

Committing to the promise it holds, Rush University Medical Center psychiatrists are now putting into action transcranial magnetic stimulation, the first FDA-approved, non-invasive antidepressant device-based treatment that is clinically proven for depression treatment, making them among the first to test the technique after having helped develop it.

This week’s research news regarding how children are faring in our current economic state underlines the urgent need for our government to take remedial action.

When a patient is diagnosed with heart disease, cardiologists typically focus on treating him or her for obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD). However, an article published in the October 20 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology explains that “up to half of women may not have” CAD.

Maybe I’m naïve or maybe I just like to see the good side of people, but since I’ve been a nurse I have always heard the terrible saying that nurses “eat their young.” My experience has been anything but that.

On Monday, the ACC and AHA released the 2009 ACCF/AHA Focused Update on Perioperative Beta Blockade, an addendum to the ACC/AHA 2007 Guidelines on Perioperative Cardiovascular Evaluation and Care for Noncardiac Surgery.