Hundreds of thousands of swine flu shots for children have been recalled because tests indicate the vaccine doses lost some strength, government health officials said Tuesday. continue reading...
The awful accident suffered by Natasha Richardson has raised the issue of making helmets mandatory when on the ski hill. continue reading...
A test has showed that having copper fittings, such as door handles and light switches, in a hospital may kill superbugs and other germs. The theory is that the germs are “suffocated” by the metal. During the test, the copper fittings had up to 95 per cent fewer bugs on their surfaces than traditional metal fixtures. Read more… continue reading...
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — As 3D images illuminate the viewfinder, a joystick delicately maneuvers a pair of robotic arms. It may sound like a video game, but Dr. Nikhil Shah is actually performing cancer surgery.
In this case, the surgeon is removing a man’s prostate gland. Robotic surgery is a growing trend in treating prostate cancer. The number of cases have increased sevenfold in the past four years, from 10,000 in 2004 to a projected 70,000 in 2008, according to Intuitive Surgical Inc., the creators of the robotic device. The advantages of robotics — fewer side effects and quicker recovery times in many patients — have led to increased use for other surgeries, including hysterectomy, kidney cancer and some heart procedures. Read more… continue reading...
Read more here. Watch a video here, below:
Take a baby boom, add six decades, and what have you got? A booming market for home healthcare companies, which provide a low-cost, long-term alternative to hospitals at a time when medical costs are rising.
As if to illustrate the point, Amedisys surprised Wall Street Wednesday with better-than-expected earnings and an increase in its guidance for the rest of the year. The company, which bought rival TLC Healthcare Services in late March for $395.0 million, said it was looking forward to growing on its own and through further acquisitions. Read more continue reading...
WASHINGTON, March 17 /PRNewswire/ — New research released at the Society of Interventional Radiology’s (SIR) Annual Scientific Meeting in Washington, D.C., this week, holds promise of a new interventional imaging capability using advanced robotics provided by Siemens Healthcare (www.siemens.com/healthcare), to improve the value of chemoembolization in treating cancer.
The research, presented by Dr. John Angle, Associate Professor of Radiology, Chief, Division of Angiography, University of Virginia Health System in Charlottesville, at the “Advanced Imaging Symposium,” reveals clinical results from his case study using the Siemens Artis zeego®, a multi-axis C-arm that employs robotic technology to enable large-volume syngo® DynaCT acquisition for liver chemoembolization. continue reading...
OAKLAND, Calif., March 11 /PRNewswire/ — Findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association on the largest weight loss maintenance study to date reinforce Kaiser Permanente’s approach to obesity prevention. The combination of both personal contact and web-based support are identified as the key to successful, long-term weight management. Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore., was the coordinating center for the Weight Loss Maintenance Trial of 1,032 overweight and obese adults and provided five of the study co-authors.
“The big discovery of this study is that losing weight and keeping it off is possible if you have ongoing, long-term support,” said study second author Victor J. Stevens, Ph.D. a senior researcher at Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research. “Everyone in this country — men, women, and children of every racial group — is getting heavier because our society promotes eating too much and not getting enough exercise. We all need a personal health coach, and hopefully health care systems can provide that. That’s why Kaiser Permanente does research: to find successful programs that fit into routine medical care, and that’s what this study shows.” continue reading...
New York (PRWEB) February 7, 2008 — Johns Hopkins Health Alerts has just released a new free special report on memory loss and aging to help answer two common concerns as we live longer than ever before:
* Does memory loss signal the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, or another form of dementia?.
* How can you protect your memory well into your later years? continue reading...
Philadelphia, PA (PRWEB) January 7, 2008 — It was once a rarity in this country to find women in medical schools seeking to become physicians, and it was even more unusual to find women who actually practiced medicine after their medical-school training. Now the landscape appears to have changed dramatically. More than 50 percent of college students are female, as are almost 50 percent of the students entering medical school. While such changes have allowed the medical field to progress and become more inclusive in regards to gender, ethnicity, and culture, there are still inequities. Medical schools and workplaces are only now beginning to look at what is needed to address these inequities and bring about systematic changes to support the changing demographics of the doctors of the future.
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