Community pharmacists can dramatically help their patients stick to their prescription regimens, according to a study led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy. The findings, published on August 4th 2014 in Health Affairs, suggest also that greater adherence to medications can lead to a reduction in emergency room visits and hospital admissions, thereby lowering health care costs for a variety of chronic conditions including diabetes and asthma.
Tag: Medical Care
“Lab Developed Tests”: FDA to Ensure Reliability
On July 31st 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration took important steps to ensure that certain tests used by health care professionals to help diagnose and treat patients provide accurate, consistent and reliable results.
Migraine Relief from Cosmetic Surgery Technique
Dr. Oren Tessler, Assistant Professor of Clinical Surgery at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center New Orleans School of Medicine, is part of a team of plastic and reconstructive surgeons who report a high success rate using a method to screen and select patients for a specific surgical migraine treatment technique. More than 90% of the patients who underwent this surgery to decompress the nerves that trigger migraines experienced relief and also got a bonus cosmetic eyelid surgery.
Debunking Myths About Robotic Surgery
By Keith Chisholm, MD
Robotics-assisted surgery has become enormously popular, with physicians around the world performing 1.5 million procedures from hysterectomies to heart valve repairs in 2011.
Survey: Quality of Health Care Providers
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research has released the results of a major survey examining the public’s opinions about what it means to be a quality health care provider in the United States. The survey, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, sheds new light on how American adults perceive the quality of their health care and doctors, as well as the information they use and trust when making health care decisions. The survey produces new and actionable data during a crucial period of Affordable Care Act (ACA) implementation.
Update on Telehealth
By Miles E. Drake, Jr., MD
“Telehealth” or “telemedicine” have been used more or less interchangeably over the past 50 years to describe the provision of health care services and exchange of health information by electronic means. The initial concept of telephonic and later computer-based medical interaction and education was defined by the Institute of Medicine as “the use of electronic information and communications technologies to provide and support health care when distance separates participants”.
Orthopedic Surgery Safe at 80+
Over the past decade, a greater number of patients age 80 and older have been undergoing elective orthopedic surgery. A study published in July 2014 in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS) found that these surgeries are generally safe with mortality rates decreasing for total hip (THR) and total knee (TKR) replacement and spinal fusion surgeries, and complication rates decreasing for total knee replacement and spinal fusion in patients with few or no comorbidities (other conditions or diseases).
Antibiotic Use Prevalent in Hospices
The use of antibiotics is still prevalent among terminal patients who have chosen hospice care as an end-of-life option, despite little evidence that the medications improve symptoms or quality of life, and sometimes may cause unwanted side effects. That is the finding of a study done at Oregon State University and the Oregon Health & Science University and published on July 14th 2014 in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.
How Friends and Family Can Help With Your Doctor Visit
At any age, it’s crucial that you not only look after your health with doctor visits and self-care, but it’s also essential that you learn the most from those visits. As people get older, and usually have several health conditions, it’s even more important.
It’s not uncommon, though, for patients to be so upset or even frightened by a doctor visit that they can’t absorb what they’re being told, or the subject may be one they’re not familiar with. In either case, that means they won’t be learning as much as they could from the physician.
Making the Best Decisions With Your Doctor
Talking with a doctor about a health-care decision is crucial – and can be an intimidating process. Here, from the experts at the National Institute on Aging, are some ways to get the most out of it:
Giving and getting information are two important steps in talking with your doctor. The third big step is making decisions about your care.
St. John’s Wort & Drug Interactions
St. John’s wort is the most frequently used complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatment in the U.S. for depression and similar psychiatric disorders. The many commonly prescribed medications that St. John’s wort can interact with—sometimes with serious consequences such as life-threatening “serotonin syndrome” or heart disease—are reviewed in the July 2014 issue of The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine and on the web site.
How Private Is Your Mental-Health Information?
Whatever you think of the Affordable Care Act (and there are many different and heated opinions) there’s no doubt that it’s expanded mental health and substance use disorder benefits and protections to 62 million Americans.
Leon Rodriguez, Director of the Office for Civil Rights, Department of Health and Human Services, wrote in a federal blog that the c hange represents “the largest expansion of behavioral health coverage in a generation and will help make treatment more affordable and accessible.”
Docs Say “AMEN” When Patients Pray for a Miracle
Cancer clinicians and a chaplain at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have developed a new tool to help doctors, nurses, and other health care providers talk to dying patients and families who are, literally, praying for a miracle.
Frailty Means Greater Hospital Complications
Researchers have found that elderly patients who are frail are likelier to experience in-hospital complications following trauma. Previously, complications had been associated with age alone.
The investigators, from the University of Arizona Medical Center, Tucson, examined statistics from 250 patients according to the 50-item Canadian Frailty Index, which measures social and daily living activities, nutrition and mood.
Superbugs in “Handcuffs”
Staph infections become resistant to multiple antibiotics because of a genetic parasite called a plasmid that the bacteria carry. RepA is a protein that sticks to the beginning of the plasmid’s DNA sequence and starts a copying process. When a pair of RepA proteins bumps into another pair, which can happen when the cell is starting to get crowded with plasmids, the two pairs of RepA stick to each other and form a four-part molecule. Scientists say that the plasmids are therefore “handcuffed” because the plasmid can no longer replicate.
Life-Saving Drug for Older Adults with Pneumonia
In a study that included nearly 65,000 older patients hospitalized with pneumonia, treatment that included azithromycin compared with other antibiotics was associated with a significantly lower risk of death but a slightly increased risk of heart attack, according to a study done at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and published in the June 4th 2014 issue of JAMA. The authors report that overall, the benefits outweigh the risks.
Infection Risks in Home Health Care
Each year, an estimated 12 million Americans receive care from more than 33,000 home health providers in the U.S., where the annual tab for home health services exceeds $72 billion. Patients depend on home health care services to recover from surgeries and hospital stays, as well as to manage daily life with chronic conditions. All too often, however, proven practices for preventing infections aren’t followed when care is provided at home.
Hep C Not a Survival Threat for HIV+ Patients with Ca
Researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia analyzed data from HIV+ patients diagnosed with lymphoma, collected over 17 years, to better understand how Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection influences survival outcomes. Study leader Stefan K. Barta, MD, MS, MRCP presented the group’s findings at the 50th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in June 2014 in Chicago.