PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Hospital surgical volume should be considered when judging value of procedures

2013-05-06
(Press-News.org) SAN DIEGO – The volume of cases performed at an institution each year has a direct effect on the outcome of surgical procedures, and should always be considered when looking at the benefits of a technique, according to a team of researchers at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

Those conclusions will be presented May 5 at the annual meeting of the American Urological Association in San Diego.

The starting point of the study was the rapid increase in the use of surgical robots to assist in radical prostatectomy, in which the entire prostate gland and some surrounding tissue are removed to treat prostate cancer.

"This has happened in spite of a lack of randomized controlled studies to measure the superiority of robot-assisted radical prostatectomy, or RARP, over traditional open surgery to treat prostate cancers," says Jesse D. Sammon, D.O., a researcher at Henry Ford's Vattikuti Urology Institute and lead author of the study.

"There have been some studies recently that suggested an advantage for RARP in terms of complication rates from the time a patient is admitted for surgery, through the operation itself and until time of discharge from the hospital."

Dr. Sammon continues: "But these studies didn't take into account the relationship between surgical outcomes and the volume of surgery performed in a given institution. We set out to fill that void while comparing outcomes for RARP and open radical prostatectomy, or ORP."

Tapping data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample – a set of databases maintained for researchers and policymakers to find and address trends in U.S. health care – the Henry Ford researchers identified 77,616 men who underwent radical prostatectomy in 2009. Of them, nearly 64 percent had RARP and about 36 percent had ORP.

The study then compared rates of blood transfusion, complications during and after surgery, prolonged length of hospital stay, elevated hospital charges and mortality within the test group.

"Overall, RARP patients experienced lower complication rates than those treated with ORP," Dr. Sammon says. "However, the picture changed when we factored in whether the procedures were done at very high-volume medical centers or low-volume institutions."

Low-volume centers averaged 26.2 cases of RARP and 5.2 of ORP, while the highest volume centers averaged nearly 579 RARP cases and 150 ORP cases per year.

When these caseloads were taken into account, the researchers found that among equivalent volumes, RARP results were generally favorable; ORP, however, at very high-volume centers, had lower complication rates after surgery and comparable rates of blood transfusions relative to RARP at low-volume centers.

"So, regardless of the approach – whether RARP or ORP – low-volume institutions experienced inferior outcomes when compared to the highest volume centers," Dr. Sammon says.

INFORMATION:

Funding Source: Supported in part by the Vattikuti Urology Institute

END



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Genome sequencing provides unprecedented insight into causes of pneumococcal disease

2013-05-06
Boston, MA — A new study led by researchers from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the UK has, for the first time, used genome sequencing technology to track the changes in a bacterial population following the introduction of a vaccine. The study follows how the population of pneumococcal bacteria changed following the introduction of the 'Prevnar' conjugate polysaccharide vaccine, which substantially reduced rates of pneumococcal disease across the U.S. The work demonstrates that the technology could be used in the future ...

Media advisory: Brain cell injections may quiet epileptic seizures

2013-05-06
More than two million people in the United States suffer from epilepsies, a group of neurological disorders caused by abnormal nerve cell firing in the brain which often produce debilitating seizures. Although anti-epileptic drugs and other therapies reduce seizures in about two-thirds of patients, the remaining one-third do not respond to any form of therapy and those who take drugs can experience harmful side effects. NIH funded researchers at the University of California at San Francisco used a mouse model of epilepsy to show that transplanting new born inhibitory nerve ...

Divide and define: Clues to understanding how stem cells produce different kinds of cells

2013-05-06
ANN ARBOR—The human body contains trillions of cells, all derived from a single cell, or zygote, made by the fusion of an egg and a sperm. That single cell contains all the genetic information needed to develop into a human, and passes identical copies of that information to each new cell as it divides into the many diverse types of cells that make up a complex organism like a human being. If each cell is genetically identical, however, how does it grow to be a skin, blood, nerve, bone or other type of cell? How do stem cells read the same genetic code but divide into ...

Scientists alarmed by rapid spread of Brown Streak Disease in cassava

2013-05-06
BELLAGIO, ITALY (6 MAY 2013)— Cassava experts are reporting new outbreaks and the increased spread of Cassava Brown Streak Disease or CBSD, warning that the rapidly proliferating plant virus could cause a 50 percent drop in production of a crop that provides a significant source of food and income for 300 million Africans. The "pandemic" of CBSD now underway is particularly worrisome because agriculture experts have been looking to the otherwise resilient cassava plant—which is also used to produce starch, flour, biofuel and even beer—as the perfect crop for helping to ...

A new cost-effective genome assembly process

2013-05-06
The U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) is among the world leaders in sequencing the genomes of microbes, focusing on their potential applications in the fields of bioenergy and environment. As a national user facility, the DOE JGI is also focused on developing tools that more cost-effectively enable the assembly and analysis of the sequence that it, as well as other genome centers, generates. Despite tremendous advances in cost reduction and throughput of DNA sequencing, significant challenges remain in the process of efficiently reconstructing ...

As climate changes, boreal forests to shift north and relinquish more carbon than expected

2013-05-06
It's difficult to imagine how a degree or two of warming will affect a location. Will it rain less? What will happen to the area's vegetation? New Berkeley Lab research offers a way to envision a warmer future. It maps how Earth's myriad climates—and the ecosystems that depend on them—will move from one area to another as global temperatures rise. The approach foresees big changes for one of the planet's great carbon sponges. Boreal forests will likely shift north at a steady clip this century. Along the way, the vegetation will relinquish more trapped carbon than most ...

More hurricanes for Hawaii?

2013-05-06
News of a hurricane threat sends our hearts racing, glues us to the Internet for updates, and makes us rush to the store to stock up on staples. Hawaii, fortunately, has been largely free from these violent storms in the recent past, only two having made landfall in more than 30 years. Now a study headed by a team of scientists at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa, shows that Hawaii could see a two-to-three-fold increase in tropical cyclones by the last quarter of this century. The study, which appears in the May 5, 2013, online ...

NIH study provides clarity on supplements for protection against blinding eye disease

2013-05-06
Adding omega-3 fatty acids did not improve a combination of nutritional supplements commonly recommended for treating age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a major cause of vision loss among older Americans, according to a study from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The plant-derived antioxidants lutein and zeaxanthin also had no overall effect on AMD when added to the combination; however, they were safer than the related antioxidant beta-carotene, according to the study published online today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. "Millions of ...

'Look but don't touch'

2013-05-06
Improving our understanding of the human brain, gathering insights into the origin of our universe through the detection of gravitational waves, or optimizing the precision of GPS systems- all are difficult challenges to master because they require the ability to visualize highly fragile elements, which can be terminally damaged by any attempt to observe them. Now, quantum physics has provided a solution. In an article published in Nature Photonics, researchers at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) report the observation of a highly fragile and volatile body through ...

Organic vapors affect clouds leading to previously unidentified climate cooling

2013-05-06
University of Manchester scientists, writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, have shown that natural emissions and manmade pollutants can both have an unexpected cooling effect on the world's climate by making clouds brighter. Clouds are made of water droplets, condensed on to tiny particles suspended in the air. When the air is humid enough, the particles swell into cloud droplets. It has been known for some decades that the number of these particles and their size control how bright the clouds appear from the top, controlling the efficiency with which clouds scatter ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Family ties and firm performance: How cousin marriage traditions shape informal businesses in Africa

Novel flu vaccine adjuvant improves protection against influenza viruses, study finds

Manipulation of light at the nanoscale helps advance biosensing

New mechanism discovered in ovarian cancer peritoneal metastasis: YWHAB restriction drives stemness and chemoresistance

New study links blood metabolites and immune cells to increased risk of urolithiasis

Pyruvate identified as a promising therapeutic agent for ulcerative colitis by targeting cytosolic phospholipase A2

New insights into the clinical impact of IKBKG mutations: Understanding the mechanisms behind rare immunodeficiency syndromes

Displays, imaging and sensing: New blue fluorophore breaks efficiency records in both solids and solutions

Sugar, the hidden thermostat in plants

Personality can explain why some CEOs earn higher salaries

This puzzle game shows kids how they’re smarter than AI

Study suggests remembrances of dead played role in rise of architecture in Andean region

Brain stimulation can boost math learning in people with weaker neural connections

Inhibiting enzyme could halt cell death in Parkinson’s disease, study finds

Neurotechnology reverses biological disadvantage in maths learning

UNDER EMBARGO: Neurotechnology reverses biological disadvantage in maths learning

Scientists target ‘molecular machine’ in the war against antimicrobial resistance

Extending classical CNOP method for deep-learning atmospheric and oceanic forecasting

Aston University research: Parents should encourage structure and independence around food to support children’s healthy eating

Thunderstorms are a major driver of tree death in tropical forests

Danforth Plant Science Center adds two new faculty members

Robotic eyes mimic human vision for superfast response to extreme lighting

Racial inequities and access to COVID-19 treatment

Residential segregation and lung cancer risk in African American adults

Scientists wipe out aggressive brain cancer tumors by targeting cellular ‘motors’

Capturability distinction analysis of continuous and pulsed guidance laws

CHEST expands Bridging Specialties Initiative to include NTM disease and bronchiectasis on World Bronchiectasis Day

Exposure to air pollution may cause heart damage

SwRI, UTSA selected by NASA to test electrolyzer technology aboard parabolic flight

Prebiotics might be a factor in preventing or treating issues caused by low brain GABA

[Press-News.org] Hospital surgical volume should be considered when judging value of procedures