Annals of Internal Medicine tip sheet for July 3, 2012, issue
2012-07-03
(Press-News.org) 1. After First Heart Attack, Patients Likely to Return to the Hospital for Unrelated Issues
Comorbid Conditions and Treatment Complications Contribute to High Rehospitalization Rate
Each year nearly 785,000 people are hospitalized for a first heart attack. Treatment advances have contributed to improved survival rates, but rehospitalization in the first 30 days after discharge remains a common and costly problem. Researchers studied 3,010 patients in one health system who were hospitalized with a first-time heart attack between 1987 and 2010 to determine the rate of rehospitalization, the reasons for rehospitalization, and the factors that increased rehospitalization. The researchers found that about 40 percent of 30-day rehospitalizations were due to the heart attack, while the remaining cases were due to other causes. Comorbid conditions such as diabetes, COPD, anemia, and higher Killip class (a risk stratification method for heart attack patients) were associated with higher rates of rehospitalization. Longer initial hospital stays and complications due to common treatments such as angiography, reperfusion, or revascularization were also associated with an increased risk for rehospitalization. The researchers conclude that recognizing and addressing the factors that contribute to rehospitalization may help to improve patient outcomes.
2. Half of Heart Patients Make Serious Medication Errors, Even When Pharmacists Intervene
Many heart patients make mistakes with their medications after hospital discharge that could lead to clinically important adverse outcomes. Patients who are most vulnerable are the elderly, those with impaired cognitive function or low health literacy, or patients who are prescribed numerous or high-risk medications. These outcomes could be prevented, or their severity could be reduced with appropriate interventions. Researchers randomly assigned 831 adults hospitalized for acute coronary syndromes or acute decompensated heart failure to either usual care or usual care plus a pharmacist intervention (check of medication accuracy, in-patient counseling, patient-education materials, telephone follow-up). In the 30 days following hospitalization, one half of the patients had a clinically important medication error, regardless of whether they were in the usual care or pharmacist intervention group. The researchers conclude that more work is needed to help prevent medication errors in cardiac patients.
INFORMATION:
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2012-07-03
Brown widow spiders are relatively new to North America, where they were first documented in Florida in 1935, and even newer to southern California, where they were only recently discovered in 2003. However, in the last decade they have been so successful that they may be displacing native black widow spiders. If so, the overall danger to homeowners may decrease because brown widow spider bites are less toxic than those of native western black widow spiders.
In "The Prevalence of Brown Widow and Black Widow Spiders (Araneae: Theridiidae) in Urban Southern California," ...
2012-07-03
A new species of phorid fly from Thailand is the smallest fly ever discovered. At just 0.40 millimeters in length, it is 15 times smaller than a house fly and five times smaller than a fruit fly.
The tiny fly, Euryplatea nanaknihali, is also the first of its genus to be discovered in Asia, and it belongs to a fly family (Phoridae) that is known for "decapitating" ants.
Some species in the Phoridae fly family lay eggs in the bodies of ants, and the resulting larvae feed in the ants' heads, eventually causing decapitation. In fact, some of these phorid flies are being ...
2012-07-03
MINNEAPOLIS – Botulinum toxin may help prevent shaking or tremor in the arms and hands of people with multiple sclerosis (MS), according to new research published in the July 3, 2012, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
"Treatments in use for tremor in MS are not sufficiently effective and new alternatives are needed," said study author Anneke van der Walt, MD, consultant neurologist at The Royal Melbourne Hospital and research fellow with the University of Melbourne in Australia.
For the study 23 people with MS were ...
2012-07-03
Fruit flies on dietary restriction (DR) need to be physically active in order to get the lifespan extending benefits that come from their Spartan diet. If the same axiom holds true in humans, those practicing caloric restriction in hopes of living longer need to make sure they eat enough to avoid fatigue.
According to research at the Buck Institute, flies on DR shift their metabolism toward increasing fatty acid synthesis and breakdown, specifically in muscle tissue. "Dietary restriction is known to enhance spontaneous movement in a variety of species including primates, ...
2012-07-03
Tree ring and oxygen isotope data from the U.S. Pacific Northwest do not provide the same information on past precipitation, but rather than causing a problem, the differing results are a good thing, according to a team of geologists.
The researchers are trying to understand the larger spatial patterns and timing of drought in the arid and semiarid areas of the American West.
"We generally understand that the Medieval Climate Anomaly, a warm period in much of the northern hemisphere that occurred about 950 to 1250 was a dry period in the American West," said Byron ...
2012-07-03
High levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol increases the risk for coronary heart disease. A variant in the human gene encoding the protein sortilin is associated with reduced plasma LDL levels and a decreased risk of heart attack. This variant results in markedly higher sortilin protein expression in liver. Dr. Daniel Rader and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia have uncovered a two-pronged mechanism for the change in LDL observed. Using a mouse model system, the Rader team found that increased liver sortilin is responsible for reducing ...
2012-07-03
CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE
Gene variant reduces cholesterol by two mechanisms
High levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol increases the risk for coronary heart disease. A variant in the human gene encoding the protein sortilin is associated with reduced plasma LDL levels and a decreased risk of heart attack. This variant results in markedly higher sortilin protein expression in liver. Dr. Daniel Rader and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia have uncovered a two-pronged mechanism for the change in LDL observed. Using a mouse model system, ...
2012-07-03
In Parkinson's disease, the loss of dopamine-producing cells in the midbrain causes well-characterized motor symptoms. Though embryonic stem cells could potentially be used to replace dopaminergic (DA) neurons in Parkinson's disease patients, such cell therapy options must still overcome technical obstacles before the approach is ready for the clinic. Embryonic stem cell-based transplantation regimens carry a risk of introducing inappropriate cells or even cancer-prone cells. To develop cell purification strategies to minimize these risks, Dr. Lorenza Studer and colleagues ...
2012-07-03
The influence of aerosols (small particles less than 1 micrometre in diameter) and clouds (liquid droplets 1 – 1000 micrometres diameter) represents one of the largest uncertainties in our understanding of trends in past global climate and predicting future climate change, as recognised by the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
One of the most significant 'known unknowns' is how quickly water can condense on the small aerosol particles to grow and become cloud droplets, influencing the albedo (reflectivity) of clouds and cloud lifetime (precipitation). ...
2012-07-03
Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adolescents have experienced an anger attack that involved threatening violence, destroying property or engaging in violence toward others at some point in their lives. These severe attacks of uncontrollable anger are much more common among adolescents than previously recognized, a new study led by researchers from Harvard Medical School finds.
The study, based on the National Comorbidity Survey Replication Adolescent Supplement, a national face-to-face household survey of 10,148 U.S. adolescents, found that nearly two-thirds of adolescents in ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Annals of Internal Medicine tip sheet for July 3, 2012, issue
