Lengthy antibiotic treatment failed to improve quality of life among patients with symptoms attributed to persistent Lyme disease, a randomized Dutch study found. "Patients with subjective, vexing symptoms attributed to Lyme disease should not anticipate that even longer courses of antibiotics will produce relief," researchers say.
Two biomarkers may help better diagnose mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), although one appears to be better than the other, researchers found. In a study of patients treated at a level 1 trauma center, glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) beat out ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase L1 (UCH-L1) for detecting TBI, CT lesions, and neurosurgical intervention.
At 4 a.m. Saturday, when New York City’s public-hospital network expects to switch on its new electronic medical-records system at two hospitals in Queens, its president and chief executive plans to be at Elmhurst Hospital.“I will be physically present,” said Ramanathan Raju, a trauma surgeon who became head of the system in 2014. “People will be anxious.” The $764 million implementation is the latest step in what hospital officials hope will be a five-year transformation of the financially troubled public health system.
MedStar Health patients were being turned away or treated without important computer records Tuesday as the health-care giant worked to restore online systems crippled by a virus. By Tuesday evening, MedStar staff could read (but not update) thousands of patient records in its central database, though other systems remained dark, a spokeswoman said. MedStar officials have refused to characterize the attack as “ransomware.” But a number of employees reported seeing a pop-up on their computer screens seeking payment in bitcoins, an Internet currency.
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist and Harvard oncologist have a proposal to get highly effective but prohibitively expensive drugs into consumers’ hands: health care installment loans. Writing last month in the journal Science Translational Medicine, the authors liken drug loans to mortgages, noting that both can enable consumers to buy big-ticket items requiring a hefty up-front payment that they could not otherwise afford.Some consumer advocates and health insurance experts see it differently.
On weekdays, Dr. Patrick H. Conway is one of the most powerful doctors in America, steering federal health programs that spend nearly $1 trillion a year while shaping health policies that affect tens of millions of citizens. On many weekends, he is just another doctor in blue sterile gloves and a yellow gown with a stethoscope around his neck, comforting children and training young physicians, many of whom have no idea of his other role.