It's warming up in the Middle East, and as the mercury rises, so does the intensity of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that means the number of seriously injured American soldiers passing through here is also rising every day. Ramstein is known as the U.S. military's gateway to Europe, since it's where most personnel touch down when deployed here, the Middle East, or Africa. It's also part of the Kaiserslauten Military Community, whose 54,000 U.S. citizens make up the world's largest concentration outside the United States. But it's also a gateway of a much more solemn kind. This is where soldiers badly wounded in combat are taken and from where they are then flown back home. And for the medical personnel here, whose job it is to process each and every one of those soldiers, whether they walk off the plane under their own power or if they're unconscious and clinging to life, each day means finding a way to remain positive while confronting the very real human effects of America's wars.
Metro Atlantans face risks of medical errors and life-threatening infections that are above national averages when they are admitted to some of the area's most prestigious hospitals, according to a study of new federal data. These conditions occur only a few times per year at most hospitals, according to the statistics, which cover Medicare patients treated between October 2008 and June 2010. Even so, the last thing hospital patients expect is that a hospital will make them sick. Or worse. The new data show most Atlanta hospitals had at least one case of a potentially deadly catheter-related bloodstream infection — commonly referred to as a "central line" infection — and Emory University Hospital posted the highest rate in the state and one of the highest in the nation, the report shows. In terms of numbers, not rates, the 36 central line infections reported at Emory gave it the fourth-worst ranking among about 3,300 hospitals in the nation. Other outliers included University Hospital in Augusta, which recorded the second-highest number of catheter-related urinary tract infections in the country with 77.
Retailers and bankers are already familiar with the concept. And soon doctors in Tennessee could learn what it means to get a call from the mystery shopper. Tennessee is among nine states where some physicians' offices could receive cold telephone calls from researchers posing as patients in a bid to gauge whether primary-care doctors are willing to see patients on Medicaid or private insurance. "We're working to expand access to primary care nationally while also tracking the success of those efforts at the community level," said Richard Kronick, a deputy assistant secretary with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Under the proposal, which is up for public comment for much of this month, the mystery shopper program would try to gauge how quickly patients are able to get an appointment — especially to see a doctor for the first time.
A donor's death was the final blow for a struggling kidney transplant program depended upon by patients across the South Plains, newly released records show. Documents obtained by The Avalanche-Journal under the Freedom of Information Act from the Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services provide explanations never given to University Medical Center transplant patients, now searching across the Southwest for a new, highly specialized surgeon to perform the life-saving operation. High demand overwhelmed the small program, and, the records show, consequences were deadly. The donor's death motivated hospital officials to suspend the program Jan. 21, and letters were sent notifying patients Jan. 27. An Independent Peer Review Team, composed of transplant and nephrology experts from across the country, visited the hospital to inspect the program, in light of poor mortality rates.
The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it will require changes in the labeling of a family of drugs used to treat benign prostate hyperplasia to indicate that the drugs increase the risk of developing a more aggressive form of prostate cancer. The family of drugs are called 5-alpha reductase inhibitors, or 5-ARIs, and includes finasteride ( Proscar) and dutasteride ( Avodart), as well as the hair-growth drug Propecia. Dutasteride is also sold in combination with tamsulosin under the brand name Jalyn. The drugs are also increasingly used as a preventive agent for men who are at high risk of developing prostate cancer, but they are not approved for that purpose. The drugs interfere with the production of male hormones, starving the tumors of nutrients they need to grow. For use in treating prostate cancer, the FDA said, the benefits of the drugs far outweigh the risks.
Emergency room visits have been on the rise in Massachusetts since the passage of the 2006 healthcare law, much to the chagrin of supporters who projected that the opposite would happen as more people had insurance and were connected with primary care providers. A new study published online shows that the issue may be a bit more nuanced. While overall emergency room visits increased about 4.1% between 2006 and 2008, visits for "low severity" problems fell slightly, by 1.8%, among patients who are poor or uninsured, according to the study posted last month by the Annals of Emergency Medicine. The decline is a small step in the right direction, but it also provides a reality check, said the lead author, Peter Smulowitz, MD, an emergency physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.