Two years ago, New York Times reporter Walt Bogdanich received a tip from a source at a major New York City hospital. The source said premature babies at the hospital were receiving much higher doses of radiation during procedures than what was typically recommended. Some premature infants were receiving full body scans, with much higher doses of radiation, when a chest X-ray—with a much lower dose of radiation—would have sufficed. Bogdanich's stories about over-radiation at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn prompted a state investigation, but problems at the hospital persisted. "The state found that the problems had continued, even after we reported them, and that's where it stands right now," Bogdanich says. "At some point, I suppose there will be some discipline imposed, but it was quite surprising to us—and to the state—that after these serious issues were laid out on the front page of The New York Times that people in the radiology department were continuing to make mistakes."
A state report released yesterday found a wide variation in the frequency of caesarean sections at Massachusetts hospitals, in an analysis restricted to first-time mothers with low-risk pregnancies who would be least likely to need the surgery. The Department of Public Health report showed that the caesarean rates for these low-risk women ranged from 10% to 35% among the hospitals in 2009, the most recent year for which the data are available. "This degree of variation suggests all are not practicing the procedure at the ideal rate," Lauren Smith, MD, the agency's medical director, said in an interview. State health officials, saying they were surprised and mystified by the wide variation, released the findings at a meeting yesterday with representatives from 49 hospitals that perform deliveries in the state. The officials hope to get the hospitals' help in rooting out unnecessary caesareans.
Data mining of the medical literature could help uncover drug side effects before they cause serious harm to patients, a new study suggests. Researchers from Santa Monica, CA think tank Rand surmised that a review of published studies could help regulators, like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, spot dangerous uses of drugs earlier and prevent situations like the 2004 recall of rofecoxib--sold under the brand name Vioxx--following revelations that the arthritis drug could increase the risk of heart attack and stroke."Regulatory agencies and drug safety researchers may be able to use these techniques to improve decision-making about drug safety," Rand CTO Siddhartha Dalal and researcher Kanaka D Shetty, MD, wrote in a new article published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.
The psychiatric clinic specialized in broken kids. But there was a big problem: Too many patients never made it through the front door. Families waited months for appointments at the UCLA facility, and those who nabbed slots often had to arrange their frazzled lives around doctors' morning-only schedules. Then an upstart named David Feinberg took over. The 32-year-old psychiatrist made same-day appointments available and handled extra cases. He scheduled visits in the afternoons so troubled youngsters wouldn't have to miss school, and he stocked the waiting room with fresh coffee and Graham crackers. It paid off. A clinic where fewer than half the patients showed up for appointments suddenly had a full house. UCLA took notice and handed Feinberg job after job. Almost two decades later, he's in charge of UCLA's entire hospital system, leading an empire with more than 10,000 employees and a reputation for groundbreaking medicine. Over all those years, he's never let go of his philosophy that patients -- and compassion -- come first.
Bedbugs leave their victims with itchy red welts, but they haven't been considered much of a threat when it comes to the spread of disease. A new report calls that assumption into question.
Researchers have now found antibiotic-resistant bacteria in bedbugs from three hospital patients in Vancouver, Canada. On one patient, researchers found three bedbugs carrying methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, a bacterium resistant to many common antibiotics. On two patients, they found a bedbug with vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium, or VRE, another bacterium resistant to common antibiotics. The report was published online before being printed in the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. The researchers hasten to point out that there is no, repeat, no evidence linking bedbugs to disease transmission. But, they say, it's possible.
James Collins is a Boston University bioengineer whose research on the warfare between bacteria and antibiotics has persuaded him that his illnesses in college were more than bad luck. Instead, he blames "persisters," bacteria that evade medications by slipping into a zombielike state, then mysteriously reawaken to cause new infections. In a study to be published today, Collins, 45, reports that he and colleagues have discovered how to make these bacteria, which are thought to underlie many stubborn infections, susceptible to drugs. Their solution is deliciously simple: Just add sugar. "Could we wake these guys up?'' Collins asked. "Could we . . . get them up off the ground so we can punch them and knock them out?" The answer appears to be yes. In tests in a lab dish and in mice, the sugar revved bacteria up just enough so that a particular type of antibiotic could make its way into the cells and destroy them.