Barbara Swansburg was volunteering for a rare Saturday morning shift at the Sawtelle Family Hospice House in Reading when she was asked to feed the new patient in Room 7. "I got up there and gave him his Danish and orange juice, and I came out of the room and said, 'I know this man, where do I know him from?" When she returned to the hospice the next day for her regular Sunday visit, she asked a nurse the patient's name. It was Dr. Richard Heidbreder. Thirteen years ago, Heidbreder, a radiation oncologist at Winchester Hospital, treated Swansburg for breast cancer. She had gone to him after a bad experience with another doctor. "I was still pretty fragile and [Dr. Heidbreder] picked up all the pieces," said Swansburg, 73, of Tewksbury. "He was very compassionate, very caring, and took all the time explaining [the treatment]. It was a very nice visit, and from then on, too." A year later, Swansburg was in remission. She'd see Heidbreder at an annual gathering for cancer survivors, but hadn't attended for a few years. Meanwhile, Heidbreder, 59, of Reading, had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, in the summer of 2008. Weakness in his arms forced him to retire as medical director of Winchester Hospital's radiation oncology service in November 2009. In June, he moved into the hospice house. As soon as she learned who he was, Swansburg told the hospice's volunteer coordinator she'd like to come in Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings to feed Heidbreder. "I wanted to give back something,'' she said.
Shands HealthCare at the University of Florida has suspended its liver and pancreas transplant programs after the sudden departure of three of its four organ transplant surgeons. The Gainesville transplant center took the action Friday and over the weekend tried to notify all 125 patients waiting for new organs. "If you have a busy transplant program, and you lose even a couple surgeons, it's a major blow," said Kevin Behrns, MD, chairman of surgery at UF's College of Medicine. He is working to recruit multi-organ surgeons who are trained to transplant livers, pancreases and kidneys. Patients waiting for a new liver or pancreas will be placed on another hospital list until Shands can reopen its program, he said. The move should not delay their treatment. The United Network for Organ Sharing is working with Shands to connect patients to other transplant centers. The nearest ones are the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida Hospital in Orlando and Tampa General Hospital.
Peek inside any American family's medicine cabinet and you're likely to find a drug that was tested in a foreign country. Pharmaceutical companies have been shifting research overseas for years and the number of foreign trials has skyrocketed. The Department of Health and Human Services reports more than a 2,000% increase in the number of foreign trials for U.S. drugs over the past two decades. In 2008, about 80% of drug applications approved by the Food and Drug Administration contained data from foreign clinical trials. The growth in developing countries and emerging economies in particular has been "explosive" said Arthur Caplan, MD, director of the Center for Bioethics at University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. Caplan explained the appeal of holding clinical trials in developing countries and the ethical issues raised by this research trend.
A one-page list of 56 common medical tests and procedures could shake up the way doctors deliver care at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Why? Because there's a price next to each item. Such lists are very unusual. Most doctors have no idea what they are spending when they order care for patients -- and finding out is an eye-opening experience. "I didn't realize that the prices were as high as they actually were, although I knew that there were some pretty extreme examples," said David Ives, a primary care doctor and the medical director of Affiliated Physicians Group, the largest group of private doctors that admits patients to Beth Israel. "One [price] that really pissed me off," Ives said, "was that when you send someone to an ear, nose and throat [specialist], something like 80 to 90 percent of the time they get a flexible scope of their sinuses." Ives says using this flexible cord with chip camera is rarely better than having the doctor look up a patient's nose or down their throat, but it costs 10 times more than the physical exam.
Scores of California hospitals, under pressure to reduce infections that kill an estimated 12,000 patients every year, say they have managed to cut costs and save lives through an initiative that has nurses and doctors redoubling efforts to prevent deadly germs from taking root. The three-year campaign is bringing together 160 hospitals across the state with the aim of reducing an estimated 200,000 hospital-related infections in California that add $600 million to healthcare costs every year. Since its launch 19 months ago, the initiative is credited with cutting ventilator-associated pneumonia 41%. Urinary tract infections related to catheters fell 24% last year, and cases of blood poisoning dropped 11%. The lower rates have saved an estimated $11 million in healthcare costs. "We're definitely making progress," said Philip Robinson, MD, who oversees infection prevention at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach. "Each one of these infections is a burden to patients, hospitals and the whole healthcare system."
The federal government has received a surge in complaints in recent months about failed hip replacements, suggesting that serious problems persist with some types of artificial hips even as researchers scramble to evaluate the health dangers. An analysis of federal data by The New York Times indicates that the Food and Drug Administration has received more than 5,000 reports since January about several widely used devices known as metal-on-metal hips, more than the agency had received about those devices in the previous four years combined. The vast majority of filings appear to reflect patients who have had an all-metal hip removed, or will soon undergo such a procedure because a device failed after only a few years; typically, replacement hips last 15 years or more. The mounting complaints confirm what many experts have feared -- that all-metal replacement hips are on a trajectory to become the biggest and most costly medical implant problem since Medtronic recalled a widely used heart device component in 2007. About 7,700 complaints have been filed in connection with that recall.