When the revamped Parkland Hospital in Dallas opened recently, each of the 862 single-patient rooms in the sprawling new 17-story tower was ready to accommodate the growing number of obese patients that hospitals across the country increasingly care for. "We designed with this idea of the universal patient in mind," said Jim Henry, an associate vice president of the architectural consulting firm HDR, which worked on the new building. "Any patient can go into any room. At this hospital, a patient doesn't feel, 'I'm going into a bariatric room.' "
Rachel Miller, due to have her second child in late September, agreed with her husband that this would be her last pregnancy and decided she would be sterilized by tubal ligation after giving birth. But her hospital in Redding, owned by Dignity Health in San Francisco, refused to allow her doctor to perform the procedure, saying tubal ligation violates the ethical principles of Catholic health care facilities. Now Miller's case could become the springboard for a legal attack on barriers to reproductive procedures — other than abortions — at Catholic hospitals in California, whose numbers are steadily increasing. [Subscription Required]
If history is any guide, about 100 pregnant women and 10 organ transplant patients will have to get to Philadelphia hospitals the weekend Pope Francis is in town. Maybe heaven can wait, but some medical events can't. Given that massive security for the papal visit could make it tough to get to city hospitals on Sept. 26 and 27, health-care providers are striving to reassure patients - even though plans are in flux. One of those patients, Julie Berson, 31, whose first child is due Sept. 30, is trying to remain calm, telling herself that a city under virtual lockdown "is just another variable in the mix."
'Tis the season for back-to-school shopping, and stores are starting to stock their shelves with wigs and hats for Halloween festivities. For many parents of school-aged children, this means it's time to start worrying about head lice outbreaks that will inevitably plague schools across the country.
As many as 60,000 American women each year are told they have a very early stage of breast cancer — Stage 0, as it is commonly known — a possible precursor to what could be a deadly tumor. And almost every one of the women has either a lumpectomy or a mastectomy, and often a double mastectomy, removing a healthy breast as well. Yet it now appears that treatment may make no difference in their outcomes. Patients with this condition had close to the same likelihood of dying of breast cancer as women in the general population, and the few who died did so despite treatment, not for lack of it, researchers reported Thursday in JAMA Oncology.
New York City health officials on Thursday declared an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease in the South Bronx officially over, saying that no new cases had been reported since Aug. 3. The officials, citing test results, also confirmed they had traced the source of the outbreak to a contaminated cooling tower on top of the Opera House Hotel on East 149th Street. The finding, which was widely expected, was a blow for the hotel that opened two years ago after a multimillion-dollar renovation of a historic theater building in a poor neighborhood.