Police are searching for a trio of thieves who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of medical equipment from a hospital in suburban Philadelphia. The three thieves broke into Lankenau Medical Center on 100 Lancaster Ave. in Wynnewood on Saturday at 7:30 a.m. and stole several Olympus colonoscopes worth approximately $450,000 in total, police said. The tube-like instruments are used to examine the colon during a colonoscopy procedure.
Cheshire Medical Center was forced to evacuate patients Thursday after a boiler malfunction caused the hospital to lose heat and hot water. A hospital spokesperson said 46 inpatients were transferred to the nearest hospitals that could handle their level of care, including Brattleboro Memorial Hospital in Brattleboro, Vt.
More than 100 cancer survivors, caregivers and their families from across the state gathered in Madison Thursday to urge lawmakers to improve the care and quality of life for patients with long-term illnesses. Throughout the day, advocates met with their legislators and asked them to cosponsor a bill to establish a state advisory committee on palliative care.
Is it possible something as simple as a special cleanser could save a patient from getting a health care-associated infection? The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided to test the theory. It examined chlorhexidine (CHG), an antimicrobial cleansing agent used primarily to bathe patients hospitalized in the intensive care unit, to see if it could prevent health care–associated infections (HAIs), particularly antibiotic-resistant staph infections, known as MRSAs, or “superbugs.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report 695 measles cases in 22 states. "This is the greatest number of cases reported in the United States since measles was eliminated from this country in 2000," according to a CDC statement issued late Wednesday.
Using antibiotics for two months or longer may be linked to an increase in a woman’s risk for cardiovascular disease. The finding, published in the European Heart Journal, applied to women who used the drugs when they were 40 and older. Researchers used data on 36,429 women free of cardiovascular disease at the start of the study who were participating in a continuing long-term health study.