Too many patients are not getting the medicines they need in hospital, a safety watchdog says.The National Patient Safety Agency warned it was a problem in every hospital in England and Wales and is now writing to them urging action. The watchdog said it had evidence of thousands of cases of patients getting their drugs late or not at all, including 27 resulting in deaths. The government said patient safety was its top priority. From September 2006 to June 2009, the NPSA received reports of 27 deaths…
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Many lives could be saved if GPs followed guidelines for reducing cholesterol in patients at high risk of heart disease, research suggests.A study of 25,250 patients in Germany found that only about half were assigned the correct targets for lowering cholesterol. Doctors believe the findings, published in the European Heart Journal, may apply in the rest of Europe. Women are most at risk of being given insufficient treatment, they say. The study found that about 50 to 80 fewer heart attacks, strokes...
Skin transplant surgery could be an effective way of treating the skin disease vitiligo, say US researchers.A team in Detroit transferred healthy skin cells to 32 patients who had areas of the body that had lost colour due to the condition. They found the treated area regained on average 52% of its natural skin colour. In some patients with a specific type of vitiligo, the treated area regained on average 74% of its natural skin colour, the researchers said. The surgery was carried
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As much as 16 percent of the U.S. population between the ages of 14 and 49 has genital herpes, according to a government study released Tuesday. And sexually transmitted diseases of all varieties infect 19 million more Americans every year a rate that costs the health care system some $16 billion annually, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) found. The study was released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as part of the the National STD Prevention Conference...
Q. What tests can determine your risk for cardiovascular disease? Michelle from Cleveland asks the Consults blog: My family, on my mother’s side, is at risk for heart disease. My grandfather died of a massive heart attack in the steel mill where he worked at the age of 45. My mother has had two strokes and several transient ischemic attacks (T.I.A.’s) beginning at the age of 45. Her brother had quadruple bypass at age 73, and her sister had a triple bypass at 71. My father has also had...
You can do nothing — and watch your child flounder while teachers register their disapproval. Or you can get help, which generally means, first, an expensive and time-consuming evaluation, then more visits with more specialists, intensive tutoring, therapies, perhaps, or, as is often the case with attention issues, drugs.For many parents — particularly the sorts of parents who are skeptical of mainstream medicine and of the intentions of what one mother once described to me as “the...
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An Indian charity has sent a team to northern Sri Lanka to provide 1,000 amputees with artificial limbs.Workers from the BMVSS charity, which makes the so-called "Jaipur foot", will spend a month in the town of Vavuniya. The Jaipur foot is regarded as the most inexpensive and cost effective artificial limb in the world. Tens of thousands of people died in Sri Lanka’s long civil war and thousands more lost limbs as a result of mines and unexploded ordnance. Last May Sri Lanka’s...
Men are more likely than women to enjoy sex in old age, researchers have found.Men can expect nearly five extra years of an active sex life compared with women, according to a review of US data surveying about 6,000 people. At 55, men have on average 15 years of sexually active life ahead of them, and women only 10.5 years, the British Medical Journal reports. The key is good health, say the researchers, as it boosts sex drive and enjoyment. Good health means people are almost twice as likely to…
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Children with behavioural problems are twice as likely to suffer chronic pain as adults than others, say researchers.Scientists at Aberdeen University, who followed the lives of more than 19,000 children, think faulty hormone signals in the brain may play a key role. Bad early life experiences may harm this brain system, causing both behavioural problems in childhood and chronic widespread pain in adulthood. The findings, spanning 45 years, are published in the journal Rheumatology. All of the children...
There is no evidence acupuncture or Chinese herbal medicine increase the chance of getting pregnant through IVF, fertility experts say in new guidance.The methods are increasingly offered as a way of boosting the chances of a baby, but the British Fertility Society suggests couples may be wasting money. They analysed 14 trials involving 2,670 people before issuing the new guidance. But a leading practitioner said that better designed trials would show that the methods could help some couples. All...
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