In The News This Week … May 4–10, 2008: Preparedness, Alzheimer's, Kids, & Cancer

Who Gets Treated During a Pandemic?

With the threat of a flu pandemic or mass critical care disasters one day occurring, doctors in the United States and Canada have developed an emergency mass critical care (EMCC) framework to optimize and manage critical care resources for hospitals and public health authorities. The framework includes recommendations about who would not receive treatment should such a situation occur. Patients will meet exclusion criteria when they have a very high risk of death, little likelihood of long-term survival, and a correspondingly low likelihood of benefit from critical care resources, and exclusion assessment will also take into account their Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score and the severity of any chronic illness. The recommendations were published in a supplement to the May issue of Chest. Also see the May 5 press release from the American College of Chest Physicians.

Survey of US ERs

A House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee survey of 34 Level I ERs in Washington, DC, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Denver, and Minneapolis, which took place at 4:30pm local time on March 25, 2008, has found that none of the 34 hospitals had sufficient ER capacity to treat a sudden influx of victims from a terrorist bombing; the hospitals had virtually no free ICU beds to treat the most seriously injured casualties; and the hospitals did not have enough regular inpatient beds to handle less seriously injured victims. One ER visited was operating at 200% of capacity, and more than half of the patients had been diverted to hallways or waiting rooms for treatment. The survey was prompted by the president's proposed $18.2 billion in cuts to Medicaid over five years. To read the statements and reports, see the page for the Committee to Hold Hearings on the Lack of Hospital Emergency Surge Capacity.

Arms, Legs, & Alzheimer's?

A paper published in the May 6 issue of Neurology reports that women who have short arms and legs (specifically floor to knee length) may be at greater risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer's disease than women with greater arm spans and longer legs. In men, only shorter arm span was linked to a higher risk of dementia.

Ibuprofen to Prevent Alzheimer's

Also from this week's issue of Neurology is the finding that long-term use of NSAIDs, particularly ibuprofen, is protective against Alzheimer's.

Another Risk Factor for Autism

An article published in the May issue of Pediatrics reports that kids with autism were more likely to have parents who have been hospitalized for a mental disorder, with schizophrenia the more common case among mothers and fathers, and depression and personality disorders more common among mothers than among fathers. Specifically, parents of children with autism were roughly twice as likely to have been hospitalized for a mental disorder as parents of other children. The study looked at 1,237 Swedish children born between 1977 and 2003 who were diagnosed with autism before age 10, and compared them with 30,925 control subjects matched for gender, year of birth, and hospital. Also see the May 5 news release from UNC Chapel Hill.

Antipsychotics & Kids

A study published in the May issue of Pediatrics has found that the overall prevalence of antipsychotics prescribed for those 18 and under in the UK almost doubled between 1992 and 2005; however, the rate of increase was much lower than the reported figures in the United States.

Breastfeeding for Baby's Brain

While it's not news that "breast is best" for babies, new research published in the May issue of Archives of General Psychiatry concludes that their findings, "…based on the largest randomized trial ever conducted in the area of human lactation, provide strong evidence that prolonged and exclusive breastfeeding improves children's cognitive development." This finding supports a November 2007 study, which found that breastfeeding boosted IQ in kids who had the right genes to digest the fatty acids in breast milk. Meanwhile, earlier research showed that breastfed kids scored higher on intelligence tests because their moms tended to be more intelligent and better educated, and provided a more stimulating home environment. (For more on breastfeeding see our trivia from July 31, 2007.)

Breast Tumor Growth

Findings published on May 8 in Breast Cancer Research, which looked at mammography screening data from 395,188 women aged 50 to 69 years, has found that 5% of breast tumors double in size in just over one month, growing from 10 to 20 mm in diameter, while another 5% take 6.3 years to grow the same amount. The average time a tumor needs to grow from 10 to 20 mm was 1.7 years. Researchers also found that detection rates were at 26% for a tumor of 5 mm, but at 91% for tumors of 10 mm.

IUDs and Protection against Cancer

An update presented at this week's Clinical Meeting of The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists reports that IUDs are associated with a 40% reduction in the risk of endometrial cancer, similar to the cancer protection provided by oral contraceptives. The hormonal type of IUD is also an alternative to leuprolide acetate injections or a 'watch and wait' approach (to see if the pain improves by itself) for treating endometriosis, while an emerging use for the hormonal IUD is treating endometrial hyperplasia, a condition in which there is abnormal overgrowth of the endometrium. Dr. David A. Grimes who presented the findings summarized, "The IUD is underutilized as a contraceptive in the US. …Research is showing that it has health benefits far beyond preventing pregnancy."

Hope for Women Smokers Who Quit

A contribution published in the May 7 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association has some good news, some so-so news, and some bad news. Researchers found that most of the excess risk of vascular mortality in women "may be eliminated rapidly" upon quitting smoking, while in the case of lung diseases, excess risk may be eliminated within 20 years of smoking cessation. They also found that postponing the age of beginning smoking reduces the risk for respiratory disease, lung cancer, and other smoking-related cancer deaths, but has little effect on other cause-specific mortality. And they found that smoking is associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer mortality. The findings were based on a cohort of 104,519 female participants in the Nurses' Health Study, with follow-up from 1980 to 2004.

Discuss This Article

Have something you'd like to say? Tell us what you think! Read and post comments for this article.

Find a Job

Choose your career:

MedHunters is the world's biggest healthcare job board. Our job directory has 16,633 jobs with 2,439 hospitals and other direct employers.

We want you to find your next job on MedHunters. Need Help? Call us at 1-888-884-8242, email us at info@medhunters.com or sign up now.