Health General

Two Months After Floods Thousands Flock to Lourdes for Assumption

by Rukmani Krishna on August 17, 2013 at 11:34 PM Lifestyle News Two months after the church in southwestern France was damaged by floodwaters, six thousand Catholic faithful attended an Assumption mass in the Basilica of Saint Pius X in Lourdes. Two Months After Floods Thousands Flock to Lourdes for Assumption
The crowds were only slightly smaller than last year and a spokesman for the town's religious sites said the recovery had been faster than expected thanks to successful fund-raising campaign.

The attendees were just some of the 25,000 people who made the journey from across Europe to celebrate the Virgin Mary's ascension into heaven, in the French town known for its apparitions of the Virgin to a poor 14-year-old girl.

Scars from the flooding are still visible in closed roads, shuttered buildings and closed hotels, although these traces are only a distant evocation of the devastation of two months ago.

Pilgrims prayed at the grotto where, according to Catholic tradition, the Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette Soubirous in 1858.

In a meadow where another mass was held, about 7,000 people, many of them in poor health, participated in the celebration of the Eucharist.

Three people were killed in the June flooding and thousands were evacuated from hotels flooded with water overflowing from the Gave de Pau river.

Six million people visit Lourdes every year, with the numbers in July and August peaking at up to 40,000 a day.

Source-AFP

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One in Five Women Don't Believe They may Have Breast Cancer

The new study from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center found that most of the women who didn't believe their risk numbers said they did not feel it took into account their family history of cancer or their personal health habits.

Senior study author Angela Fagerlin, Ph.D., associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School and a research scientist at the VA Ann Arbor Center for Clinical Management Research, said that if people don't believe their risk numbers, it does not allow them to make informed medical decisions.

She said that women who believe their risk is not high might skip chemoprevention strategies that could significantly reduce their risk.

Fagerlin asserted that women who think their risk should be higher could potentially undergo treatments that might not be medically appropriate, which can have long-term ramifications

Some 690 women who were at above-average risk of developing breast cancer completed a web-based decision aid that included questions about age, ethnicity, personal history of breast cancer, and number of first-degree relatives who had had breast cancer.

The women then were told their five-year risk of developing breast cancer and given information about prevention strategies.

After receiving this information, the women were asked to recall their risk of breast cancer within the next five years. If they answered incorrectly, they were asked why: they forgot, made a rounding error or disagreed with the number. The researchers found that 22 percent of women who misreported their risk said they disagreed with the numbers.

The most common reason women said they disagreed with their risk was that their family history made them either more or less likely to develop breast cancer.

Many believed that because an aunt or father had cancer, it increased their risk. Only first-degree female relatives-mother, sister, daughter - impact a person's breast cancer risk. Others felt a lack of family history meant their cancer risk should be very low.

33 percent of women cited a gut instinct that their risk numbers just seemed too high or too low.

The findings have been published in Patient Education and Counselling.

Source-ANI

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'Rothman Index' A Useful Tool to Lower Repeat Hospitalization Risk

by Bidita Debnath on August 17, 2013 at 8:29 PM Hospital News A health risk score calculated automatically using routine data from hospital electronic medical records (EMR) systems can identify patients at high risk of unplanned hospital readmission. 'Rothman Index' A Useful Tool to Lower Repeat Hospitalization Risk
This is being reported in a study in the September issue of Medical Care, published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

The score, called the Rothman Index, may provide a useful tool for lowering the rate of avoidable repeat hospitalizations, according to the report by Elizabeth Bradley, PhD, of Yale School of Public Health and colleagues. They write, "Clinicians can use the Rothman index to target hospital programs and supports to patients at highest risk of readmission."

Routine Data Identify Patients at High Risk of ReadmissionThe researchers evaluated the Rothman Index as a "practical tool" for assessing readmission risk. The Rothman Index software uses information from the hospital EMR system to provide a continuously updated score indicating the likelihood of death or readmission within 30 days.

The score is calculated automatically using routine data on each patient's vital signs, routine nursing assessments, skin condition, heart rhythms, and laboratory tests. Lower Rothman Index scores (from a maximum of 100) indicate a higher risk of readmission.

Dr Bradley and colleagues evaluated the ability of the Rothman Index to predict hospital readmission, based on data from more than 2,700 patients hospitalized during 2011. (During this time, doctors and nurses did not have access to the Rothman Index scores.) Sixteen percent of the patients had an unplanned readmission within 30 days after hospital discharge.

The Rothman Index was strongly associated with the risk of unplanned readmission. For patients in the highest-risk category?Rothman Index less than 70?readmission risk was more than 1 in 5. By comparison, for those in the lowest-risk category?Rothman Index 80 or higher?the risk was about 1 in 10.

After adjustment for other factors, patients in the highest versus lowest risk category were more than two and a half times as likely to be readmitted within 30 days of discharge. The Rothman Index predicted readmission across diagnoses and medical specialties.

Rothman Index Could Help Efforts to Lower Repeat HospitalizationsUnplanned hospital admissions are a major quality and cost issue in the US healthcare system. About 20 percent of Medicare patients are readmitted to the hospital within 30 days, at an estimated cost of $17 billion per year. Hospitals are looking for more effective ways of reducing readmissions?especially now that Medicare has begun reducing payments to hospitals with high readmission rates.

The Rothman index is especially valuable because it is calculated automatically from routine data, requiring no manual input from busy healthcare professionals. It was developed by brothers Michael and Steven Rothman in memory of their mother, who died unexpectedly four days after hospital discharge following heart surgery.

During their mother's illness, the Rothman brothers were surprised to learn that the hospital's EMR system did not generate summary patient health measures that might have alerted doctors to unrecognized complications that were present at discharge. While neither of the brothers had medical training, both were computer scientists with experience in applying complex analytical tools to massive electronic databases.

The new study suggests that the Rothman Index could help reduce rates of unplanned readmission, identifying a group of patients two to three times more likely to be readmitted. Implemented into daily care, the Rothman Index could provide "a practical way for clinicians to identify patients who might be at higher risk for unplanned readmission and intervene specifically for these patients to try to avert unplanned readmission," Dr Bradley and coauthors write.

"We know the Rothman Index is associated with readmissions, but we do not know if it can be used to improve decision making at the bedside in terms of when patients are discharged," commented Dr Bradley, who is professor of public health at the Yale School of Public Health and faculty director at the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute.

"We also don't know if physicians would benefit from using it as part of determining what kinds of added supports at home and in the community might be arranged at discharge," Dr Bradley added. "Answering these questions will determine if the Rothman Index can be used prospectively by clinicians to reduce readmissions and adverse events post-hospitalization." Dr Bradley's coauthors were Olga Yakusheva, PhD, Leora I. Horwitz, MD, Heather Sipsma, PhD, and Jason Fletcher, PhD.

Source-Eurekalert

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Genetic Mutation Responsible for Increased Risk of Tuberculosis Among Africans Identified

by Kathy Jones on July 27, 2013 at 7:44 PM Research News A genetic mutation in Africans suffering from HIV infection increases their risk of developing tuberculosis, a new study conducted by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania reveals. Genetic Mutation Responsible for Increased Risk of Tuberculosis Among Africans Identified
Africans have some of the highest rates of TB in the world, and it has long been suspected that genetic susceptibility plays a role. However, establishing candidate genes across populations to gauge risk has remained a challenge.

Now, a new study, published this week in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that a commonly occurring polymorphism in an immune response gene called macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) confers almost a two-and-a-half fold increased risk for severe TB in patients from Uganda who were co-infected with HIV.

Low-expressers of MIF were almost twice as common among people of African ancestry as Caucasians.

"These results help explain the increased incidence of TB among this group," said Rituparna Das, MD, PhD, an instructor in the division of Infectious Diseases at Penn Medicine. "Moreover, this is especially important in people co-infected with HIV, who have a compromised immune system and also constitute the major public health challenge of controlling TB."

TB's prevalence is rising because of drug resistance and an increasing number of patients who are co-infected with HIV. People with HIV and latent TB infection are at a much higher risk for progressing to active TB disease, so identifying patients earlier and getting them in preventative TB treatments is a priority.

"Therapies to augment MIF action are under development, and may provide a new tool to combat the global TB epidemic," said Dr. Das. Recently, Dr. Das received funding from the Penn Center for AIDS Research to further examine MIF in Botswana. The pilot project will examine the distribution of MIF genetic polymorphisms among HIV co-infected patients with pulmonary TB from the Botswana-UPenn Partnership site.

"With the high degree of TB exposure in that community, we hope to identify which patients are more likely to go on to develop active TB disease, and in the future, target these patients for preventive therapies," said Dr. Das.

Source-Eurekalert

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Listen to Your Favorite Songs While You Shower With Aquatunes

by Kathy Jones on August 10, 2013 at 10:05 PM Medical Gadgets Chinese electronics giant Haier has come out with a new range of 'Aquatunes' water heater featuring a unique sing-in-shower technology that allows users to listen to their favorite tracks when taking a bath. Listen to Your Favorite Songs While You Shower With Aquatunes
The advanced technology comes with a plug-and-play option, which allows the water heater to play the music as soon as a pen-drive is plugged in the device.

The two in-built speakers produce music with volume over 90 decibels thus enabling the user to enjoy music even when the shower is on. The two-channel stereo audio signal deliver high quality music.

The newly-launched Aquatunes water-heater models, ES15V-P3 and ES25V-P3, come with a energy efficiency rating and are packed with incredible features like Safe-care Technology, IPX4 water proofing and four- and seven-year warranty. Some of the other features include smart control through remote, smart timer, smart memory and fluctuation voltage.

"Aquatunes as a concept in water heaters is a great achievement that we have been able to initiate. We realise how important music is to Indians and how passionate we are for our music, especially as bathroom singers," said Eric Braganza, president, Haier India in a statement.

"The product not only aims at stylising and adding to the glam-quotient of the rapidly evolving urban-Indian household's bathrooms but also to add value to the customers," added Braganza.

The ES15V-P3 is electrically controlled, vertically installed and comes with a 15 litre capacity and weighs 12 kg. The product costs Rs.11,130.

Source-IANS

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Study: We Owe Our Swimming Style to Apes

The study conducted on chimpanzees and orang-utans also suggested that unlike humans, great apes do not prefer deep water dives because they are afraid of finding unseen predators that might be loitering there, New Scientist reported.

However, the detailed description by University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa has showed that they may go deep if they feel safe enough.

It was found that the chimpanzee and the orang-utan both moved their limbs out sideways from their bodies.

Researchers suggested that while almost all other four-limbed mammals use doggy paddle with their limbs moving vertically through the water directly beneath their body, apes exhibit an unusual behaviour.

Source-ANI

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Health General

Two Months After Floods Thousands Flock to Lourdes for Assumption

One in Five Women Don't Believe They may Have Breast Cancer

'Rothman Index' A Useful Tool to Lower Repeat Hospitalization Risk

Genetic Mutation Responsible for Increased Risk of Tuberculosis Among Africans Identified

Listen to Your Favorite Songs While You Shower With Aquatunes

Study: We Owe Our Swimming Style to Apes

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