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New data on health insurance to be included in AHRQ's 2009 State Snapshots

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's annual release of state-by-state quality data has been expanded to include new data on health insurance, including data on health care quality categorized by source of payment, including private insurance, Medicare, Medicaid and those without insurance.

23 Jul 2010

New rules Thursday on appealing insurance claims, states take lead in health reform implementation

Kaiser Health News /The Washington Post obtained a summary of new rules to be released Thursday by the Obama administration that will make it easier for consumers to appeal the denials of their health insurance claims as the White House tries to "boost political support" for the new health law.

23 Jul 2010

CWRU introduces new dental health program for families

Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine announced a new program called Family First in which they will adopt nine families and care for multiple generations in a family unit.

23 Jul 2010

Choice between late-term abortion or keeping an unhealthy foetus

Most pregnant women whose foetus is proven to have a genetic abnormality choose to have an abortion, but reaching that decision is a painful, exhausting process for most of them. "The women's doubt, pain and sorrow make abortion more moral - in the eyes of society as well as her own," says Sølvi Marie Risøy, a researcher at the Stein Rokkan Centre for Social Studies, University of Bergen.

23 Jul 2010

Young women more likely to die in hospitals following heart attacks: Study

A new study by researchers at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School has found that women between the ages of 35 and 54 were more likely to die in hospitals following heart attacks than men of a similar age. This finding from a sample of more than 423,000 patients can be seen as surprising, given that women, on average, develop their first acute myocardial infarction -- or heart attack -- about 10 years later than men, and are overall less likely to develop myocardial infarction than are men.

23 Jul 2010

More time spent sitting linked to higher risk of death

Childhood physical abuse associated with adulthood heart disease

Childhood physical abuse is associated with significantly elevated rates of heart disease in adulthood, according to new findings by University of Toronto researchers, published in this month's issue of the journal Child Abuse & Neglect.

23 Jul 2010

Effective prevention therapy, early critical care and rehabilitation needed to overcome cost burden of stroke

The consequences of stroke, reported to be the third leading cause of death in the U.S., can extend beyond the physical to impose devastating financial burdens on families and society in general. According to the American Heart Association, the total direct and indirect costs of stroke in 2008 have been estimated at $65.5 billion.

23 Jul 2010

Discontinuing epoetin can normalize hemoglobin levels in hemodialysis patients

Discontinuing the anemia drug epoetin may be more effective than reducing the dose for normalizing potentially dangerous high hemoglobin levels in hemodialysis patients, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology. The results provide useful information about the balance required between administering epoetin and achieving target hemoglobin levels.

23 Jul 2010

BDSRA designates Nationwide Children's Hospital as Batten Disease Center of Excellence

Nationwide Children's Hospital has been selected as a Center of Excellence by the Batten Disease Support and Research Association (BDSRA), the largest research and support organization in North America for families that have children with Batten disease. BDSRA chose Nationwide Children's because of its clinical and research history with the disease and its ability to provide comprehensive care for these unique children.

23 Jul 2010

St. Jude Medical second-quarter net sales increase 11% to $1.313 billion

St. Jude Medical, Inc., a global medical device company, today reported sales and net earnings for the second quarter ended July 3, 2010.

23 Jul 2010

Study reveals link between allergies, asthma and old age

Mistaken for illnesses like bronchitis and emphysema, exacerbated by medications like aspirin, and overlooked by patients and doctors alike, asthma is a common and highly treatable condition in older adults. And while allergies tend to decrease with age, they also are frequently disregarded as a potential cause of misery for the elderly.

23 Jul 2010

Agfa HealthCare's IMPAX HeartStation enables rapid diagnosis of 15-lead ECG studies when compared to 12-lead ECG studies at Western Maryland Regional Medical Center

Agfa HealthCare, a leading provider of diagnostic imaging and healthcare IT solutions, today announces that Western Maryland Regional Medical Center's recent upgrade to the newest version of IMPAX HeartStation ECG Management System has helped enable the rapid diagnosis and treatment of patients with posterior wall heart attacks. The Cumberland-based hospital is using the recently released features of IMPAX HeartStation to digitally review and archive 15-lead ECG studies.

22 Jul 2010

Four areas that impact weight, obesity in women identified

The information gap and general lack of understanding of obesity's unique and disproportionate impact on women contributes to the challenges of the 65 million American women who are considered overweight or obese, said the Strategies to Overcome and Prevent (STOP) Obesity Alliance Task Force on Women at a meeting on Capitol Hill today.

22 Jul 2010

New understanding on insulin resistance, action of diabetes drugs may lead to safer medication

A new understanding of insulin resistance and the action of diabetes drugs such as Avandia and Actos could pave the way for improved medications that are more selective and safer, say scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and The Scripps Research Institute.Our findings strongly suggest that good and bad effects of these drugs can be separated by designing second-generation drugs that focus on the newly uncovered mechanism, said Bruce Spiegelman, PhD, of Dana-Farber, senior author on a report appearing in the July 22 issue of Nature.

22 Jul 2010

Fatal risk of software defects in implantable medical devices

Software vulnerabilities in life-sustaining medical devices such as pacemakers and infusion pumps pose a growing threat to public health, warns a new report published by the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC).

22 Jul 2010

Genomics researchers study role of protein in metabolic disorders, heart disease

Studying a protein already known to play an important role in type 2 diabetes and cancer, genomics researchers have discovered that it may have an even broader role in disease, particularly in other metabolic disorders and heart disease. In finding unsuspected links to other disease-related genes, the scientists may have identified future targets for drug treatments.

22 Jul 2010

Study: Patient-centered health care lowers death rates from heart attacks

In 2001, the Institutes of Medicine named patient-centered health care — based on patient preferences and needs — as a major and necessary change in America's health care system to improve the quality of medical care.

22 Jul 2010

Chaos models may help predict cardiac arrhythmias, say researchers

Chaos models may someday help model cardiac arrhythmias -- abnormal electrical rhythms of the heart, say researchers in the journal CHAOS, which is published by the American Institute of Physics. In recent years, medical research has drawn more attention to chaos in cardiac dynamics. Although chaos marks the disorder of a dynamical system, locating the origin of chaos and watching it develop might allow researchers to predict, and maybe even counteract, certain outcomes.

22 Jul 2010

GE Healthcare awarded $1M to develop MRI for Pediatrics Populations project

GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric Company, in collaboration with Cincinnati Children's Medical Center and the Davis Heart and Lung Institute of The Ohio State University, was awarded $1 million for magnetic resonance imaging and devices for the "Pediatrics Population" project. This project reinforces GE's commitment to healthymagination which works to bring new technologies and solutions to more people.

22 Jul 2010