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Cardiovascular disease costs the UK economy £29 billion a year

Cardiovascular disease costs the UK economy £29 billion a year in healthcare expenditure and lost productivity, reveals research published ahead of print in Heart.

16 May 2006

Heroin plus pain killer proves to be a lethal combo

According to health officials and the Chicago police a deadly combination of heroin and a prescription pain killer has resulted in one death and 21 others becoming ill.

15 May 2006

Bird flu - the battle could be over

Even though Dr. David Nabarro, chief pandemic flu coordinator for the United Nations says he is encouraged by how both Thailand and Vietnam had responded to the health crisis facing their domestic poultry, and their successful efforts to reduce the threat of the disease, the deadly H5N1 strain still remains a significant threat, especially to Indonesia and Africa.

14 May 2006

Peanut - kiss not the culprit in Canadian teens death

According to a coroner in Quebec a severe asthma attack was responsible for the death of a 15 year old girl last November and not a peanut-contaminated kiss.

14 May 2006

Researchers improve delivery of health care for pediatric patients

Having a young child scheduled for a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or computed tomography (CT) scan to diagnose a potentially serious condition can be worrying for parents.

11 May 2006

Potential for organ donation in the United Kingdom

The biggest obstacle to improving the organ donation rate in the United Kingdom is the number of relatives who refuse consent, say researchers in this week's British Medical Journal.

11 May 2006

No bail for six medics in Libyan HIV sham

Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who have been imprisoned in a Libyan jail since 1999 on spurious charges of deliberately infecting more than 400 children with the HIV virus, have had their request to be released on bail rejected.

11 May 2006

First human H5N1 bird flu case in Horn of Africa

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), a two-year-old girl in Djibouti has been become infected with H5N1; the girl is the first confirmed human case in the Horn of Africa.

11 May 2006

Abortion pill in trouble again

Clostridium sordellii is a rare germ that has killed four women who took the abortion pill RU-486 and has also been implicated in the deaths of at least 11 other women following childbirth or miscarriage.

11 May 2006

Claims that medicine is rife with malpractice lawsuits 'overblown'

According to new research, contrary to public perception, people who file lawsuits against doctors accusing them of medical mistakes rarely do so frivolously, and those who do submit trivial claims as a rule receive no payout.

11 May 2006

Researchers link novel mutated gene to mental retardation and imbalance syndrome

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have identified a genetic cause for a form of pediatric brain malformation involving the cerebellum.

11 May 2006

Usual practices in surgical site preparation do not reduce infections

Antiseptic cleansing and body hair removal do not reduce surgical site infections, investigators report in two new reviews of studies of these common preoperative practices.

11 May 2006

Gene amplification could guide treatment for high-risk breast cancer

A new study shows that breast cancer patients with an "amplification," or greater number of copies, of the TOP2A gene are 45% more likely than women who do not have this amplification to benefit from a longer course of anthracycline-based adjuvant chemotherapy.

11 May 2006

Hidden thousands devastated by myalgic encephalomyelitis

New research published by the UK's leading Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.) charity, Action for M.E., suggests that a hidden 55,000 people in Britain are so severely affected by the illness that they're either bed-bound or house-bound.

11 May 2006

Debate over medical malpractice litigation continues

The Senate is expected to vote soon on legislation to impose a federal cap on noneconomic damages in malpractice suits, following on similar bills that passed the House of Representatives but stalled in the Senate last year.

10 May 2006

Human factors/ergonomics professionals are improving health care

The latest issue of Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society contains a special section describing ways in which human factors/ergonomics professionals are improving health care.

10 May 2006

Local clinical quality monitoring for detection of excess operative deaths

If convicted murderer Dr Harold Shipman had been working as a surgeon or anaesthetist at a specialist UK heart hospital in Cambridge, increased patient death rates would have alerted clinical audit staff after eight to ten months, according to research in the latest issue of Anaesthesia.

10 May 2006

Long term oestrogen-only hormone replacement therapy increases breast cancer risk

According to new research women who take oestrogen-only hormone replacement therapy for 20 years or longer to treat the symptoms of menopause, put themselves at greater risk of developing breast cancer.

10 May 2006

Space technology to help hospitals contain spread of avian flu infection

In response to concerns from hospitals to prepare for eventual pandemic flu outbreaks, the French company AirInSpace, with support from ESA's Technology Transfer Programme, has successfully adapted technology developed to protect astronauts for use in critical care centres to protect immune-deficient patients against airborne pathogens such as the avian flu virus.

10 May 2006

Impact of optional regulations on heart attack treatment

People who have heart attacks are about 15 percent less likely to be treated with bypass surgery or angioplasty within the first few days of the incident in states with certificate of need (CON) regulatory programs.

10 May 2006