Catheters News and Research

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Disturbingly high rate of home care patients are being admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia

A two-year study showed home-care patients suffering from Community-Acquired Pneumonia (CAP is acquired outside of hospitals) account for 25 of every 1,000 people who visited emergency rooms suffering pneumonia.

26 May 2005

Two-sided coating could breathe life into medical implants

By mimicking an adhesive protein secreted by mussels and a polymer that repels cells and proteins, researchers at Northwestern University have designed a versatile new two-sided coating that could breathe life into medical implants.

15 May 2005

Using light under your skin

You have a tiny wound on your hand that doesn’t heal, a bad burn on your chest – or an injured retina. Your doctor cannot tell how serious the injuries are below the surface. He needs tissue samples. That means using a scalpel, which again equals pain, perhaps even a risk. Soon there may be hope for an improved and totally harmless method to peer under the surface of the skin: light.

23 Apr 2005

How heart is formed in the embryo helps explain congenital heart disease

Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh Cardiologist Bradley B. Keller, MD, and his research team are discovering details in the lab that explain how the heart is formed in the embryo. This knowledge improves the chances of doctors identifying fetuses who can benefit from intervention to treat congenital defects.

5 Apr 2005

Urine actually helps a particular yeast stick to cells along the urinary tract

The finding might offer a new way to prevent or treat certain yeast and fungal infections, and the researchers' work also provides an unexpected new role for some proteins already known to help hungry yeast live longer.

30 Mar 2005

New form of technology to treat cardiac arrhythmias

Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center physicians are among the first in the country to use a new form of technology to treat distant, malfunctioning areas inside the heart that cause irregular heartbeats, or cardiac arrhythmias.

23 Mar 2005

Large hole in boy's liver repaired using innovative catheterization procedure

Through an innovative catheterization procedure, a pediatric cardiologist at Texas Children's Heart Center in Houston repaired a severe liver condition in a 14-year-old male.

7 Mar 2005

Guidelines designed to track potentially deadly infections in hospitals and clinics

Guidelines released on Monday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are designed to help track and alert the public to potentially deadly infections in hospitals and clinics.

1 Mar 2005

Growing evidence base supports focus on mind-body connection in heart disease

Cardiologists should recognize and help manage depression, stress and other common psychosocial risk factors that play a powerful role in the wellbeing and health outcomes of heart disease patients, according to an article(PDF) in the March 1, 2005 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

1 Mar 2005

Medical device innovations - fabricating the future

Two large pieces of metal lie on the floor of what looks like a mini-factory in the Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute. The whirring machinery here stamps out prototypes of medical devices imagined by clinicians and researchers to help with diagnostic testing or surgical procedures.

9 Jan 2005

Blocking a key molecule protects breast implants, permanent catheters, pacemakers and artificial joints from rejection and damage by the body

Blocking a key molecule protects breast implants, permanent catheters, pacemakers, artificial joints, glucose sensors for diabetics, and other biomaterials from rejection and damage by the body, according to a study published this month in The American Journal of Pathology.

20 Dec 2004

System helps physicians prevent radiation-induced skin injuries to patients

The threading of slender catheters and stents through arteries to deliver treatments to the heart, the brain and elsewhere in the body has produced nothing short of a medical revolution.

4 Dec 2004

Simple and inexpensive interventions can cut the number of catheter-related bloodstream infections

As many as 28,000 patients die each year in the U.S. because of catheter-related bloodstream infections, but doctors and nurses who implement simple and inexpensive interventions can cut the number of deaths to nearly zero, according to a study by Johns Hopkins researchers.

30 Nov 2004

Carbon coatings to prevent bacteria collecting on indwelling catheters

This team of physicists have coated catheters and ureter stents with an extremely thin layer of diamond-like carbon. DLC-coated surfaces do not react chemically with their environment; they are hardwearing, can be sterilised and reduce friction.

18 Nov 2004

Heart arrhythmias easily treated, yet few know risks

Since she was a young girl, Sandra Moore, 46, of Glen Ellyn, Ill., had episodes every few months when her heart started racing.

9 Nov 2004

Study of infection prevention therapy for premature babies

Whether donated human antibodies can protect premature babies from a common and potentially dangerous bacterial infection is under study at the Medical College of Georgia Children’s Medical Center.

4 Nov 2004

Genetically modified bacterium as remedy for intestinal diseases

Researchers from the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) at Ghent University are joining the fight against chronic intestinal disease with a genetically modified bacterium (Lactococcus lactis).

14 Sep 2004

MRSA bugs immunity to hospital disinfectants and antiseptics

Dangerous multi-drug-resistant bacteria are also developing immunity to hospital disinfectants and antiseptics, according to new research presented today at the Society for General Microbiology’s 155th Meeting at Trinity College Dublin.

8 Sep 2004

Blood vessel plug - amplatzer ductal occluder, performs well in trial

In the largest and longest trial yet of a device called the Amplatzer ductal occluder, a duct that shunts blood flow away from the lungs during fetal development but sometimes fails to close after birth, was successfully closed in almost all patients, according to a new study in the Aug. 4, 2004, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

5 Aug 2004

Smart drug that targets cancer cells in the brain following removal of a tumor

The use of a "smart" drug that targets cancer cells in the brain following removal of a tumor may provide treatment that can extend the survival of people with the most common form of primary malignant brain tumor, glioblastoma multiforme (GBM).

3 Aug 2004