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This page shows you the most recent publications within this specialty of the MedWorm directory.

Just what is healthcare reform anyway?
by Jonathan H. Burroughs That was a question a physician asked me at dinner last week and I answered simply, "World-class quality, safety and service at half the price." Healthcare reform/transformation is a problem in the guise of a political conflict. What the two political parties argue over is who has the legal right to control and regulate the healthcare market: the federal government, state governments or private industry. This is a war that has been waged since we began as a nation and it shows no sign of slowing. Unfortunately, while corporate lobbyists spend hundreds of millions of dollars to defend their entr...
Source: hospital impact - May 20, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, May 13th 2013
In this study we used the hMTH1-Tg mouse model to investigate how oxidative damage to nucleic acids affects aging. hMTH1-Tg mice express high levels of the hMTH1 hydrolase that degrades 8-oxodGTP and 8-oxoGTP and excludes 8-oxoguanine from both DNA and RNA. Compared to wild-type animals, hMTH1-overexpressing mice have significantly lower steady-state levels of 8-oxoguanine in both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA of several organs, including the brain. hMTH1 overexpression prevents the age-dependent accumulation of DNA 8-oxoguanine that occurs in wild-type mice. These lower levels of oxidized guanines are associated with in...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 12, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

Fecal Transplant Donor Dr. Hunter Johnson Happy To Go err … Give
Fecal transplant donor Dr. Hunter Johnson, a Pathology resident, has supplied stool that aided in the resolution of four serious courses of C. difficile infection at Emory University. It should be noted that while showing a cure a rate of up to 90% epidemiologists and infectious disease physicians are hoping that more widespread use of prophylactic probiotics will eliminate the need for the transplant, which does carry a risk of disease transmission. The post Fecal Transplant Donor Dr. Hunter Johnson Happy To Go err … Give appeared first on InsideSurgery Medical Information Blog. (Source: Inside Surgery)
Source: Inside Surgery - May 11, 2013 Category: Surgeons Authors: Editor Tags: Infectious Disease Medical News Wire Source Type: blogs

Obamacare Transparency
The most transparent government in history is going to demand transparency from hospitals as part of Obamacare. Now everyone will know exactly how much they will have to pay for their brain transplant. "Currently, consumers don't know what a hospital is charging them or their insurance company for a given procedure, like a knee replacement, or how much of a price difference there is at different hospitals, even within the same city," said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said. "This data and new data centers will help fill that gap." USA Today Do consumers really care or want to know? If they have i...
Source: InsureBlog - May 9, 2013 Category: Medical Lawyers and Insurers Source Type: blogs

Parabiosis Points to GDF-11 as a Means to Reverse Age-Related Cardiac Hypertrophy
Parabiosis involves joining the circulatory systems of two animals. This is of interest for a number of studies in which old mice and young mice are linked together, known as heterochronic parabiosis. The young mice acquire a little of the metabolic, cellular, and gene expression changes characteristic of old mice, while in the the old mice some of these measures reverse towards more youthful levels. In stem cell activity in particular, the environment of signals present in the blood seems to dictate age-related decline as much as does any inherent damage to stem cells or their niches. This reinforces the view of stem cell...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 9, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs

The unhappy hospital CEO
Dr Desai is a bright young hospital CEO . After finishing his M.D. in internal medicine he completed his MBA and now runs a 100 bed multispecialty hospital. The hospital is doing well , but he is unhappy . He knows that his hospital has excellent equipment and that his doctors are very skilled and competent. However, he is concerned that his bed occupancy is still low. He wonders what he is doing wrong and why more patients don’t come to his hospital. One major problem is the competition. Most patients prefer going to the big brand-name hospitals such as Apollo and Fortis, because they have much larger marketing budgets...
Source: The Patient's Doctor - May 6, 2013 Category: Obstetricians and Gynecologists Tags: empty hospital beds low hospital occupancy hospital CEO hospital profitability Source Type: blogs

What treatment for stage D heart failure: LVAD, transplant or hospice?
(Source: Notes from Dr. RW)
Source: Notes from Dr. RW - May 3, 2013 Category: Internists and Doctors of Medicine Tags: cardiovascular Source Type: blogs

Feeding tubes and weird ideas
My favorie BADD post: Tube-ageddon. I haven't had much time to write anything here about the hell I went through getting my GJ tube. I had every indication for a GJ tube. I had gastroparesis so bad it was starting to affect my breathing, in a way that doctors said was likely to result in infection after infection until I died. From the emergency room onward, doctors were saying my best hope was to get a feeding tube. Yet the pressure I got from doctors, while in the hospital for one of those infections, was to just keep getting infections, go home, wait to die. Most of them wouldn't say that outright. But som...
Source: Ballastexistenz - May 2, 2013 Category: Autism Authors: Amanda Tags: Abuse Autism Bullying Cognitive disability Degradation Developmental disability Disability Rights Discrimination Ethics Ethics, justice, etc. Food Hatred Medical Medical stuff Outside Perceptions Physical disability Power Source Type: blogs

FDA Warns That Tolvaptan Can Lead To Serious Liver Injury
The FDA has issued a drug safety communication concerning tolvaptan (Samsca, Otsuka), a selective vasopression V2-receptor antagonist used in heart failure patients to treat clinically significant hypervolemic and euvolemic hyponatremia. The FDA said tolvaptan “should not be used for longer than 30 days and should not be used in patients with underlying liver disease because it can cause liver injury, potentially leading to liver transplant or death. “ The liver injury risk was discovered in clinical trials testing tolvaptan in patients with autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD). The drug label h...
Source: CardioBrief - May 1, 2013 Category: Cardiology Authors: Larry Husten Tags: Heart Failure People, Places & Events Policy & Ethics food and drug administration liver Source Type: blogs

Transdermal Granisetron for Refractory Nausea and Vomiting
Discussion: There were many factors that likely contributed to the dramatic improvement in Ms Emma N’s refractory nausea and vomiting. Better psychiatric care through the palliative care psychologist and psychiatrist almost certainly played a role in her overall clinical turn-around. The close attention, serial visits and supportive counseling she received in the Palliative Care clinic could also have been therapeutic. Up-titration of her olanzapine also likely was helpful. Olanzapine is an atypical antipsychotic that works on multiple receptors including dopaminergic, serotonergic, adrenergic, histaminergic and muscarin...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - May 1, 2013 Category: Palliative Carer Workers Authors: Christian Sinclair Source Type: blogs

Why aren't employers choosing your hospital?
by Kathleen Bartholomew Revolutions that change the course of history do not begin in thunderous explosions of action covered by the media. Revolutions that changed governments, that gave women the right to vote, that spurred the civil rights movement, that changed the belief system of a nation ... these revolutions began as seeds of conversations between like-minded individuals who said, "Something must be done. We must do it ourselves." So it was that in 2012, Wal-Mart announced it would foot the entire bill for certain bundled treatments--heart, spine, and transplant surgeries--if its 1.2 million employees would go ...
Source: hospital impact - April 26, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs

When is a rebate a kickback?
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Files Healthcare Fraud Lawsuit Against Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. For Orchestrating A Multi-Million Dollar Prescription Drug Kickback Scheme Tuesday, April 23, 2013 Suit Alleges Novartis Induced Pharmacies to Switch Thousands of Transplant Patients to One of Its Drugs with Kickbacks Disguised as Rebates and Discounts, Resulting in Medicare and Medicaid Paying Tens of Millions of Dollars in Kickback-Tainted Reimbursements Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Ronald T. Hosko, the Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Criminal...
Source: PharmaGossip - April 24, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

Ten Years Cancer-Free in Three Days
Sarah Palin has weighed in on my umbilical cord stem cell transplant, which I received on April 24, 2003, meaning this Wednesday my bone marrow turns 10. When my fellow UVA graduate, Katie Couric, asked Palin whether I should have accepted the stem cells, Palin said, “The only difference between humans and animals is the willingness to sacrifice oneself in the face of sin. Does that answer your question? Wahoowa, Couric.” When Couric informed Palin that an umbilical cord transplant is different than stem cell research and does not involve fetuses, Palin said, “Like I’m going to fall for another one of your tricky ...
Source: I've Still Got Both My Nuts: A True Cancer Blog - April 21, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: politics Source Type: blogs

Lab-grown Kidney Successfully Transplanted into Rats
Kidney disease is extremely prevalent: it is estimated that 100,000 patients are awaiting kidney transplants in the U.S. alone, while an additional 400,000 require extensive dialysis. If engineering entire kidneys were made possible, it could solve the problem of organ shortage that exists throughout the world.A group from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School made a critical step towards this goal. They have bioengineered an entire kidney and transplanted it into a lab rat. Most importantly, this artificially-generated kidney was able to produce urine and showed renal function in the rat that received ...
Source: Medgadget - April 19, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Shiri Yaniv Tags: in the news... Source Type: blogs

Reactions to Uterus Transplant Pregnancy
Part of being a blogger is learning that people, even ones on your side, will misread, misunderstand, and misrepresent what you are saying. Being human, many of us only read headlines, or skim through a piece missing the major points, or infer things that simply are not implied. Knowing this, I try not to let reactions to my posts get under my skin.For some reason the reactions to yesterday's news about the pregnancy of the woman who underwent a uterus transplant really affected me. To recap, a woman born without a uterus was transplanted with a uterus from a deceased woman. She then underwent IVF and is now confirmed to b...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - April 17, 2013 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Reproductive Technologies Source Type: blogs

Fred Schulte: "GOP senators call for overhaul of electronic health records program"
Fred Schulte, investigative reporter at the Center for Public Integrity (link to bio), has authored a new article worth reading in its entirety:GOP senators call for overhaul of electronic health records programLawmakers say Obama's $35 billion initiative pushing health information technology isn't working.Six U.S. Senators are calling for an overhaul of the federal government’s $35 billion plan for doctors and hospitals to switch from paper to electronic medical records, citing concerns from patient privacy to possible Medicare billing fraud.The report issued Tuesday by the half-dozen Republicans concedes that many lawm...
Source: Health Care Renewal - April 16, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: healthcare IT difficulties healthcare IT risks Center for Public Integrity Fred Schulte Source Type: blogs

Decellularization Produces Partially Functional Kidneys in Rats
Decellularization is the process of taking donor tissue, such as a complete organ, stripping out its cells to leave the extracellular matrix structure, and then repopulating that structure with another individual's cells to reform a functional organ. This produces donor tissue that will not be rejected by a transplant recipient, and has been successfully used in a few human transplants of less complicated tissue structures such as the trachea. This technology is an important stepping stone on the way towards organs created from scratch; it works around the present inability to build a sufficiently detailed and functional...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 15, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs

Sunday News Round-Up, OMG the Next Three Weeks Edition
First up, some brief comments on Gosnell: The “care” women received from Dr. Kermit Gosnell is abhorrent. The idea that nobody is covering it is not true, however. It was covered extensively when many details first became known in 2011. Here’s my own post on the issue. It is also not representative of abortion care or even late-term abortion care (which is extremely limited) in this country. A woman is more likely to die from pregnancy than abortion in the United States. There absolutely was a failure to inspect and act on his clinic. That is a failure to do what they were *supposed* to do – and no ...
Source: Women's Health News - April 14, 2013 Category: Medical Librarians Authors: Rachel Tags: Abortion Abuse, Rape, & Safety Access, Rights, & Choice Body Image & Eating Disorders Contraception Drugs Ethics Government Laws, Legislation, & Courts Miscellaneous News Round-Ups Pregnancy ART comics emergency contraception Source Type: blogs

Hospital defense maliciousness, aided and abetted by attorneys who ignore the ABA and Pennsylvania's Ethical Rules of Conduct Regarding "Candor Towards the Tribunal"
At Healthcare Renewal we've written of hospitals' deviations from the core mission of compassionate, ethical and safe patient care, towards profiteering at patient's and the community's expense.What we haven't written about is maliciousness.At my Feb. 2013 posts about my late mother's (now my) lawsuit regarding injury and death that involved EHR problems, namely "The lengths a hospital will go to in order to protect their EHR - Motion for Reconsideration of Denial of Motion for Reconsideration of Denial of Objections" and "More on the lengths a hospital will go through to protect their EHR from disc...
Source: Health Care Renewal - April 11, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman Goggin malicious abuse of process Candor Toward the Tribunal Abington Memorial Hospital Carolyn B. DiGiovanni Stroud v. Abington Memorial Hospital Source Type: blogs

Fear Is Like Ice Cream
My mobile rings at least fifty times a day My pager buzzes double that. I'm stopped in the hall and accosted by doctors, nurses, patients and families. And most of the questions are mundane: an adjustment of the coumadin dose, a formulary change for the antibiotic. Thousands of daily decisions reasoned through years of experience and practice. This is the life of the modern day Internist. Yet, I can't help but admit that I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Each ring, each buzz, carries the possibility of disaster. Will it be the ER with a hypotensive...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - April 8, 2013 Category: Family Physicians Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs

Here. A Big, Ol' Glass of ...
Overheard ... mostly:“My grandmother had both her legs amputated as a result of diabetes.”“A kid I went to high school with had diabetes but he didn’t take care of himself. He is blind now, but he brought it on himself.”“Didn’t they cure it in mice?”“Did you eat a lot of sugar as a kid?”“I read that you can reverse diabetes with acupuncture. Have you tried that?”“I read about a chocolate shake that cures diabetes. Have you tried that?”“I read about an herbal supplement that cures diabetes. Have you tried that?&...
Source: Six Until Me. - April 4, 2013 Category: Diabetes Source Type: blogs

The Push Back Continues: the Mayor of Pittsburgh Sues UPMC Claiming it is No "Public Charity"
There is another indication that push back against the power of large health care organizations is getting more significant.In February, 2013, we noted that the Governor of the state of Connecticut publicly criticized lavish executive compensation at a small regional hospital system, compensation partially fueled by government funded health insurance payments, and in contrast to hospitals' claims that insufficient reimbursement was driving them to poverty. The Suit Challenging the Charitable Status of UPMCNow the outgoing Mayor of Pittsburgh has launched a lawsuit challenging the status of huge, nominally non-...
Source: Health Care Renewal - March 26, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: UPMC oligopoly concentration of power logical fallacies non-profit organizations public relations Source Type: blogs

10 minute Workout for pregnant women ( who don’t have a lot of time!)
We asked three fitness experts to recommend three workouts you can fit in while baby’s snoozin’ in the afternoon or kicking away in her bouncy seat. Each mini routine is a series of three simple moves that shape up your entire body, especially the core and back muscles you need to strengthen for toting baby around. If you only have 10 minutes, do just a set or two of each exercise and then gradually add sets until you’ve worked up to a 20- or 30-minute workout. Before you move, get into the groove: • Check with your doctor or midwife first before starting to exercise postpartum. Most will recommend that you ...
Source: Cord Blood News - March 22, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: joyce at mazelabs.com Tags: babies brain development Cord Blood medical research parents pregnancy stem cells Uncategorized affordable cord blood banking bone marrow transplant cord blood cost cord blood stem cells exercise while pregnancy new baby parent Source Type: blogs

Creating Beauty From a Life of Chronic Pain
When I sit down to write these blogs each week, my creative self often takes me to surprising places. I’ve discovered last week’s theme of finding beauty is the beginning of a series of three blogs on beauty. It certainly surprised me to find two more blogs lurking in my mind. The more I reflected on the role of this particular quality in my own life, I realized it has many ramifications. For many of us who live with daily pain, creating beauty and participating in something beautiful has been a welcoming open door into a dark room and a way out of the pain. Naturally, when you create a beautiful photo or picture you ...
Source: Life with Chronic Pain - March 14, 2013 Category: Other Conditions Authors: admin Tags: happiness creating beauty endorphins Source Type: blogs

Nora Ephron’s Final Act - NYTimes.com
At 10 p.m. on a Friday night in a private room on the 14th Floor of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital on 68th and York Avenue, my mother was lying in her bed hallucinating, in that dream space people go on their way to being gone.She spoke of seeing trees, possibly a forest. And she mentioned to Nick, my stepfather, that she had been to the theater where her play was showing and that the audience was full. In reality, she had not left the hospital in a month, and the play, "Lucky Guy," was nearly a year away from opening.My brother, Max, and I stood there in disbelief. Though it had been weeks since her blood count showed any ...
Source: Psychology of Pain - March 9, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs

Little Nurse Lost
Years have gone by... my fault I know. Not sure why I decided to pick this up again. Maybe because there was something missing in my day to day life. Maybe I need the outlet to sleep well again. Maybe I just missed the opportunity to just vent to the stratosphere. I am unfortunately, still planted with feet firmly in the ground. Several flight interviews down, still no job. Working full time at MECCA as charge, trauma, triage, pedes (yup, still baby hell) and orienting a new grad to boot. The hospital has expressly forbidden any social media mention (following a less than delicate post about a f.tarded surgery resident abo...
Source: thoughts from the night shift - March 7, 2013 Category: Nurses Source Type: blogs

Happy 8th birthday to the Health Business Blog!
The Health Business Blog turns eight years old today. Continuing a tradition I established with birthdays one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven I have picked out a favorite post from each month. Thanks for continuing to read the blog! March 2012: Should medical debt count against your credit rating? As far as I’m concerned, a lot of medical debt isn’t real debt. Real debt is borrowing money from a bank to buy a car or using a credit card to finance a vacation or taking out a student loan to pay for college. Borrowers know ahead of time that they are incurring a financial obligation for a known amount of mone...
Source: Health Business Blog - March 1, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: David E. Williams of the Health business blog Tags: Announcements Blogs Source Type: blogs

Healthcare Update — 02-27-2013
Knowledgeable and honest. Yeah, that’s me. Study shows that doctors wearing white coats were most likely to be judged by patients as being the “best” physicians. Doctors wearing scrubs were also more likely to be highly rated. Of course my widespread appeal could also come from my stunning good looks or my debonaire personality … Interesting dilemma. A patient in Washington DC called an ambulance at 1:26 AM when he was having trouble breathing. Just so happens that it was New Years Eve and about 25% of the entire DC firefighting force had called off sick that day. An ambulance arrived 30 minutes later and the patie...
Source: WhiteCoat's Call Room - February 27, 2013 Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Authors: WhiteCoat Tags: Healthcare Update Source Type: blogs

App News
Apple launches dedicated ‘Apps for Healthcare Professionals’ collection One of the updates to the Apple App Store recently is the inclusion of a specific collection entitled, “Apps for healthcare professionals”. This collection can be found within the ‘Medical Category’. It is a useful starting point for physicians with new mobile devices looking for relevant apps. The collection is further subdivided into: Reference Apps, Medical Education Apps, EMR & Patient Monitoring Apps, Nursing Apps, Imaging Apps, Patient Education Apps and Personal Care Apps. To read about: http://bit.ly/12SWKtr ...
Source: BHIC - February 21, 2013 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Monica Rogers Tags: General Health Information Literacy Source Type: blogs

Rejuvenation Research for February 2013
This study demonstrates that pancreatic-derived PCs from the adult rat can enable functional repair of renal damage in mice. It validates the use of PCs to regenerate damaged tissues and also offers a novel therapeutic intervention for repair of solid organ damage in situ. This behavior has been seen in a range of stem cell transplant studies: regeneration is not occurring because the transplanted stem cells are building new tissue, but rather because they alter the local environment and deliver orders to existing local cell populations. At some point in the future, this whole class of treatment will cease to involve cell...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 20, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

CBO Report: Improved Patient Adherence Benefits Medicare
Prescription medicines help people avoid the disability and death caused by disease, and help lower overall treatment costs. In fact, medical advances, including prescription medicines, have lowered death rates for heart disease, stroke, cancer, and other deadly diseases. Two years ago, a report from Eli Lilly noted how if it were not for the declines in death rates from heart disease and stroke, we would lose 1 million more Americans every year. In addition, the 5-year survival rates for cancer have risen by 26% just since 1984. And while HIV/AIDS was the 8th leading cause of death in the US in 1996, today, it’...
Source: Policy and Medicine - February 20, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs

Next Steps
Fighting cancer may be easier when you break it down into smaller steps. For breast cancer survivors the journey can be composed of multiple stays since radiation, chemo, and surgery may be involved. Alexis is a 39 year old mother … Continue reading → (Source: Being Cancer Network)
Source: Being Cancer Network - February 17, 2013 Category: Cancer Authors: Dennis Pyritz Tags: Living with Cancer Bone marrow transplant Breast cancer Chemotherapy Radiation Source Type: blogs

Sherpa Pak Transplant Heart Transport System Gets U.S. Green Light
Paragonix Technologies out of Cambridge, Massachusetts received clearance in the U.S. for the Sherpa Pak Cardiac Transport System. The Sherpa combines oxygenated perfusion of organs and safe organ storage. The device is indicated for hypothermic transportation of hearts in a cold environment for up to four hours in preparation for a transplant. From the announcement:Currently, the availability of cardiac transplantation is governed by the “ischemic time”, that being, the elapsed time from heart donation to recipient implantation. According to The International Society Of Heart and Lung Transplantation (“...
Source: Medgadget - February 13, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Gene Ostrovsky Tags: Anesthesiology Cardiac Surgery Source Type: blogs

The Quest for Reversible Cryopreservation
Much of the talk of low-temperature preservation of tissue here at Fight Aging! directly relates to the cryonics industry: the work of preserving the brains of those who age to death prior to the advent of rejuvenation biotechnology, so that they have some possible chance at a longer life in the future. There is a large mainstream cryobiology industry and research community that shares essentially the same goals when it comes to organs and tissues, although cryobiologists have historically been quite hostile towards cryonics groups. It's the same old story of the conformist mainstream pushing away anyone who is doing somet...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 6, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

Working on the Use of Decellularization to Make Pig Hearts Suitable for Human Transplantation
Decellularization involves taking a donor organ and stripping its cells, leaving just the shaped extracellular matrix behind. When new cells of the right types are seeded into the matrix, they will inhabit it, grow, and follow its cues to rebuild the tissue as it was. This might prove to be a shortcut to the future of organs grown to order - you can't use it to produce an organ such as the heart from scratch, but you can take animal organs and make it possible to transplant them into humans with minimal risk of rejection. This, at least, is the goal. So far decellularization has worked for some human donor tissues, such a...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 1, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

Stem Cell Transplant Increasingly Sought by Patients
Stem cell transplant and treatment is offered in hundreds of clinics outside of the United States for conditions ranging from cancer to arthritis to autism, but American physicians warn patients of potential dangers, saying clinics like to use the term autologous and FDA approved to mislead people. Blood containing stem cells for transplant The post Stem Cell Transplant Increasingly Sought by Patients appeared first on InsideSurgery Medical Information Blog. (Source: Inside Surgery)
Source: Inside Surgery - January 27, 2013 Category: Surgeons Authors: Editor Tags: Oncology arthritis autologous bone marrow Cancer stem cell treatment Source Type: blogs

A Transplant Story with Helpful Tips for the Family
This is the story of my wife’s kidney transplant. Told from the husband’s perspective and includes some tips on how to make things easier.Contributor: Allen RushmorePublished: Jan 24, 2013 (Source: Most Recent Health Wellness - Associated Content)
Source: Most Recent Health Wellness - Associated Content - January 24, 2013 Category: Other Conditions Source Type: blogs

What is Cord Tissue Banking??
Both cord blood and umbilical cord tissue have been shown to be rich sources of Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSCs). Whereas cord blood is exceptionally rich in hematopoietic (leading to blood and immunological cells) stem cells, cord tissue carries a more dense concentration of the MSCs. These cells have the ability to differentiate into a variety of different cell types, including bone cells (osteoblasts), chondroyctes (cartilage cells), ligament and tendon cells. Although there are no current medical therapies using stem cells derived from umbilical cord tissues, there is ongoing research for their use in treatment of: Diabe...
Source: Cord Blood News - January 18, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: joyce at mazelabs.com Tags: babies brain development Cord Blood medical research parents pregnancy stem cells Uncategorized affordable cord blood banking bone marrow transplant breast feeding cord blood banking fees cord blood collection cord tissue banking Source Type: blogs

Transplant Morality
In our aging society, older Americans are increasingly receiving organ transplants. The number of kidney transplants performed annually on adults over 65 tripled between 1998 and last year, according to data from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients. In 2001, 7.4 percent of liver transplant recipients were over 65; last year, that rose to 13 percent. The allocation of certain organs in this country is determined by need and severity of underlying illness. It's not like at the deli where you draw a number and simply wait your turn. Length of time spent on the wait list has not...
Source: Buckeye Surgeon - January 17, 2013 Category: Surgeons Authors: Jeffrey Parks MD Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, January 14th 2013
Discussion - Latest Headlines from Fight Aging! - Endurance Training Associated With Longer Telomeres - Unpublished Reader's Digest Interview on Aging and Longevity - Fat Tissue Knockout of Mitochondrial Transcription Factor A is Beneficial, and May Extend Life in Mice - Regenerating Hair Cells to Restore Hearing - Identifying a Mechanism for Nematode Longevity via Bifidobacteria in the Diet - Towards Therapies for Regeneration of Dental Pulp - News from the...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 13, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

Biomarkers May Signal Early Transplant Rejection
A team of researchers in the Department of Pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have discovered a set of biomarkers that could detect early signs of chronic heart transplant rejection — a process that is often undetectable until function of the heart has been irreversibly compromised. The team, led by Kevin P. Daly, MD, and David M. Briscoe, MD, of the Transplant Research Program (TRP) at Boston Children’s Hospital, and S. Ananth Karumanchi, MD, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, published their findings online in the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplant...
Source: Medgadget - January 11, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Ravi Parikh Tags: Cardiac Surgery Diagnostics in the news... Source Type: blogs

Cells Derived From Embryonic Stem Cells Rebuild an Artery
Regenerative medicine is not an all or nothing field of research. There are many useful waypoints on the road to being able to grow perfectly formed organs, blood vessels, muscle, and other tissues to order and from a patient's own cells. The partial results and half-way houses include a range of potential therapies and technologies that will be a great improvement over the present clinical state of the art. Roadmaps in this sort of research tend to look like this: Gain knowledge of the underlying mechanisms: cell signaling, stem cell life cycles, and so forth. Use this new knowledge to better understand the workings of...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 10, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

NIH Public-Private Partnerships to Bring Therapies from Bench to Bedside
The objective of this project is to develop a treatment called recombinant human LCAT that would act as a replacement therapy to offset the deficiency caused by LCAT deficiency syndrome. Spinal Cord Injury: Development of Nogo Receptor Decoy for the Treatment of Spinal Cord Injury, George Maynard, Ph.D., vice president, Preclinical Development Axerion Therapeutics, Inc., New Haven, Conn. Recovery after a spinal cord injury is limited, as nerve cell growth is virtually nonexistent in the adult spinal cord. This project aims to develop a compound called Nogo Receptor Decoy to rewire nerve cells that promote the reco...
Source: Policy and Medicine - January 7, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs

Tranexamic Acid (TXA).
Around 25% of severe trauma patients experience acute coagulopathies associated with increased morbidity and mortality rates. Recently, we have seen an increased understanding of the relationship between trauma and alterations to the coagulation system. A little ironically, this knowledge has been gained largely from battlefield experience including Iraq and Afghanistan. Tranexamic Acid (TXA) is an antifibrinolytic. That is, it inhibits the activation of plasminogen (and plasmin) thereby preventing the breakdown of existing clots. One of the negative responses to an acute traumatic event is the muting of the bodies plasmin...
Source: impactEDnurse - January 1, 2013 Category: Nurses Authors: impactEDnurse Tags: the nurses desk: Source Type: blogs

10 Winter Depression Busters for Seasonal Affective Disorder
We’ve officially entered the hard months, the “dark ages” as the midshipmen at the Naval Academy say: the time of the year when the sun disappears and the pale complexions of your friends remind you that you had better take your vitamins or else you’ll have a cold to go with your pasty look. I dread winter each year because many of my depression busters require sunny skies and temperatures in the 70s. What does a girl who kayaks and bikes for sanity do in the winter? Lots of things. Here are a few of them. 1. Give back. Ghandi once wrote that “the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself...
Source: World of Psychology - December 30, 2012 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Therese J. Borchard Tags: Depression General Mental Health and Wellness Acid One Altruism Antidotes Biochemical Systems Cellular Level Chuck E Cheese Cold Weather Complexions Eicosapentaenoic Emotional Health Enhancement Program Family Picnics Flour P Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, December 31st 2012
Conclusion Donate now. Unless you find yourself in the rare and envious position of knowing in certainty that a stupendous pile of money will fall upon your bank account in years to come. In which case, donate both now and after that fortunate event. Over the years I have watched many people churning their way through the energetic startup community of the US West Coast, putting off many things in their lives because of the conviction that they would have time and much money to deal with them later. Among the ways to wealth, it is true that doing a good job of starting a company (and a good job of being networked while d...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 30, 2012 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

An Interview with Stephen Valentine
Stephen Valentine is the architect on the ofttimes seemingly dormant Timeship project, which drifted back into the news recently. It was suggested at the time that the goal is less to build something for the cryonics industry and more to provide a tax shelter for those who seek to take advantage of cryonics, which might explain some otherwise puzzling aspects of the initiative. Cryonic providers are not at the vanguard of a wealthy industry by any means, and the Timeship seems out of place in in scale and goals when compared to the ongoing, practical work of small foundations and businesses in this narrow marketplace. In ...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 27, 2012 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Healthy Life Extension Community Source Type: blogs

New Study Shows Cancer Drug Shortage Causing Worse Outcomes
A recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine is reporting that a recent drug shortage of mechlorethamine caused a significantly worse outcome in patients who were forced to take cyclophosphamide instead. One patient who had to go without the first line drug is Abby Alonzo, who experienced a relapse and required a bone marrow transplant to try to control her Hodgkin’s lymphoma. (Source: Inside Surgery)
Source: Inside Surgery - December 26, 2012 Category: Surgeons Authors: Editor Tags: Hematology Oncology Abby Alonzo Cancer drug shortage Hodgkins mechlorethamine relapse Source Type: blogs

FOAM Procedure Video Database
I know, I know – I’ve been told. “Nickson, why are you slacking off, there have been bugger all posts by you the last month or so.” Hey, I’ve been busy. First up, I’ve finally got around to putting a collection of FOAM videos of emergency medicine and critical care procedures from around the web online in one searchable database. The database lives on the LITFL Procedures page (down the bottom of the Education drop down menu on the LITFL website task bar). I’ve reproduced it here so you can have a play with it. SectionTitleKeyWordsAuthorLink airwayInserting an OPAOPA...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - December 20, 2012 Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Authors: Chris Nickson Tags: Emergency Medicine Featured FOAM FOAMed Intensive Care Procedure Video Critical Care Compendium database Search Source Type: blogs