Medicaid strains US emergency rooms
The U.S. government’s Medicaid program for the poor may put more financial burden on overcrowded hospital emergency rooms than the nation’s 47 million uninsured, according to a study published on Thursday.
Researchers at the University of California San Francisco and Stanford University found that the uninsured patients paid 35 percent of their overall emergency room bills in 2004, versus 33 percent for Medicaid.
Tobacco deaths to reach 10 mln a year by 2030: group
Tobacco-related deaths are expected to double to 10 million a year by 2030, with most fatalities in developing countries, a senior World Lung Foundation (WLF) official said on Friday.
Judith Longstaff Mackay, the organization’s global tobacco control program coordinator, said while cigarette markets were getting smaller in advanced economies, the opposite was true for developing states, where the number of smokers and the volume each consumes is growing.
Dieting hardest for emotional eaters: study
Emotional eaters—people who eat when they are lonely or blue—tend to lose the least amount of weight and have the hardest time keeping it off, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.
They said the study may explain why so many people who lose weight gain it all back.
Landmark Trial to Evaluate Cardioprotective Properties of Insulin
The ability of insulin to limit heart-tissue damage during a heart attack will be tested in a landmark clinical trial led by Paresh Dandona, M.D., Ph.D., University at Buffalo Distinguished Professor in the departments of Medicine and Pharmacology and Toxicology in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
Approximately 600 patients at 90 centers in the U.S. and Latin America will be recruited to participate in the two-year INTENSIVE (Intensive Insulin Therapy and Size of Infarct as a Validated Endpoint by Cardiac MRI) trial. Patients in the trial, which is funded by sanofi-aventis, will be treated with two forms of insulin—insulin glargine and insulin glulisine.
Having a baby? It will cost more than $7K
According to a new report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the cost of having a baby, from the first prenatal visit to delivery, averaged roughly $7,600 (in 2004 dollars) for an uncomplicated birth.
“Although there have been more than 4 million births each year in the United States since 2000, there is little information in the literature regarding the average medical expenditures generated over the course of a pregnancy,” note Steven R. Machlin and Frederick Rohde of AHRQ, who worked on the report.
Therapy Effective for Reducing Lupus Flares
Mayo Clinic researchers have shown that an immunosuppressive drug used in organ transplant cases is effective in reducing flare-ups in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). SLE results in inflammation of connective tissues and can involve the skin, joints and kidneys. Its cause is unknown. The findings were announced today at the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology in Boston.
“Our findings show this therapy reduces lupus flares overall and is especially effective in reducing severe flares by roughly half,” says Mayo rheumatologist Kevin Moder, M.D., who led the research.
Hispanic Patients Receive Fewer Surgical Interventions and Less Favorable Outcomes for Treatment of
Hispanic Patients Receive Fewer Surgical Interventions and Less Favorable Outcomes for Treatment of Vascular Disease
Reasons for Disparities May Include Socioeconomic Factors and Genetic Variations
Surgeries in New York State and Florida Studied by Researchers at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia University Medical Center and Weill Cornell Medical College
Jolting exercise may up miscarriage risk: study
Exercise in the early stage of pregnancy, particularly high-impact exercise, may boost the risk of miscarriage, research suggests.
The reasons for this are not entirely clear, the researchers note, “but the fact that high-impact exercise seems to be associated with highest risk of miscarriage indicates that the jolts produced while exercising play a role,” they suggest.
Burst bladder danger for binge-drinking women
Increased binge drinking among British women is leading to previously unseen cases of burst bladders, a report said on Friday.
The condition is more common among men, but three female cases were reported at the Pinderfields Hospital in the northern English city of Wakefield during the past year.
