All Medical care Articles

LOS ANGELES -- A surprising number of frail, elderly Americans in nursing homes are suffering from futile care at the end of their lives, two new federally funded studies reveal. One found that putting nursing home residents with failing kidneys on dialysis didn't improve their quality of life and may even push them into further decline. The other showed many with advanced dementia will die Read more...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Dr. James E. Sanders is a big believer of switching patient records from old paper files to sophisticated computer databases. The electronic medical records system at the Department of Veterans Affairs' Kansas City Medical Center gives Sanders and his staff almost immediate access to medical histories, allowing them to seamlessly treat veterans from other states. But when Read more...

Some people with heart disease are failing to take vital drugs which help prevent heart attacks and strokes, researchers say. Experts analyzed data from 472 patients and found that 29 percent -- almost one in three -- patients were not taking their anti-clotting drugs regularly enough. Meanwhile, 23 percent missed doses of statins, which help reduce cholesterol and the risk of heart Read more...

WASHINGTON -- If you pay the mechanic $1,000 to fix your transmission and it breaks again next week, the garage should find and fix the problem for free. So if you get an infection following open-heart surgery because the doctor forgot an antibiotic, why are you charged extra to clear up the wound? At Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania, pay a flat fee for bypass surgery and you'll get Read more...

Every year, about four million Americans under age 65 undergo medical imaging procedures that bombard them with more radiation than the safety limit set for workers in the health-care and nuclear industries, a new study concludes. The research is the latest to estimate the dangers of this country's exploding use of CT scans and other diagnostic imaging that involve radiation. The United States Read more...

Many older drivers are unaware of how their medications may affect their driving, U.S. researchers warn. Researchers at the Center for Injury Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham say their research findings -- released by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety -- indicate 95 percent of those age 55 and older have one or more medical conditions and 78 percent take one or more Read more...

More than 6 million Americans have lost jobs since the recession began in December 2007, and for many, the loss of a job means the loss of health insurance benefits. Even for those who still work, many companies are dialing back health benefits for employees. For instance, about 58 percent of small U.S. employers offered health insurance for their workers five years ago, but that number has Read more...

WASHINGTON -- Obesity is not just dangerous, it is expensive. New research shows medical spending in the United States averages $1,400 more a year for an obese person than for someone who is normal weight. Overall obesity-related health spending reaches $147 billion, double what it was nearly a decade ago, says the study published Monday by the journal Health Affairs. The higher expense Read more...

Slurred speech. Disorientation. Memory loss. Morris Ganaden thought he was having a stroke. So did doctors in two emergency rooms, but brain scans and other tests turned up nothing wrong. Turns out Ganaden, 75, wasn't having a stroke. He was taking the wrong pills. Despite efforts to prevent medication errors, mix-ups like this are occurring across the country with alarming frequency. Read more...

CHICAGO -- Proposed limits on Tylenol, a painkiller as common as pain itself, have left many consumers fearful, confused and wondering where to turn for relief. The potential government crackdown on acetaminophen, Tylenol's main ingredient, would affect everyone from occasional pill poppers to chronic pain sufferers who rely on daily doses to make their lives more bearable. If adopted by the Read more...

Should a 97-year-old man undergo an expensive, dangerous open-heart operation to repair a lethal tear in a main artery of his heart? No, concluded the patient, Michael DeBakey, the world-famous cardiovascular surgeon who pioneered the operation. Yes, said his family and surgeons, who prevailed after DeBakey lapsed into coma. DeBakey later said they did the right thing. After a long, Read more...

CHICAGO -- When it comes to health care spending, an ounce of prevention is seldom worth a pound of cure. Take Mrs. Jones, a hypothetical 55-year-old obese woman at risk for diabetes. It costs $900 a year to hire a personal lifestyle coach to help her lose weight and prevent diabetes. Suppose that the coaching works for Mrs. Jones, and she is spared diabetes and all the resulting health Read more...

Sometimes it's hard to know when to see a doctor when you have pain. It's an easy decision when you have severe, unrelenting pain, but at times you just don't know. And with a bad economy, perhaps you are trying to avoid seeing a doctor because you cannot afford it. According to Gundersen Lutheran, there are pains you shouldn't ignore. Here are five pains that deserve your attention: 1. Read more...

Drugs -- many over-the-counter -- for allergies, hypertension or asthma can cause cognition problems in the elderly, U.S. researchers found. Study author Dr. Malaz Boustani of the Indiana University School of Medicine and Regenstrief Institute and colleagues conducted an analysis of 27 peer-reviewed studies of the relationship of the anti-cholinergic effect in some drugs -- a toxic reaction Read more...

BALTIMORE -- At one of the nation's top trauma hospitals, a nurse circles a patient's bed, humming and waving her arms as if shooing evil spirits. Another woman rubs a quartz bowl with a wand, making tunes that mix with the beeping monitors and hissing respirator keeping the man alive. They are doing Reiki therapy, which claims to heal through invisible energy fields. The anesthesia chief, Read more...

ATLANTA -- The U.S. cancer death rate fell again in 2006, a new analysis shows, continuing a slow downward trend that experts attribute to declines in smoking, earlier detection and better treatment. About 560,000 people died of cancer that year, according to an American Cancer Society report released Wednesday. The new numbers show the death rate fell by less than 2 percent, but since that Read more...

As the economy sours, more employers are cutting back on health insurance benefits, if not outright eliminating them. Add these workers to the hundreds of thousands of uninsured and underinsured Americans, and there's little doubt that consumers should expect to shoulder more of the burden of paying their own medical costs. The U.S. government predicts that consumer out-of-pocket health care Read more...

PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- Joanne Devlin needs about 20 prescription drugs to regulate her blood pressure, keep her arthritic joints limber and pain-free and control her asthma. She counts on financial help from Rhode Island when her Medicare Part D insurance plan maxes out and no longer pays her drug bills, which can reach $3,000 every three months. But that state help may no longer be an option Read more...

There are so many things to worry about these days. Wouldn't it be nice to cross something off the list? Turns out you can. Researchers have been busy debunking some common medical myths that have been repeated so many times, people assume them to be true. Here are five misconceptions you can stop biting your nails over now: 1. Myth: Stretching before exercise prevents injury. Fact: Read more...

ORLANDO, Fla. -- First there was surgery, then chemotherapy and radiation. Now, doctors have overcome 30 years of false starts and found success with a fourth way to fight cancer: using the body's natural defender, the immune system. The approach is called a cancer vaccine, although it treats the disease rather than prevents it. At a cancer conference Sunday, researchers said one such Read more...