December 3rd, 2011 by PeterWehrwein in Research
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Some medications are well known for being risky, especially for older people. Certain antihistamines, barbiturates, muscle relaxants—take too much of them, or take them with certain other medications, and you can wind up in serious trouble (and possibly in the back of ambulance).
But researchers from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Emory University reported in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine that those high-risk medications are not the ones that most commonly put older Americans (ages 65 and older) in the hospital.
Warfarin is #1
Instead, they found that warfarin is the most common culprit. Warfarin (the brand-name version is called Coumadin) reduces the blood’s tendency to clot. Many older people take it to lower their risk of getting a stroke.
After warfarin, different Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*
November 24th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Research
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Sending dementia patients to the hospital could overwhelm the health care system and not offer them any better care at the end of life, researchers noted.
The researchers obtained data on all hospitalizations involving a dementia diagnosis for the 85 years and older group between years 2000 and 2008 from the nationally representative Nationwide Inpatient Sample database, a part of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Healthcare Costs and Utilization Project.
Annual hospitalization data came from the U.S. Census Bureau. They projected the future volume of hospitalizations involving a dementia diagnosis in the 85 years and older group two ways, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
November 21st, 2011 by HarvardHealth in Health Tips
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No matter how sick my grandmother got or what her doctors said, she refused to go to the hospital because she thought it was a dangerous place. To some degree, she was right. Although hospitals can be places of healing, hospital stays can have serious downsides, too.
One that has been getting a lot of attention lately is the development of delirium in people who are hospitalized. Delirium is a sudden change in mental status characterized by confusion, disorientation, altered states of consciousness (from hyperalert to unrousable), an inability to focus, and sometimes hallucinations. It’s the most common complication of hospitalization among older people.
We wrote about treating and preventing hospital delirium earlier this year in the Harvard Women’s Health Watch. In the New York Times “The New Old Age” blog, author Susan Seliger vividly describes her 85-year-old mother’s rapid descent into hospital delirium, and tips for preventing it.
Although delirium often recedes, it may have long-lasting aftereffects. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*
November 12th, 2011 by Medgadget in Research
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Cost scrutiny and comparative effectiveness research are playing a growing role in shaping healthcare delivery. In light of that, Abiomed Inc. (Danvers, MA) has recently announced the results of a study that showed the company’s Impella heart pump significantly reduced major adverse events at an incremental cost per quality-adjusted life year. “The cost-effective message is directly tied to the financial impact of these better clinical outcomes for patients treated with Impella,” Jeffrey Popma, MD, the director of the angiographic Core Laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess told Medgadget. Popma was responsible for the planned analysis of the angiographic results.
The device, which the company describes as the “world’s smallest heart pump,” demonstrated an increase in ejection fraction of more than 20% and an improvement in Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
August 1st, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in News
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The World Health Organization’s new patient safety envoy will take on health care acquired infections in his new role, he announced last week. Liam Donaldson, England’s former Chief Medical Officer, pointed out in his first report as envoy that patient safety incidents occur in 4% to 16% of all hospitalized patients, and that hospital-acquired infections affect hundreds of millions of patients globally.
A WHO report outlined the problem.
High-income countries had pooled health care acquired infection rates of 7.6%. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control estimated that 4.1 million Europeans incur 4.5 million health care acquired infections annually. In the U.S. the incidence rate was 4.5% in 2002, or 9.3 infections per 1,000 patient-days and 1.7 million affected patients.
In Europe, these infections cause Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*
