Healthcare :: Mortality rates 71 percent lower at top-rated hospitals, HealthGrades 2008 hospital-quality study

Patients have on average a 71 percent lower chance of dying at the nation’s top-rated hospitals compared with the lowest-rated hospitals across 18 procedures and conditions analyzed in the tenth annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study, issued today by HealthGrades, the healthcare ratings company. The study, which documents a wide variation in the quality of care between the highest-performing hospitals and all others, also found that if all hospitals performed at the level of hospitals rated with five stars by HealthGrades, 266,604 Medicare lives could potentially have been saved over the three years studied.

Depression :: Anti-depressant drugs can double risk of gastrointestinal bleeding

New research shows that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), a group of drugs commonly used to treat depression, may double the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding, according to researchers from Wake Forest University School of Medicine and colleagues. When the drugs are taken with aspirin and other similar pain medications, the risk is more than 600 percent higher.

Back Pain :: New clinical guideline for low back pain

A summary of evidence on the diagnosis and treatment of low-back pain has prompted the American Pain Society (ASP) and the American College of Physicians (ACP) to issue a new treatment guideline. The guideline is based on a thorough analysis of published research conducted by investigators at the Oregon Evidence-Based Practice Center at Oregon Health & Science University.