With six out of 10 Pittsburgh-area elementary school students testing positive for strep throat in previous studies and another strep season approaching, Children?s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC wants families to take steps to avoid the painful and potentially dangerous infection.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today approved revised labeling for Trasylol (aprotinin injection) to strengthen its safety warnings and to limit its approved usage to specific situations. Trasylol is given to patients before heart surgery to reduce bleeding and the need for blood transfusions. Trasylol is marketed by Bayer Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Leverkusen, Germany.
Based on results recently presented at the 2006 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, researchers speculate that a sudden decrease in the incidence of breast cancer in 2003 may be due to a reduction in the use of postmenopausal hormone therapy.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have taken the dangerous guesswork out of dosing a life-saving medication for congestive heart failure.
Scientific, technological and medical advances made in the past two decades are leading to more definitive diagnoses, earlier and more effective treatment options and better outcomes for patients suffering from a condition called acromegaly, according to an article published in today’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine and authored by a specialist in endocrinology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Intelligent children are more likely to become vegetarians later in life, a study reported in the British Medical Journal. A Southampton University team found those who were vegetarian by 30 had recorded five IQ points more on average at the age of 10.
Survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is at an all-time high in King County, and a new method of resuscitation used by emergency medical responders in King County may be the reason. Since the protocol was adopted in 2005, survival rates jumped to 46% from 33% for the period of 2002 through 2004.
The largest-ever study of carotid stenting in high-surgical risk patients has shown that with proper education and training, community physicians are just as successful at using catheter-based techniques to unclog arteries supplying blood to the brain as are those who pioneered the procedure at major university medical centers.
Clinical researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Health System are starting a trial utilizing a new mechanism to treat the heart when its electrical pulses essentially short-circuit, referred to as atrial fibrillation (A-Fib). The tool is a high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) ablation system. It’s the first to deliver energy bursts forward in a complete circle, all at once, from outside of the vein.
Every year there are potentially more than 500 sudden unexplained deaths in England, reveals a nationwide study published ahead of print in the journal Heart. This figure is around eight times higher than previously thought, the data suggest.