The annual report, which assesses whether states are keeping their promise to use proceeds from the 1998 state tobacco settlement to fund tobacco prevention and cessation programs, finds that only three states — Maine, Delaware and Colorado — currently fund tobacco prevention programs at minimum levels recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Surgeons at the Methodist DeBakey Heart Center in Houston were among the first in the U.S. to implant a new vascular graft engineered to reduce the risk of blood clots in patients treated for peripheral arterial disease (PAD), which affects as many as 12 million Americans over the age of 50.
Thousands of statin users worldwide are suffering preventable heart attacks, simply because they are not complying with their treatment or are taking too low a dose, according to new research published on-line today (Thursday 7 December) in European Heart Journal.
Researchers are advancing against a rare, deadly lung disease (related to hormones) that no one had even heard of a decade ago. The disease targets only women, striking them down during their childbearing years. It can be triggered by pregnancy, progresses rapidly, and often results in death within 10 years.
Computer scientists are building mathematical models to represent the safest and most effective ways to perform surgery, including tasks such as suturing, dissecting and joining tissue.
Epilepsy specialists at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center have found that brain injury patients in a coma can benefit from prolonged electroencephalographic (EEG) testing that may diagnose whether seizure activity is contributing to their coma state.
Drug coated heart stents deliver benefits that outweigh any risks of blood clots when placed in appropriate patients, a U.S. advisory panel said.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning five firms, Triangle Compounding Pharmacy, University Pharmacy, Custom Scripts Pharmacy, Hal?s Compounding Pharmacy, and New England Compounding Center, to stop compounding and distributing standardized versions of topical anesthetic creams, which are marketed for general distribution rather than responding to the unique medical needs of individual patients.
FDA was notified that Pfizer will suspend a large, Phase 3 trial evaluating the investigational cardiovascular therapy torceptrapib/atorvastatin (T/A) due to an increased rate of mortality (death) in patients receiving the combination compared to those receiving atorvastatin alone.
It looks, contracts and responds almost like natural heart muscle ? even though it was grown in the lab. And it brings scientists another step closer to the goal of creating replacement parts for damaged human hearts, or eventually growing an entirely new heart from just a spoonful of loose heart cells.