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.
Children at risk of contracting juvenile diabetes may soon be vaccinated against the disease by administering insulin through a nasal spray device if a Melbourne-based clinical trial proves successful.
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.
Kidney transplant recipients are typically required to take daily steroids as part of their anti-rejection medications. However, long-term steroid use has significant side effects. A new study in Clinical Transplantation explored a combination of steroid-free medications that resulted in excellent patient outcomes and a very low rejection rate.
Many people believe nanotechnology will be the key to solving many of the world’s most pressing medical problems, while others believe it could lead to a potential disaster. The current issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics addresses this issue in all its aspects.
Experiments designed to test discrepancies in theoretical computational chemistry have turned up a barely two-angstrom difference that may lead to a new approach to locate and remove dangerous toxins such as perchlorate and nitrates from the environment.
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.
On December 11, USDA Forest Service (FS) scientists from the FS Southern Research Station (SRS) unit in Research Triangle Park, NC, along with colleagues from Duke University, published two papers in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) that provide a more precise understanding of how forests respond to increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), the major greenhouse gas driving climate change.
A CIHR-funded randomized controlled trial conducted in Kenya has demonstrated that male circumcision is an effective measure for reducing HIV incidence in young men.
There’s good news for children growing up in bad neighborhoods in a comprehensive, 8-year study led by University of Colorado at Boulder. The successful development of children in Denver and Chicago from the best neighborhoods was 63 percent, while the success rate for children living in high-poverty, disadvantaged neighborhoods was still relatively high, at 52 percent.