Exhale Your Way To Better Heatlh

From The New Scientist:

A simple breath test can sometimes detect lung cancer in patients – even those in the early stages of the disease – US researchers reported on Sunday.

The researchers developed a compact device that correctly diagnosed three-quarters of lung cancer patients in trials involving 122 people with different types of respiratory disease. The sample included 49 people with lung cancer and 21 healthy controls. However, the test also wrongly diagnosed many people with lung cancer when they did not have the disease.

The researchers say a more accurate test may be possible in principle. "The unique chemical signature of the breath of patients with lung cancer can be detected with moderate accuracy by a [colour-producing] sensor array," the researchers write.

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Searching For Better Health

Microsoft Corp. today announced that it has agreed to acquire Medstory Inc., a privately held company based in Foster City, Calif., that develops intelligent Web search technology specifically for health information. The acquisition represents a strategic move for Microsoft in the consumer health search arena and signals a long-term commitment toward the development of a broader consumer health strategy. Medstory employees will join the Health Solutions Group, a recently formed division at Microsoft that will manage product development and delivery. Financial terms were not disclosed, as part of the agreement between the organizations.

“At Microsoft, we are focused on enabling people to make the best decisions,” said Peter Neupert, corporate vice president for health strategy and leader of the Health Solutions Group. “We were impressed with the ability of Medstory’s unique technology to organize and surface the most relevant online health content, which empowers consumers who are trying to find the right information about an important life event.”

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Everyone's got a story, and now we can index and search it. Medicine 2.0?

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Russian Bird Flu

From the St. Petersburg Times:

Veterinary workers wearing masks and white protective suits carted off refuse and burned it Tuesday inside the quarantined section of the popular Bird Market as guards patrolled the perimeter.

But other parts of the market, which has been linked to an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain of avian flu, remained open for business, with sellers hawking dogs, cats and fish.

“Of course it doesn’t affect the dogs,” saleswoman Maria Ivanova said, sitting in front of a cage of playful Alsatian puppies selling for $200 each.

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Yet Another Health Insurance Plan

From Reuters:

A group of U.S. hospitals on Thursday offered a plan to cover the nation's 47 million uninsured, including mandatory coverage for all and subsidies for the working poor.

The proposal by the Federation of American Hospitals, which represents about 20 percent of the industry, is the latest in a flurry of proposed schemes to solve the growing problem of the uninsured. Since 2000, about 6 million people in the United States have lost their insurance.

The hospital group's plan, estimated to increase federal spending by $115 billion, would build on the employer-based health system, under which most Americans already get coverage.

It would provide subsidies for individuals to buy insurance from their employer if they cannot afford it, or to buy tax-subsidized coverage in the open market.

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If the folks could afford the insurance, don't you think they would have purchased it. Will this encourage more employers to offer less coverage, thereby forcing their employees to buy their own coverage. Won't this increase the overall spending as a nation on healthcare when we're already at an all time high and other nations have better stats with far less expenditure?

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Record Setting Surgery

From the Houston Chronicle:

Until she came to Houston's Renaissance Hospital two weeks ago, Renee Williams hadn't left her bed in three years. It took eight people to get her in and out of the ambulance. At her first weigh-in at the hospital, she tipped 850 pounds.

Williams this week became what's thought to be the largest female patient to undergo laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery, the increasingly popular solution to morbid obesity. Her doctor said he's optimistic her weight may drop to as low as 200 pounds in two years.

"I feel like I've been run over by a truck," an exhausted Williams said Wednesday, a day after the surgery. "But it's worth it if I can get my independence back, take my kids to the park, just be able to get around on my own."

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Cut All Fat, Not Just Trans

From USA Today:

Big food companies are squeezing trans fats out of products from Oreos to Cheetos and rushing to find palatable substitute oils. Even Crisco has been reformulated so it's trans-fat free. Fast-food chains such as Wendy's and McDonald's have scrambled to figure out ways to cook fries without trans fats.

Now, some nutrition and health analysts say the preoccupation with trans fats has gone too far.

They say that in some cases, trans fats simply are being replaced with other unhealthful oils. And at a time when 66% of adults in the USA are overweight or obese, the analysts say the nation's fixation with trans fats is drawing attention away from other important reasons Americans' diets are so bad for their hearts: They continue to consume too many calories, too much junk food and not enough fruits and vegetables.

"It is important to remind ourselves that changing oils and removing trans fat does not magically turn a deep-fried food into a health food," says Dawn Jackson Blatner, a registered dietitian at Northwestern Memorial Wellness Institute in Chicago and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association.

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Hiccups- A Chronic Condition?

From Yahoo News:

Jennifer Mee can't stop hiccuping. For more than three weeks now, the 15-year-old St. Petersburg teen has hiccuped close to 50 times a minute — despite the best efforts of doctors and home remedies.

She's had blood tests, a CT scan and an MRI. Drugs haven't worked. Neither has holding her breath, putting sugar under her tongue, sipping pickle juice, breathing into a paper bag and drinking out of the wrong side of a glass.

And, yes, people have tried to scare them out of her.

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Well, I guess modern medicine is puzzled at this point. I doubt she has tried all of these "cures?" My favorite is "T's Lick, Toss & Bite but Hick No More!"

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An Expensive Lesson

From CBC News:

The cash-strapped Vancouver Island Health Authority is spending $130,000 to teach to teach front-line medical workers how to wash their hands properly.

For the next two months, seven educators will teach refresher courses in Vancouver Island hospitals and community-care facilities, making sure that staff know how to effectively use soap and sanitizing gels to kill germs.

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Let's see, soap, water, rub the hands, make the suds, count to thirty seconds... I think they could save their dollars for something else.

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Germs At the Office

From MSNBC:

From his studies, Gerba has discovered that in most work environments, offices and cubicles have higher bacteria levels than surfaces in common areas. What spot in your office space is friendliest to germs? Telephones topped the charts in most offices across the United States, followed by desks and computer keyboards. "The phone is typically the dirtiest piece of equipment in an office because it goes straight to your mouth, and you never clean or disinfect it,” Gerba says.

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Maybe it's true that your job is making you sick... Of course, around the hospital these would be resistant bacteria.

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Southern Cookin'

From The Washington Post:

West Virginia and Kentucky _ states known for high levels of obesity, diabetes and smoking _ have the highest proportion of people with heart disease in the nation, U.S. health officials said Thursday.

The findings, from the first study ever to look at heart disease prevalence state by state, showed that states in the Southeast and Southwest were heart disease leaders. Colorado and the District of Columbia had the lowest percentages.

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All that butter and bacon fat had to end up somewhere. So much for down home cookin'!

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Salmonella Peanut Butter

From Medical News Today:

While US shops and consumers hunt down and throw out potentially contaminated jars of Peter Pan Peanut Butter, health officials continue to investigate exactly how some of them became contaminated with Salmonella.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned US consumers earlier this week not to eat jars of Peter Pan Peanut Butter and Great Value Peanut Butter with product codes starting "2111" because they could be contaminated with Salmonella.

All I know is "Choosy mothers choose Jif..."

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Simulating Surgery

From Medgadget:

In an article at the Globes [online] we read about Israeli company Simbionix Ltd., a medical simulator start-up. The company has many interesting simulators such as GI Mentor (i.e. upper & lower GI scopes), URO Mentor (i.e. endourology), PERC Mentor (i.e. fluoroscopy-assisted percutaneous procedures), and ANGIO Mentor (i.e. self-explanatory).

We were particularly intrigued by LAP Mentor, a laparoscopic sim system.

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Forget Organic Chemistry

From NewSciTech:

As carbon-based life forms, humans and other animals, invariably, are treated for disease with the help of carbon-based medicines.

But now, in a promising new study, scientists have shown that silicon — the stuff of computer chips, glass and pottery — may have extraordinary therapeutic value for treating human disease.

“All medicines are carbon-based — like we are,” says Robert West, a University of Wisconsin-Madison chemist and one of the world’s leading authorities on silicon chemistry. “There are about 50,000 biologically active molecules, and they’re all mainly carbon-based.”

But now, West and his colleagues report in the January edition of the journal Silicon Chemistry that the effectiveness and safety of an important anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer drug were enhanced remarkably by replacing one of the molecule’s carbon atoms with a silicon atom.

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Stuck At the On Ramp of the Info Superhighway

In a world where most people routinely e-mail friends, family and colleagues, and many exchange e-mail with teachers, newspaper columnists and even the pizza delivery guy, it's a weird fact: Most of us still don't have e-mail relationships with our doctors.

For a decade, experts in medicine and technology have been saying that patient/doctor e-mailing was an obvious trend just waiting to explode. But studies show a very slow adoption of the practice: Just 8% of adults said they had received e-mail from their doctors in an online survey in 2005 by Harris Interactive for The Wall Street Journal Online.

Although 25% of doctors said they communicated online with patients in a survey last year by Manhattan Research, other studies suggest a smaller number do so regularly.

Maybe the fact that there's no code for an email encounter or instant messaging has something to do with it. Then again, perhaps it's the fact that you can't examine a patient through a computer. While this may evolve, the Doctor-Patient relationship is based on a face to face encounter.

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Full Disclosure?

According to a new survey conducted by the University of Chicago, a meaningful subgroup of physicians feel that they do not have an obligation to tell patients about treatments, such as abortion and birth control for minors, they oppose on religious or moral grounds. The survey, which reached 1,144 doctors, found most (86 percent) respondents believe that doctors are obligated to present all treatment options, whether they approve of them or not.

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So according to this, whether we agree or not, we have to present every option? I think this is ridiculous. So a conservative Christian has to go against their beliefs and present abortion as an option to their patient, even if they are opposed to it as well? What about the Doctor's rights? How about a Doctor that offers only one of several recognized procedures for a condition? Are they obligated to tell their patient that "there are many ways to repair your hernia, but I only use the 'plug and patch' method, but you should also consider a Lichtenstein, a McVay, and a laparoscopic approach, although I don't do any of these? Does the Doctor have to go through a dozen hernia repairs and variations to simply get the consent from the patient?

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Souvenir Ultrasounds

Parents anxious to have souvenir ultrasounds photographs or film clips of their unborn child in the womb should make sure they are done by professionals who follow strict safety guidelines.

Technological advances have enabled parents to get amazing high definition ultrasound images of their unborn baby and even CD-ROMs and DVDs that can cost up to 250 pounds ($490) at commercial companies.

But experts said although there is no evidence that ultrasound can harm the developing fetus it should be used prudently.

Your unborn baby...now available on DVD.

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Super Bowl = Super Eating

According to a new study, 'Even the food you see when you watch the Super Bowl can lead you to ‘Blimp' out', says researcher Collin Payne, Ph.D., of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab.

The Super Bowl ranks #1 in terms of home parties (it even beats New Year's Eve), and it ranks #2 in food consumption, according to the book, Mindless Eating (Bantam 2006). In 2004, Super Bowl partiers ate 4,000 tons of popcorn, 14,000 tons of chips and an estimated 3,200,000 pizzas.

And this is before all of those commercials for snacks...

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Dance Revolution To Fight Obesity

A year after rolling out Dance Dance Revolution video games in West Virginia's public schools, state officials say the program has helped improve the health of overweight students there. A study conducted by West Virginia University and the West Virginia Public Employees Insurance Agency found that obese students playing the dance game halted any weight gain while their peers continued to put on an average of 6 pounds during the testing period.

Whatever happened to just a game of basketball?

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Clinton 2.0 Beta

Forty-seven million Americans are without health insurance, dependent on the emergency room, or getting no care at all. And here we go again with a complicated plan going nowhere.

I say "again" because in 1970 I wrote a book, "Don't Get Sick in America," on the financing of healthcare. I predicted that, because of rising costs, 1970 would be the year for national health insurance – the next big step after Medicare and Medicaid.

It didn't happen then, and not much has happened, legislatively, since. In 1988, Congress passed a bill providing Medicare coverage in cases of catastrophic illness. Because it required senior citizens to pay sizable premiums, the reaction was so stormy that Congress repealed the bill.

Americans didn't want a Canadian style national health care system when Bill Clinton was in office, and I severely doubt it will be so different this time around...

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