Noncardiac Surgery Guidelines

From The NY Times:

The nation’s two leading heart groups issued new guidelines yesterday about what should be done for patients with heart disease before they undergo surgery on other parts of the body.

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Traveling Patch

From WebMD:

Researchers have developed a skin patch that prevents the curse of many trips abroad: travelers’ diarrhea.

In a study of more than 150 travelers to Mexico and Guatemala, the novel vaccine cut the risk of moderate to severe diarrhea by 75%. Those who did get sick had a shorter, milder course of illness, says researcher Herbert DuPont, MD, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston.

The patch releases a low level of the toxins of E. coli that causes Traveler's diarrhea. This stimulates the immune system of the patient. Then, when they are infected by the bacteria, they already have some preformed antibody which is protective. Neat, huh?

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Keep the Lunch, Lose the Box

From San Jose Mercury News:

The state's public health department asked parents Thursday to toss certain Chinese-made lunchboxes potentially containing dangerous levels of lead - the same ones it distributed in a campaign to promote healthy eating.

The department distributed more than 350,000 of the canvas lunchboxes, only to find out that at least three that were tested in a batch of 56,000 contained "significant" levels of lead.

I think this is an argument to brown bag it.

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