Posted on

Medical Debt Is Killing Our Patients

Loading

— Here’s my legislative solution to put an end to this

by Arvind Venkat, MD

As an emergency medicine resident in the early 2000s, I cared for a patient in her early 60s with back pain. Prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), approximately 16% of emergency department patients were uninsured. Often their issues were of low acuity, again because they had no other place to see a physician. I assumed that to be the case with this patient, that I would treat her presumably musculoskeletal back pain, and discharge her. However, while treating her, I noticed she struggled to walk and clutched her gown across her chest. It was the clutching that really struck me as unusual. Read more in MedPage Today.

Loading
Posted on

Second person to receive pig heart transplant dies, Maryland hospital says

Loading

The second person to receive a transplanted heart from a pig has died, nearly six weeks after the highly experimental surgery, his Maryland doctors announced Tuesday.

Lawrence Faucette, 58, was dying from heart failure and ineligible for a traditional heart transplant when he received the genetically modified pig heart on Sept. 20. Read the full article in CBS News.

Loading
Posted on

Three Binghamton alums make a life-saving connection

Loading

Donor, coordinator and surgeon enable stranger to receive a kidney

By Eric Coker

For Arielle Disick ’12, donating a kidney in 2022 wasn’t about courage or charity. It was about simply doing something good.

“You never know how much of an impact that a little bit of kindness can make and what the ripple effects will be,” she says. “If you can do something to help, you should help.”
Read the full story in BingUNews.

Loading
Posted on

Diabetic Eye Screening: Reducing Frequency May Raise Retinal Risks

Loading

— Switching from annual to biennial exams would delay diabetic retinopathy diagnoses, study shows

By Randy Dotinga

Reducing the frequency of eye screening in patients with diabetes from annually to every other year would delay detection of sight-threatening diabetic retinopathy (STDR) and proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR), according to real-world data from a multi-ethnic population-based retrospective cohort study.

Among over 82,000 patients with diabetes in the London area, diagnosis of STDR would have been delayed by 1 year in 56.3% of patients, while diagnosis of PDR would have been delayed in 43.6%, reported Christopher Owen, PhD, of St. George’s University of London, and colleagues in the British Journal of Ophthalmology. Read the full article in MedPage Today.

Loading
Posted on

How a health crisis caused me to rethink my sense of identity

Loading

Getting to the core of who I am was a pivotal moment on my journey

By Lara Govendo

I had an identity crisis when I turned 30. At the time, everything that had previously defined me — my health, my job, my financial independence — had been stripped from me. It felt like the rug had been pulled out from under my feet.

Most 30-year-olds aren’t writing out their final wishes in the event they won’t be able to communicate, but several years ago, I was. As I finished the evaluation for a double-lung transplant, made necessary by complications of cystic fibrosis, I had to rumble with death more than life. While preventing death was the goal, it wasn’t promised. Read more in Cystic Fibrosis News Today.

Loading
Posted on

Organ Transplant Recipients Share Their Stories

Loading

By Mina Kim

Every day in hospitals around the country, while one family is grieving the loss of a family member, another family is given news that will offer them hope: that a possible organ donor match has been made. In California alone, more than 20,000 people remain on the waitlist for a kidney, liver, or other organ. We’ll talk about how organ donation works and hear about a new law that aims to modernize the current system. And we’ll hear from you: have you or a family member received – or donated – an organ?

Guests:

Lenny Bernstein, health and medicine reporter, The Washington Post

Michael Pasco, liver transplant recipient

Kris Netherton, heart and kidney transplant recipient

Dr. Harish Mahanty M.D., surgical director of transplantation, Sutter Health

Listen to the interview on KQED Radio.

Loading
Posted on

Antibiotic Combo for Acute Infection Cleared of Kidney Risk

Loading

— Use of cefepime meanwhile resulted in more neurological dysfunction

By Michele Sullivan

BOSTON — In adults hospitalized for acute infections, cefepime and piperacillin-tazobactam turned out to be equally safe in terms of serious kidney outcomes, although the latter antibiotic showed a lower risk for coma and delirium, an open-label randomized trial found.

Cefepime versus piperacillin-tazobactam for suspected infection resulted in no significant difference in the study’s primary endpoint, the highest stage of acute kidney injury (AKI) or death at 14 days (OR 0.95, 95% CI 0.80-1.13, P=0.56), Edward Qian, MD, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, reported here during a late-breaking abstract session at IDWeek. Read the full article in MedPage Today.

Loading
Posted on

Donor’s Immune Cells Could Help Transplant Recipients Avoid Organ Rejection

Loading

By Amy Norton, HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Oct. 16, 2023 (HealthDay News) — A liver transplant can give people a new lease on life, but at the cost of lifelong immune-suppressing medication and its risks. Now an innovative approach to reduce, or possibly eliminate, certain patients’ reliance on those drugs is showing early promise.

The tactic is aimed at priming a transplant recipient’s immune system to better tolerate liver tissue from a living donor. A week before the transplant, the recipient receives an infusion of specific immune system cells from the donor — ones that, in theory, could tone down any immune system attack on the new “foreign” liver. Read the full article in U.S. News & World Report.

Loading
Posted on

How you can help shape the future of organ donation and transplant

Loading

A message from Dianne LaPointe Rudow, President, UNOS Board of Directors

By Dianne LaPointe Rudow, ANP-BC, DNP, FAAN, President, UNOS Board of Directors

What’s going on

I’m a nurse practitioner by training, and I’ve spent countless hours with patients—both those waiting for a transplant and those who’ve just received one. I’ve seen firsthand the highs and lows, both physical and mental, that patients, living donors, loved ones, and family members of generous deceased donors go through, and one thing remains clear: Patients like you are at the center of the U.S. organ donation and transplant system, and it is up to us in the transplant community to engage with you and learn more from your experiences. Read the complete article from UNOS here.

Loading
Posted on

Early diagnosis, treatment intensification essential to improve diabetes outcomes

Loading

By Regina Schaffer

BOSTON — Interventions that prevent or delay the onset of type 2 diabetes are critically important, and early diagnosis and treatment intensification can improve outcomes and increase lifespan, according to a speaker.

Despite the development of several new classes of diabetes medications and devices and advances in understanding of the importance of glucose control, only about half of people with type 2 diabetes are achieving a target HbA1c of less than 7%, Juan P. Frias, MD, medical director and principal investigator at Velocity Clinical Research in Los Angeles, said during a presentation at the Cardiometabolic Health Congress. Read the complete article in Healio.

Loading