Internationally Recognized Cardiothoracic Surgeon Available for Comment on Aortic Dissection

Joseph E. Bavaria, MD, is Director of the Thoracic Aortic Surgery Program at Penn Medicine, a multidisciplinary program encompassing all aspects of aortic disease, including thoracic aortic reconstruction and Marfan syndrome. He also is Vice Chief of the Division of…

From knee replacement to spine surgery, your next procedure likely will be outpatient

With nearly 50 million outpatient surgeries performed in the U.S. each year and the increasingly complex nature of the procedures, patients need to know several important details when having surgery without an overnight stay in the hospital, says the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA). Updated fasting restrictions, removing jewelry to reduce the risk of burns and asking about regional blocks for non-opioid pain control when undergoing anesthesia are a few important factors that could lead to increased satisfaction and safer outcomes.

Argonne’s Valerii Vinokur awarded Fritz London Prize

Valerii Vinokur, a senior scientist and distinguished fellow at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, has been awarded the Fritz London Memorial Prize for his work in condensed matter and theoretical physics.

Patient Safety Awareness Week: CRNAs Set the Standard for Safe and Effective Anesthesia Care

In honor of Patient Safety Awareness Week (March 8-14, 2020), Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs) want patients to know that nurse anesthetists are not only patient safety practitioners, they are patient safety experts. CRNAs plan and implement every step of the anesthesia process with patients’ safety and well-being in mind.

FAU Emergency Medicine Resident Physicians Train for Coronavirus Contagion

With seven reported cases in Florida to-date, FAU emergency medicine resident physicians prepared for the threat of a coronavirus contagion using a simulated or “mock” disaster scenario at FORTS Medical. The simulation involved a cruise ship dock-setting scenario and mock passengers were transported by bus. The passengers stormed into the large warehouse to challenge the resident physicians to react and respond quickly to triage the patients. About 100 people participated in the half-day simulation including local nurses, paramedics, and student and community actors.

Coronavirus and the Workplace: Rutgers Experts Available for Interview

PISCATAWAY, N.J. (March 6, 2020) – The coronavirus/COVID-19 outbreak is raising questions about internal communications, telecommuting, sick leave, and other policies. Workplace experts in the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations are available for interview on an ongoing basis…

Improving detection of prenatal alcohol exposure using complementary tools

Drinking while pregnant can harm the developing fetus, leading to physical, cognitive, and neurobehavioral effects that may persist into adulthood. No safe level of alcohol in pregnancy has been identified, and many guidelines now recommend total abstinence. However, prenatal drinking remains common, particularly early on before women are aware of their pregnancy.

New Legislation Would Jeopardize Patient Access to Medical Tests Across the Board by Restricting Policy that Removed Barriers to Coronavirus Testing

On March 5, U.S. House and Senate lawmakers introduced the VALID Act, which would give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) new, expansive powers to regulate laboratory developed tests—tests that are already regulated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and are subject to stringent personnel, quality control, and proficiency testing requirements. This bill promotes duplicative, costly federal regulations for clinical laboratories that will result in decreased patient access to essential medical tests. AACC urges Congress not to act on this bill until its impact on healthcare can be thoroughly evaluated.

Millions of US workers at risk of infections on the job, UW researchers calculate, emphasizing need to protect against COVID-19

A University of Washington researcher calculates that 14.4 million workers face exposure to infection once a week and 26.7 million at least once a month in the workplace, pointing to an important population needing protection as the novel coronavirus disease, COVID-19, continues to break out across the U.S.

New Imaging Technique Enables the Study of 3D Printed Brain Tumors

In research published in Science Advances, Xavier Intes, a professor of biomedical engineering at Rensselaer, joined a multidisciplinary team from Northeastern University and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai to demonstrate a methodology that combines the bioprinting and imaging of glioblastoma cells in a cost-effective way that more closely models what happens inside the human body.

A Bite Out of Apple: What Happens If You Lose Strategic Talent?

When Apple’s longtime design guru Jony Ive announced that he’d be starting his own agency, it meant major change. The situation serves as a case in point for any organization whose success rests on strategic human capital: If strategy is intrinsically tied to talent, how does a firm support that talent or proceed if that talent disengages?

Using new genomic technology, UCI researchers discover breast cancer cells shift their metabolic strategy in order to metastasize

New discovery in breast cancer could lead to better strategies for preventing the spread of cancer cells to other organs in the body, effectively reducing mortality in breast cancer patients.
According to a study, published today in Nature Cell Biology, breast cancer cells shift their metabolic strategy in order to metastasize. Instead of cycling sugar (glucose) for energy, they preferentially use mitochondrial metabolism.

Sandia, Puerto Rican university collaborate to develop energy projects for global tropics

A new 10-year agreement between Sandia National Laboratories and the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, has the potential to bring more reliable electricity to remote communities and the latest in electrical grid technology to rural areas in the world’s tropics. A Sandia manager who was born and grew up in Puerto Rico says the agreement will continue a decadeslong relationship with the university he attended.

Healthcare Innovators Focus on ‘Quality as a Business Strategy’ – Update from Journal of Healthcare Quality

Despite two decades of effort – targeting care processes, outcomes, and most recently the value of care – progress has been slow in closing the gap between quality and cost in the US healthcare system. It’s time for a new approach focusing on healthcare quality as a business strategy, according to a special issue of the Journal for Healthcare Quality (JHQ), the peer-reviewed journal of the National Association for Healthcare Quality (NAHQ). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

Skills Training Opens ‘DOORS’ to Digital Mental Health for Patients with Serious Mental Illness

Digital technologies, especially smartphone apps, have great promise for increasing access to care for patients with serious mental illness such as schizophrenia. A new training program, called DOORS, can help patients get the full benefit of innovative digital mental health tools, reports a study in the March issue of Journal of Psychiatric Practice. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

The Impact of MSK Ultrasound Code Changes On Imaging Utilization

Concerns regarding increasing utilization of non-vascular extremity ultrasound (US) imaging led to the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) Editorial Panel to separate a singular billing code into distinct comprehensive and focused examination codes with differential reimbursement. This new Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute study, published online in Current Problems in Diagnostic Radiology, explores the association of the billing code separation on nonvascular extremity US utilization, with attention to specialty-specific variation.

Gut bacteria can penetrate tumors and aid cancer therapy, study suggests

Researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and University of Chicago have discovered that bacteria that usually live in the gut can accumulate in tumors and improve the effectiveness of immunotherapy in mice. The study, which will be published March 6 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM), suggests that treating cancer patients with Bifidobacteria might boost their response to CD47 immunotherapy, a wide-ranging anti-cancer treatment that is currently being evaluated in several clinical trials.

Mount Sinai and Harbour BioMed Collaborate to Advance Novel Biotherapies for the Treatment of Cancer and Coronavirus COVID-19

Collaboration combines Harbour BioMed’s proprietary H2L2 Harbour Mice® platform for fully human monoclonal antibody generation with Mount Sinai’s translational medical research expertise.