More Heart Attack Education Needed
A recent study suggests that many people who have heart disease still don’t know the symptoms of a heart attack. Lives can be saved if someone who is having a heart attack can get help within the first hour of having the symptoms. However it was found that most people don’t seek help until more than two hours have passed, and that means lives are being lost.
A few of the symptoms are pain in the jaw, left arm, or chest and can also include nausea. Of course most of us reason that there also can be many other reasons for these symptoms so we don’t run right to the ER, especially if we are uninsured.
The key seems to be that we all need to be aware if we are at risk for a heart attack. If you know you are at risk than these symptoms could certainly be telling you what is happening.
Doctors say that shorter hospital stays and more outpatient treatments could be a factor in not being educated enough about heart attacks, and right now no one is sure about how to better inform people about their risk. What they do know is that this is costing many lives that could otherwise be saved with early and prompt treatment.
Talk to your doctor about your risks and the health of your heart, it may save your life one day.
Hospital Compare, A New Website
Hospital Compare is a new website by the department of Health and Human Services. It lets consumers compare 26 quality of care measures in about 4,000 hospitals nation wide.
Patients rated hospital services such as how quickly they were given care and how well the communication was between them and the medical staff. In all there were ten main areas of experiences that patients had.
The purpose of the site is to help consumers make more informed decisions about where to go for care and treatment of certain ailments and illnesses. It is hoped that it will also allow hospitals to see where there strengths and weaknesses are so that they all can offer the best care and experience for their patients.
The site gives a lot of useful information, so if you are faced with a hospital stay, check the site before you are admitted. It will help to answer a lot of questions you may have and possibly relieve some anxiety about how you will be treated and cared for.
Immigrants, Sick and Uninsured Being Sent Home
Immigrants who are ill and are uninsured are being sent back to their home countries, whether they are here legally or illegally.
Hospitals in Arizona are routinely sending ill patients back to their countries of origin for treatment because of a law that says they are not eligible for medicaid. They say that after they treat the patients some of them need to go to the next level of care and long term care facilities require payments of a year in advance. The immigrants can’t afford that and are being sent back, most against their will. The police have stopped some of these transfers and lawyers are trying to block others.
These hospitals are sometimes paying from between 20,000 and 100,000 dollars to charter the medical helicopters and fly these people home.
Pregnancy, Stress, and Asthma
Four studies that were presented for discussion in Canada, conclude that other factors beside genetics can affect the baby’s immune system and determine whether it will develop asthma and/or allergies later on.
Stress levels were studied as were dust mites in the home. They found that higher stress levels increased the risk of asthma and allergies, and that the dust mites increased the risk even more.
Everything that the mother is exposed to is passed on to the baby. During the last trimester the mother begins to pass on her antibodies to the baby, thus strengthening the babies immune system.
Also worth mentioning is that women who have c-sections have babies with weaker immune systems, and first born children have a higher risk of allergies and asthma until age ten.
Dennis Quaid Goes To Congress
Dennis Quaid spoke to Congress about the incident which almost cost him his baby twins lives.
Quaid is suing Baxter because the labels on the drug Heparin for low and high dosages looked very much the same which led to the overdose given his babies. Baxter was aware of the problem and was fixing it. What they did not do however, was to recall labels that were already on the market and in the hospitals. He argues that just because the FDA approves a drug does not mean it’s safe. Sometimes a problem won’t arise until it’s on the market.
The defense is saying that states should not have the right to hold drug companies responsible if the federal government gives approval for a drug.
Dennis Quaid has said that the courts are the only road to justice for families that have fallen victim to this kind of mistake.
Nurses
We just finished National Nurse’s week and I didn’t want to let it go by without a mention.
Nurses truly are the heart and soul of medicine. They are special people who are there for their patients and who care about those they take care of.
A nurse is expected to do so many things and sometimes they are not pleasant but these modern day angels do them without batting an eye and most of the time, with a smile on their faces.
They offer care, support, and courage in the face of terrible disease and injury. They are the rock on which the medical system functions.
To nurses everywhere, in every discipline, thank you.
The Point of Studies
Maybe I’m the last one to figure this out but it finally came to me what the point of studies are. For instance, I read that the Norwegians did a study about tumors in breast cancer patients. One of the conclusions was that tumors grow faster in younger women than in older women. This observation seems logical when you think about it. I don’t think this was any big surprise. However the second finding was that larger tumors are more noticeable on mammograms than smaller tumors. They said that this finding was suspected. Yes, I thought, I should hope so.
Just as I was thinking about how ridiculous that finding was and how they wasted time and money to figure that out, it came to me. The point of studies is sometimes two fold. The first is to see what the outcome of something is. The second which applies to this example, is to take a statement that you find to be obvious and true, and to come up with proof.
I may tell you that leaves are green, which is a painfully obvious statement, but for me to state it as absolute fact if someone should argue otherwise, I must be able to recite some proof or findings to back it up.
So, silly as some studies seem to be, there is a method to the madness, and sometimes it’s worth the time and money.
Patient Dumping
A hospital in Costa Mesa discharged a 42 year old homeless man, put him in a taxi that drove him 42 miles away to a Mission in skid row.
Even though there were many other missions along the way the hospital decided skid row was where he belonged. This is not the first time hospitals have done this. A man who was paraplegic was found in the gutter in skid row after he was dumped.
Officials are investigating this latest dumping and say they will take appropriate action. The hospitals say that they have been taken to court over previous patient dumpings and have retrained their staffs to prevent this from happening again. Apparently someone at the hospital didn’t get the message.
Risk Factors for Alzheimer’s
The French have concluded a study on men and women who had mild cognitive impairment and them examined them two years later and then again four years later.
Those that suffered from depression, or taking anticholinergic drugs were more likely to go on to develop dementia.
It was also discovered that men and women have different risk factors. Men who have had a stroke were almost three times more likely to progress to dementia. Women who suffered from depression were two times as likely to get dementia.
Not all the people in the study went on to develop dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. There was a small percentage that recovered to normal cognitive ability.