http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. Though the toll of sepsis is known to be enormous – it is estimated to cost the U.S. health care system $24.3 billion each year, and is the nation's third-leading killer, behind heart disease and cancer – the true magnitude of incidence of and death from the illness remains unknown. There is substantial variability in these numbers, depending on the method used to identify the condition in patients treated at hospital across the United States, according to a new study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The authors say these discrepancies limit the potential to improve treatment for the condition. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-lack-consensus-health-sepsis-poses.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Tue, 16 Apr 2013 09:31:37 EST news285323489 MDCT is a better way to measure annular size in patients with aortic stenosis who are candidates for transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) than two dimensional echocardiography, a new study indicates. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-mdct-valve-implant-size-transcatheter.html Cardiology Sat, 13 Apr 2013 04:31:31 EST news285046279 Radiation oncologists at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital are stressing the need for evidence-based, standardized guidelines on dietary recommendations for cancer patients—and with good reason. A new analysis revealed that online dietary recommendations for cancer patients, if even present on an institution's website, appear to be consistently inconsistent. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-cancer-websites-lack-nutritional-guidance.html Cancer Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:00:01 EST news283522728 Truth and alcohol may not mix, particularly when people are asked how much they drink. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-boozy-brits-underestimate.html Health Wed, 27 Feb 2013 11:50:01 EST news281187240 (HealthDay)—Compared with final pathology, biopsy of small renal masses (SRMs) can be accurately used in a treatment algorithm to direct management, according to research published in the February issue of The Journal of Urology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-biopsy-based-algorithm-accurate-small-renal.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Sat, 09 Feb 2013 07:20:01 EST news279613252 Discrepancies between internal and published analyses of industry-sponsored clinical trials lead to further calls for transparency http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-discrepant-analyses-industry-sponsored-clinical-trials.html Other Tue, 29 Jan 2013 17:00:02 EST news278687643 (Medical Xpress)—Yellow coat color mice in Cheryl Rosenfeld's lab are not fortunate sons and daughters.Conventional knowledge says these mice will likely live fatter, more diseased lives than their black, brown and mottled (tiger-striped) siblings. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-previous-bpa.html Medical research Wed, 02 Jan 2013 14:23:46 EST news276359010 (HealthDay)—Fewer diagnostic discrepancies are seen for pathologists with dermatopathology fellowship training, according to a study published in the January issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-derm-path-linked-diagnosis-discrepancies.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Sat, 29 Dec 2012 07:40:01 EST news275987740 A team of researchers led by Hiroyuki Nakahara and Shinsuke Suzuki of the RIKEN Brain Science Institute has identified a set of brain structures that are critical for predicting how other people make decisions. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-brain-decision-making-circuits-simulate-people.html Neuroscience Fri, 14 Dec 2012 08:44:04 EST news274697030 A collaborative study conducted in Mexico by researchers from the West Virginia University-Charleston (US), Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla (México), Universidad de Chile and the Institute of Molecular Epidemiology of the Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción (Chile), revealed that opinion surveys used by researchers from the Guttmacher Institute overestimated figures of induced abortion in the Federal District of Mexico (Mexico DF) up to 10-fold. The research recently published in the International Journal of Women's Health highlights that the actual figure of induced abortion in Mexico DF has not surpassed 15,000 per year according to the official registry. "During 2009, the number of induced abortions in Mexico DF was 12,221, which directly contradicts the figure of 122,355 induced abortions estimated by opinion surveys for the same year, resulting in a 1000% overestimation" pointed out Elard Koch, the Chilean epidemiologist leading the research. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-mexican-paradox-opinion-surveys-overestimate.html Obstetrics & gynaecology Thu, 06 Dec 2012 09:00:01 EST news274002837 Many studies suggest gender-related differences in athletes' responses to sports-related concussion. Nevertheless, findings have not been unanimous, and no guidelines regarding gender-specific strategies for prevention or treatment of sports-related concussion have been developed. Researchers at Vanderbilt University, the University of Albany, and ImPACT Applications, Inc., set out to review symptoms and neurocognitive findings in male and female high-school soccer players to see if they could verify such discrepancies. The researchers were unable to do so. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-gender-affect-acute-concussive-injury.html Pediatrics Tue, 02 Oct 2012 10:46:46 EST news268393599 The head of the US National Cancer Institute warned Tuesday that the United States could lose its global leadership in research into the disease because of lower spending. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-funding-slump-alarms-cancer.html Cancer Tue, 25 Sep 2012 17:48:34 EST news267814108 (Medical Xpress) -- A study of more than 500 patients admitted to, and discharged from, a big-city medical center suggests that nurse-pharmacist teams trained to track down discrepancies between lists of drugs patients are taking at home and those they are scheduled to take in the hospital might substantially reduce such potentially harmful conflicts. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-special-nurse-pharmacist-teams-conflicts-patient.html Other Fri, 03 Aug 2012 08:23:57 EST news263201028 A brief therapeutic intervention called motivational interviewing, administered over the telephone, was significantly more effective than a simple "check-in" call in getting Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans with mental health diagnoses to begin treatment for their conditions, in a study led by a physician at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-therapy-technique-iraq-afghanistan-veterans.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 26 Jul 2012 16:15:17 EST news262538110 When a person injures their knee, it becomes inflamed. When a person has a cold, their throat becomes inflamed. This type of inflammation is the body's natural and protective response to injury. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-childhood-adversity-depression-chronic-inflammation.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 03 Jul 2012 10:20:41 EST news260529633 A study from Rhode Island Hospital examined the two-year period when the current ban on federal funding for syringe exchange programs (SEPs) was lifted in order to learn whether SEPs received or anticipated pursuing federal funding during that time. Only three of the 187 SEPs that responded had received funding at the time of the survey, and early experiences cited many barriers to accessing the federal funds. With the ban reinstated, the researchers state that the effect of federal SEP funding can therefore not realize its full public health potential. The findings are published in the American Journal of Public Health. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-syringe-exchange-critical-health.html Health Thu, 15 Mar 2012 17:26:43 EST news251051155 A comparison of several international clinical trials of beta-blocker drugs has shown there are notable differences in how well the drugs prevent deaths in heart failure patients, based on where the patients were treated. In this study, U.S. patients apparently had a lower survival rate with beta-blocker treatment compared to patients outside the U.S. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-outcomes-vary-global-heart-failure.html Cardiology Mon, 15 Aug 2011 16:00:12 EST news232641884