Health News

Despite Law, Critically Ill Uninsured Americans Still At Risk Of Being Turned Away From Hospitals

Date: Aug-08-2012
Despite a twenty-five year old law that bans "patient dumping" the practice continues to put uninsured Americans at risk, according to a national team of researchers led by a professor at the George Washington School of Public Health and Health Services. Patient dumping is the practice of turning away or transferring uninsured patients with emergency medical conditions. The study, which appears in the August issue of Health Affairs, suggests that hospitals still practice "patient dumping" which is in violation of the law...

Concern For The Poorest Americans If States Opt Out Of Medicaid Expansion

Date: Aug-08-2012
Health coverage for the poorest Americans could be in jeopardy in many states as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling last month on the Affordable Care Act, according to a new legal analysis. The report examines federal and state Medicaid options following the United States Supreme Court's ruling in NFIB v Sebelius and appears in the August issue of the journal Health Affairs...

Greater Incidence Of Babies With Retinoblastoma In US-Born Latinas

Date: Aug-08-2012
In a large epidemiologic study, researchers at UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center found that the children of U.S.-born Latina women are at higher risk of having retinoblastoma, a malignant tumor of the retina which typically occurs in children under six. The study, which focused on babies born in California, also found that offspring of older fathers were at greater risk for retinoblastoma, as were children born to women with sexually transmitted diseases and those born in multiple births, which may indicate an increased risk from in vitro fertilization...

High Quality Care Provided By Safety-Net Hospitals, Despite Financial Challenges

Date: Aug-08-2012
A Yale study of the care quality received at safety-net hospitals - which provide care for the majority of uninsured and other vulnerable populations - found that quality at these facilities is similar to non-safety-net hospitals. This is despite the unique financial challenges at safety-net hospitals in the face of rising costs and the potential impact of the health care law. Published in the August issue of Health Affairs, the study was conducted by Elizabeth E. Drye, M.D., of the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, Joseph S. Ross, M.D...

Photosensitizing Antihypertensive Drugs May Increase Risk Of Lip Cancer

Date: Aug-08-2012
Long-term use of commonly used blood pressure medications that increase sensitivity to sunlight is associated with an increased risk of lip cancer in non-Hispanic whites, according to a Kaiser Permanente study that appears in the current online issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. Funded by the National Cancer Institute, the study found that photosensitizing antihypertensive drugs such as nifedipine and hydrochlorothiazide were associated with cancer of the epithelial cells known as squamous cells - which are the main part of the outermost layer of the lips and skin...

Life Expectancy Greater With More Education, Socioeconomic Benefits

Date: Aug-08-2012
Despite advances in health care and increases in life expectancy overall, Americans with less than a high school education have life expectancies similar to adults in the 1950s and 1960s. "The most highly educated white men live about 14 years longer than the least educated black men," says S. Jay Olshansky, professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health and lead author of the study. "The least educated black women live about 10 years less than the most educated white women...

Fracture Risk Not Found To Increase Following Bariatric Surgery

Date: Aug-08-2012
An international study, led by researchers at the Medical Research Council Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit (MRC LEU) at the University of Southampton, has found that obese patients who undergo bariatric surgery are not at an increased risk of broken bones in the first few years after the operation. However, the study, published in the British Medical Journal has shown that there is a possibility of an increase in fracture risk after three to five years...

Obesity Awareness: Child's Weight Often Underestimated By Mothers, Children In China

Date: Aug-08-2012
Childhood obesity is on the rise in China, and children and parents there tend to underestimate body weight, according to Penn State health policy researchers. "Because many overweight Chinese children underestimate their weight, they are less likely to do anything to improve their diet or exercise patterns," said Nengliang Yao, graduate student in health policy and administration. "If they don't make changes, they are likely to be obese and have a lot of health problems in the future - as we often see in the United States already...

New Approaches Needed For Uncovering, Identifying, And Treating Buried Chemical Warfare Material

Date: Aug-08-2012
The current approach for identifying and destroying buried chemical munitions and related chemical warfare materials uncovered during environmental remediation projects is neither reliable enough nor has the capability to efficiently tackle large-scale projects, says a new report from the National Research Council. An alternative or modified approach is needed to remediate the Redstone Arsenal and other such projects on active and former U.S. Department of Defense sites and ranges...

Slower Growth Seen In Infants Born To Overweight Mothers

Date: Aug-08-2012
Pregnant women who are overweight or obese can encounter a host of health complications. The added weight also appears to affect how their children grow and develop, at least initially. In a new study published in the Journal of Pediatrics, a team led by a University of Iowa researcher compared the weight and height of babies born to overweight and obese mothers with those born to normal-weight mothers. Contrary to expectations, babies of overweight/obese mothers gained less weight and grew less in length than babies of normal-weight women from just after birth to three months...