Tucking a pacemaker inside an antibiotic-soaked mesh envelope before implanting it inside your body can drastically reduce your risk of a dangerous infection, a new study shows. About 1.7 million patients receive cardiac implants like pacemakers or defibrillators every year worldwide, and doctors use preoperative antibiotics to lower the chances of infection. Nonetheless, about 1.2… read on >
Children often visit the pediatrician for skin rashes. From viruses to allergies, rashes have a multitude of causes. To ease discomfort, KidsHealth tells parents: Do not rub the skin. Pat it dry after a bath or shower. Do not scratch or scrub the skin. Leave the rash exposed to air. Source: HealthDay
Teenagers often struggle with questions of identity. For adopted teens, the struggle may be harder than it is for their non-adopted peers. When dealing with questions of identity, the Children Welfare Information Gateway suggests: Talk to your teen about his or her birth parents. Develop a lifebook of personal history. Connect the youth to cultural,… read on >
People who’ve already had a heart attack or stroke can cut their odds for another one in half if they regularly take cholesterol-lowering statins. Yet new research found that only about 6 percent of patients take these drugs as prescribed by their doctor. “Very few patients were optimally compliant. We found that the less compliant… read on >
Women scientists get less early-career research funding from the U.S. government than men, which can put them at a disadvantage for the rest of their careers, a new study says. Researchers analyzed grants given by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to 53,000 first-time principal investigators (57 percent men and 43 percent women) between… read on >
FRIDAY, March 15, 2019 (American Heart Association News) — Overweight children may be more likely than normal-weight children to develop life-threatening blood clots as adults, a new Danish study suggests. The good news is, getting to a healthy weight by age 13 eliminated the extra risk. For the study, published Friday in the Journal of… read on >
Think of it as another example of a refined palate. The ability to make speech sounds such as “f” and “v” is due to diet-led changes in humans’ bite, researchers say. The range of speech sounds people can make was generally thought to be fixed since modern humans appeared about 300,000 years ago, but this… read on >
Many older Americans have the worrisome and potentially dangerous irregular heartbeat known as atrial fibrillation, or “a-fib,” and they’re typically offered medicines or a surgery called ablation to correct it. Which works best? Two new trials may have the answer. Researchers say ablation and medicines perform similarly in protecting a-fib patients from stroke, death and… read on >
Precious few treatment guidelines for heart patients are supported by the best scientific evidence, a new study shows. Less than one in 10 recommendations are based on results from multiple randomized controlled trials (considered the “gold standard”), and that percentage has actually dropped in the past decade, the researchers reported. For the study, the investigators… read on >
Think exercise has to be high-intensity to make a difference to your health? Think again. New research shows that even routine housework and gardening can help older women’s hearts. “For older women, any and all movement counts towards better cardiovascular health,” said Dr. David Goff. He’s director of the division of cardiovascular sciences at the… read on >
