Health News

Woman hosts dancing party before surgery

Undergoing a double mastectomy can be a scary experience.  Yet for one woman, her surgery became a much more upbeat occasion.

Breast cancer patient Deborah Cohan checked into Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco on Wednesday to have both of her breasts removed. But before she went under the knife, she hosted a dance party with her team of doctors.

In a now viral video, Cohan and her doctors can be seen smiling as they dance to Beyonce’s “Get Me Bodied” in the operating room.

Oh her CaringBridge site, Cohan also asked family and friends to organize their own dance party flash mobs in the hallway of her hospital room the day after her surgery.

“I have visions of nurses, patients, my community members (and maybe a few surgery residents) transforming the solemn space of a hospital into a vibrant healing ward,” she wrote.

Several other videos of Cohan’s family and friends dancing in the halls of Mount Zion have been posted to YouTube.  On her site, Cohan even encouraged people she did not know to send her pictures or videos of themselves dancing, so that she could make a dancing montage.

“Nothing brings me greater joy than catalyzing others to dance, move, be in their bodies,” she wrote.

Source: airing news

 

Is Medical Education in a Bubble Market?

The costs of medical education must be reduced as part of efforts to rein in health care costs more generally, according to a Perspective published online this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. The currently high costs of medical education – which at some schools rise above $60,000 per year – are sustainable only if physician salaries remain high, which the authors, led by a physician from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, say is less likely because of efforts to reduce health care costs.

 

Noting that students leave medical school with debt that often exceeds $150,000, the authors argue: “If we want to keep health care costs down and still have access to well-qualified physicians, we need to keep the cost of creating those physicians down by changing the way that physicians are trained. From college through licensure and credentialing, our annual physician-production costs are high, and they are made higher by the long time we devote to training.”

 

“People wonder whether we are in a bubble market in medical education,” says lead author David A. Asch, MD, MBA, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Health Care Innovation at Penn Medicine.  In bubble markets, such as the recent US housing market and the dotcom bubble of 2000, prices rise based on speculation rather than intrinsic value, as people buy houses or stocks with the hope of reselling them to those with even more optimistic views of their valuation. When clearer thinking returns, those who haven’t sold are left having overpaid, holding an asset they cannot unload.  “In the case of medical education, students buy their education from medical schools and resell that education in the form of services to patients.  Medical education can remain expensive only so long as there are patients, insurers, and employers who are willing to pay high prices for health care. But if prices for physician services decline, then the cost of medical education will have to decline too, or people won’t be willing to pay for medical school in the first place,” Asch says.

 

The authors warn that high debt-to-income ratios drive students away from less financially rewarding fields.  “Debt-to-income ratios reveal how much a student has to go into the hole financially for education compared to what a graduating student might earn,” says Asch.  “For example, it costs approximately the same to become an orthopedist, psychiatrist, or primary care physician, but orthopedists earn much more.”

 

That might suggest that there is already a medical education bubble for psychiatry and primary care, but as bad as the debt-to-income ratios might be for those fields, they are even worse for some other fields outside of medicine.  The authors note that veterinary medicine is closer to a bubble market situation, which could burst when potential students recognize that the high costs of becoming a veterinarian aren’t matched by high income later.

 

Source: Penn News

How 17th Century Fraud Gave Rise To Bright Orange Cheese

The news from Kraft last week that the company is ditching two artificial dyes in some versions of its macaroni and cheese products left me with a question.

Why did we start coloring cheeses orange to begin with? Turns out there’s a curious history here.

In theory, cheese should be whitish — similar to the color of milk, right?

Well, not really. Centuries ago in England, lots of cheeses had a natural yellowish-orange pigment. The cheese came from the milk of certain breeds of cows, such as Jersey and Guernsey. Their milk tends to be richer in color from beta-carotene in the grass they eat.

So, when the orange pigment transferred to the cow’s milk, and then to the cheese, it was considered a mark of quality.

But here’s where the story gets interesting.

Cheese expert Paul Kindstedt of the University of Vermont explains that back in the 17th century, many English cheesemakers realized that they could make more money if they skimmed off the cream — to sell it separately or make butter from it.

But in doing so, most of the color was lost, since the natural orange pigment is carried in the fatty cream.

So, to pass off what was left over — basically low-fat cheese made from white milk — as a high-quality product, the cheesemakers faked it.

“The cheesemakers were initially trying to trick people to mask the white color [of their cheese],” explains Kindstedt.

They began adding coloring from saffron, marigold, carrot juice and later, annatto, which comes from the seeds of a tropical plant. (It’s also what Kraft will use to color its new varieties of macaroni and cheese.)

The devious cheesemakers of the 17th century used these colorings to pass their products off as the full-fat, naturally yellowish-orange cheese that Londoners had come to expect.

The tradition of coloring cheese then carried over in the U.S. Lots of cheesemakers in Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin and New York have a long history of coloring cheddar.

The motivation was part tradition, part marketing to make their cheeses stand out. There was another reason, too: It helped cheesemakers achieve a uniform color in their cheeses.

But Kindstedt says it’s not a tradition that ever caught on in New England dairy farms.

“Here in New England there was a disdain for brightly colored cheese,” Kindstedt says.

And that’s why to this day, we still see lots of naturally white cheddar cheese from places such as Vermont.

With the boom in the artisanal food movement, we’re starting to see more cheese produced from grass-fed cows.

And as a result, we may notice the butterlike color in summer cheeses — similar to what the 17th century Londoners ate.

“We absolutely see the color changes when the cows transition onto pasture in early May,” cheesemaker Nat Bacon of Shelburne Farms in Vermont wrote to us in an email. He says it’s especially evident “in the whey after we cut the curd, and also in the finished cheese. Both get quite golden in color, kind of like straw, with the beta-carotenes the cows are eating in the fresh meadow grasses.”

Source: npr

 

Cow’s milk may harbour gastric cancer cure

A new research has indicated that a peptide fragment derived from cow’s milk, known as lactoferricin B25 (LFcinB25), exhibited potent anticancer capability against human stomach cancer cell cultures.

Wei-Jung Chen, PhD, of the Department of Biotechnology and Animal Science of National Ilan University, Taiwan Republic of China evaluated the effects of three peptide fragments derived from lactoferricin B, a peptide in milk that has antimicrobial properties.

Only one of the fragments, LFcinB25 reduced the survival of human AGS (Gastric Adenocarcinoma) cells in a dose-dependent and time-dependent manner.

Under a microscope the investigators could see that after an hour of exposure to the gastric cancer cells, LFcinB25 migrated to the cell membrane of the AGS cells, and within 24 hours the cancer cells had shrunken in size and lost their ability to adhere to surfaces.

In the early stages of exposure, LFcinB25 reduced cell viability through both apoptosis (programmed cell death) and autophagy (degradation and recycling of obsolete or damaged cell parts). At later stages, apoptosis appeared to dominate, possibly through caspase-dependent mechanisms, and autophagy waned.

The research also suggested a target, Beclin-1, which may enhance LFcinB25’s cytotoxic action. Beclin-1 is a protein in humans that plays a central role in autophagy, tumour growth, and degeneration of neurons.

“Optimization of LFcinB using various strategies to enhance further selectivity is expected to yield novel anticancer drugs with chemotherapeutic potential for the treatment of gastric cancer,” Dr. Chen said.

The study is published in the Journal of Dairy Science.

Source; deccan chronicle

 

Cow’s milk

lactoferricin B25

newswrap

Enrollment in MD, DO Schools Hits New Highs

Medical school applications and enrollment reached record highs this year as organized medicine’s cries for more funding for residency slots continued with little response from Congress.

The number of first-year medical students exceeded 20,000 for the first time in 2013, reaching 20,055, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) said Thursday in its annual report on medical school enrollment and applications.

Meanwhile, first-year student enrollment at osteopathic medical colleges increased 11.1% in 2013, to 6,449, according to the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM).

The two organizations increased their pleas for Congress to provide more money for graduate medical education and funding residency training slots to handle the newly minted doctors.

“We think, that as much as we see gridlock in Washington, that is something that we need to attend to sooner rather than later,”Atul Grover, MD, PhD, chief public policy officer at AAMC, said during a congressional briefing Thursday.

First-time medical school enrollment jumped 2.8% this year and is up 21.6% since 2002, according to the AAMC. The group attributed the increase to four medical schools opening their doors this year and an additional 14 increasing their class sizes by more than 10%.

Total medical school applications are up 6.1% to 48,014, this year while first-time applicants have grown 5.8%, the AAMC said. First-time female applicants increased 6.9%, after remaining flat in 2012. Hispanics attendance at medical schools increased 5.5%.

Furthermore, total enrollment at osteopathic medical schools increased to 4.9% over 2012, growing to more than 22,000 students. New osteopathic medical schools opened in the last year in Alabama, North Carolina, and Indiana.

“Because large numbers of new osteopathic physicians become primary care physicians, often in rural and underserved areas, it is evident that the osteopathic medical profession will help the nation alleviate a primary care physician crisis,” Stephen Shannon, DO, MPH, AACOM president and chief executive, said in a statement. “And colleges of osteopathic medicine are expanding and increasing to meet this demand.”

But the increase in enrollment will mean little in the fight to ease the nation’s physician shortage unless teaching hospitals have a greater ability to train physicians, the AAMC and AACOM said. The AAMC projects a shortage of more than 90,000 doctors by 2020.

“Unless Congress lifts the 16-year-old cap on federal support for residency training, we will still face a shortfall of physicians across dozens of specialties,” AAMC President and Chief Executive Darrell Kirch, MD, said in a release. “Students are doing their part by applying to medical school in record numbers. Medical schools are doing their part by expanding enrollment. Now Congress needs to do its part and act without delay to expand residency training to ensure that everyone who needs a doctor has access to one.”

The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 limited the number of residencies Medicare would support. But seeing the pending shortage of physicians coming, the AAMC pleaded with its members in 2006 to increase its enrollment, which was mostly flat between 1980 and 2006.

While medical schools have complied, the number of residency training positions has remained the same. Nearly 1,000 graduates initially were unmatched last year, a number that was eventually whittled down to 520.

“We should probably be training another 4,000 doctors per year,” Grover said.

With 26,504 medical students starting in 2013 between osteopathic and allopathic medical schools, only 26,392 first-year residency slots existed in 2013, Grover said.

“We hear from our educators and our teaching hospitals the way that clinical revenues have been compressed, they don’t have the resources for additional positions anymore,” he added.

Legislation is pending in both chambers — H.R. 1201 and S. 577 — that would increase the number of residency slots Medicare would support by 15,000 over 5 years. The legislation would cost about $9 billion over 10 years, Grover said.

It costs about $145,000 a year to train a physician, but Medicare supports only about $3.2 billion annually of the roughly $15 billion it takes to train physicians nationwide.

Source: Med Page today

 

Women ‘more prone to breathlessness’

Women’s lung muscles have to work harder than men’s, making breathlessness more common after exercise, say scientists in Canada.

Their study in the journal Experimental Physiology examined the activity of the diaphragm – the muscle that drives lung function.

It had to work harder in women to compensate for smaller lungs, the research showed.

The research was conducted at McGill University.

Even with a man and a woman of equal size, the woman’s lungs are smaller and their airways narrower.

Breathlessness can occur after tough physical exercise or be a symptom of some illnesses such as bronchitis.

“In both health and diseases, women are more likely to show signs of breathlessness after physical activity than men,” said lead researcher Dr Dennis Jensen.

The study compared 25 men and 25 women between the ages of 20 and 40, exercising on a bicycle.

How deep and how fast they breathed at different levels of exercise were recorded. They also recorded the “drive to breathe”, the electrical signals sent to the diaphragm to control its movement.

Dr Jensen told the BBC: “Women have biologically smaller lungs and they have to activate respiratory muscles more to move a given amount of air.”

He said it was an “important insight into why women with emphysema and heart failure have worse breathing symptoms than men”.

Further studies will investigate the impact of obesity on breathlessness.

Source: Medical web times

ZMW5NPU6YKM8

Surgeon Wins Award For 95p Invention

Dr Hossien spent over six months developing his invention A heart surgeon at a Swansea hospital has won an award for an invention that cost him 95p to create. Morriston hospital doctor Abdull razak Hossien made his surgery training simulator out of a sweet tin. The portable device can be used anywhere and is now being manufactured for use around the world

Dr Hossien spent over six months developing his invention

A heart surgeon at a Swansea hospital has won an award for an invention that cost him 95p to create.

Morriston hospital doctor Abdullrazak Hossien made his surgery training simulator out of a sweet tin.

The portable device can be used anywhere and is now being manufactured for use around the world.

It is used in training for surgery of the aortic root, which carries blood from the left side of the heart to the arteries of the limbs and organs.

Dr Hossien created his training device for a competition run as part of the European Association for Cardiothoracic Surgery (EACTS) Conference 2013 in Vienna.

He said: “Thomas Edison said that to invent you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.

“I designed a portable trainer, which you can keep in your pocket. You can practise on the train, on an airplane, at home, wherever you are.

“I developed it from a sweet tin that can be fixed to a table, and created an aorta using synthetic material. It cost me around 95p.

“I accompanied this simulator with a multimedia DVD [with] guidelines that trainees can apply to any procedure on the aortic root. They can progress from the simplest procedure to the most complex as they develop.”

Dr Hossien said trainees using the simulator would be completely familiar with the procedures by the time they came to carry out supervised aortic root surgery on patients.

He added: “They will have mastered the procedure before they operate on the patient.”

Garage workshop

Dr Hossien said that at the same time “qualified surgeons and any doctor with an interest in the specialty can improve their skills”.

The prototype simulator was made from a sweet tin

For the EACTS award, candidates were challenged to create a low-tech training simulator for aortic root surgery.

These were judged by a panel of eight top surgeons from Europe and the USA.

Dr Hossien was eventually declared joint winner along with a candidate from Italy.

His simulator will be manufactured for worldwide use by award sponsor Ethicon, which develops innovative surgical products.

Dr Hossien turned the garage of his Swansea home into a workshop to develop the aortic root simulator.

“I spent six or seven months on it. I would forget to eat and to drink sometimes because I was thinking about it so much.

“I would like to thank my wife and daughter who supported me and gave me the time I needed to develop this.”

He is donating his share of the 3,000 euro (£2,600) first prize from the EACTS award to the Syrian humanitarian relief appeal.

Dr Hossien is senior clinical research fellow in the cardiothoracic department at Morriston Hospital.

Mr Saeed Ashraf, consultant cardiothoracic surgeon and honorary senior lecturer at Swansea University said: “Dr Hossien is a very talented academic surgeon with an excellent pair of surgical hands.”

Source: 24all news

Polio in Syria poses risk for Europe

An outbreak of polio in Syria poses a threat to Europe, where the crippling and potentially fatal disease was declared eradicated in 2002, doctors warned on Friday.

Europe is exposed because some countries have low rates of innoculation, which lowers “herd immunity”, or protection through community-wide vaccination, a pair of German epidemiologists warned in The Lancet.

In addition, most countries use a type called inactivated polio vaccine (IPV), which is less effective against the virus than an oral vaccine which is now largely discontinued because it causes rare cases of paralysis, they warned.

At least 10 cases of polio have been confirmed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Syria, where vaccination has been disrupted by the war.

The polio virus has also been found in Israel in routine tests in sewage, from people who had the virus but did not develop the disease, prompting the country to launch an emergency innoculation campaign.

In their letter to The Lancet, Martin Eichner of the University of Tuebingen and Stefan Brockmann, a regional health officer in Reutlingen, said the risk of polio spreading to Europe was invisible but real.

Out of every 200 people infected with the polio virus, only one will develop the disease’s classic symptoms, called acute flaccid paralysis, they said.

“In regions with low vaccination coverage (e.g. Bosnia and Herzegovina, 87 percent or Ukraine, 74 percent), particularly those with low coverage of inactivated polio vaccine (e.g. Austria, 83 percent), herd immunity might be insufficient to prevent sustained transmission,” said the letter.

In addition to vaccinating Syrian refugees, “more comprehensive measures” should be considered, it said.

“Routine screening of sewage for poliovirus has not been done in most European countries, but this intensified surveillance measure should be considered for settlements with large numbers of Syrian refugees.”

Source: France 24

US moves to ban trans fats in foods

US food safety officials have taken steps to ban the use of trans fats, saying they are a threat to health.

Trans fats, also known as partially hydrogenated oils, are no longer “generally recognised as safe”, said the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The regulator said a ban could prevent 7,000 deaths and 20,000 heart attacks in the US each year.

The FDA is opening a 60-day consultation period on the plan, which would gradually phase out trans fats.

“While consumption of potentially harmful artificial trans fat has declined over the last two decades in the United States, current intake remains a significant public health concern,” FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said in a statement.

“The FDA’s action today is an important step toward protecting more Americans from the potential dangers of trans fat.”

‘Industrially produced ingredient’

If the agency’s plan is successful, the heart-clogging oils would be considered food additives and could not be used in food unless officially approved.

The ruling does not affect foods with naturally occurring trans fats, which are present in small amounts in certain meat and dairy products.

  • Some processed baked goods such as cakes, cookies, pies
  • Microwave popcorn, frozen pizza, some fast food
  • Margarine and other spreads, coffee creamer
  • Refrigerator dough products such as cinnamon rolls

Artificial trans fats are used both in processed food and in restaurants as a way to improve the shelf life or flavour of foods. The fats are created when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil, making it a solid.

Nutritionists have long criticised their use, saying they contribute to heart disease more than saturated fat.

Some companies have already phased out trans fats, prompted by new nutritional labels introduced in 2006 requiring it to be listed on food packaging.

New York City and some other local governments have also banned it.

But trans fats persist primarily in processed foods – including some microwave popcorns and frozen pizzas – and in restaurants that use the oils for frying.

According to the FDA, trans fat intake among Americans declined from 4.6g per day in 2003 to around 1g per day in 2012.

The American Heart Association said the FDA’s proposal was a step forward in the battle against heart disease.

“We commend the FDA for responding to the numerous concerns and evidence submitted over the years about the dangers of this industrially produced ingredient,” said its chief executive, Nancy Brown.

Outgoing New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who led the charge to ban trans fats in that city, said the FDA plan “deserves great credit”.

“The groundbreaking public health policies we have adopted here in New York City have become a model for the nation for one reason: they’ve worked,” he said.

Source: BBC News

 

Low treatment costs attract foreign heart patients to India

Low treatment costs and high levels of expertise have made India a leading destination for heart treatment for people from West Asian and African countries, doctors said.

According to doctors, the rates of heart treatment are 1/10th to 1/15th times lower as compared to the United States and Britain.

“India has now become a hub for heart treatment in Southeast Asia and people have been flying in from foreign countries and undergoing treatment for various cardiovascular diseases here,” Subhash Chandra, associate director (Interventional Cardiology), Fortis Escorts Heart Institute, told IANS.
People visiting India for treatment are not only from neighbouring countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Nepal but also from far off countries like Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Kazakhstan, Iran, Iraq, Yemen and Oman.

Subhash Chandra said close to 500 patients had undergone treatment in Delhi alone in the last one year.

“Compared to global standards, the rates for any kind of cardiovascular surgery are very minuscule in our country,” said Anil Bansal, chief cardiologist at Columbia Asia Hospital.
Coronary angiography (a test that uses dye and special X-rays to show the insides of coronary arteries, the tube that carries blood to heart) costs around Rs.10,000 to Rs. 15,000 in India and around 500 dollars (Rs. 32,000) in the US.

“I underwent an implant here in just Rs.7 lakhs, while I was quoted Rs. 30 lakhs for this in Europe,” said Bardhan Sarkar from Bangladesh, who was treated by Bansal.

The most popular treatments availed of  by people who come to India are angioplasty, where the blockage in the coronary artery is opened and a thin coil, called a stent, is implanted; open heart surgery where the heart holes are closed and narrow valves opened; and the installation of artificial pacemakers for slower heart rates.

Low treatment costs are definitely one of the major factors attracting people to India, but the expertise and trust in the quality of treatment is another reason for the growth of foreign patients.

“All the latest high quality treatment is available in our country and with high expertise we have been able to establish trust among foreign patients,” said Chandan Kedawat, senior consultant cardiovascular disease at Pushpawati Singhania Research Institute (PSRI).

Similarly, even for treatment of congenital heart disease (diseases affecting infants and children and present since birth) several hospitals are attracting a lot of patients from abroad.

“Treatment of heart disease in children costs 10 to 15 times less here than that in any European country,” said Shreesha Maiya, pediatric interventional cardiologist at Bangalore’s Narayana Hrudayalaya.

In private hospitals, open heart surgery costs Rs.1.5 lakh to Rs.2.25 lakh; for children, open heart surgery costs Rs.1.25 lakh to Rs.2 lakh; valve surgeries cost between Rs.2.5 lakh and Rs.2.75 lakh.

The treatment is even cheaper in government hospitals, with the difference being  usually between Rs.75,000 and Rs. 1 lakh.

Source: Deccan herald