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NEWS:
Ohio State Surgeons Use Novel Heart Transplant Monitoring System
Heart surgeons at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center are the first in central Ohio to use a novel organ monitoring system that preserves hearts donated for transplant up to three times longer than current methods. The “heart in a box” technology being tested in a clinical trial at the Richard M. Ross Heart Hospital gave surgeons access to an out-of-state donor heart, which was recently transplanted into a 63-year-old Rockbridge patient hospitalized on mechanical heart support.
“This novel technology has the potential to greatly increase our heart transplant donor pool because we can go farther away to get hearts that are the best fit for our patients,” said Dr. Asvin Ganapathi, cardiothoracic surgeon at the Oho State Wexner Medical Center and assistant professor of surgery at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. “The current method of transporting hearts is to put
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Contact Events in Rugby Union Linked to Reduced Blood Flow to The Brain, Impacting Brain Function
Repetitive contact events incurred over a single season resulted in professional rugby union players having a reduced ability to regulate blood flow to the brain, which is essential for normal function.
The health consequence of this is crucial, as it may pay the way for neurodegenerative disease later in life.
That’s according to new research published in The Physiological Society’s journal Experimental Physiology.
Additionally, the researchers compared effects on players who were in the position of forward versus back. Compared to backs, forwards were involved in more contact events (such as tackles and collisions) and demonstrated an accelerated decline in their ability to regulate blood flow to the brain.
This research suggests that the decline in blood flow regulation was related to an increased formation of invisible molecules called free radicals that circulate in the bloods
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Safe Nurse Staffing Standards in Hospitals Saves Lives and Lowers Costs
A new study published in The Lancet Global Health showed that establishing safe nurse staffing standards in hospitals in Chile could save lives, prevent readmissions, shorten hospital stays, and reduce costs.
The study, by the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research (CHOPR) at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, and the Universidad de los Andes - Chile School of Nursing, found very large variations in patient to nurse staffing across 40 hospitals located throughout Chile. Nurse staffing was significantly better in private compared to public hospitals.
Differences in nurse staffing across public hospitals were found to be associated with avoidable deaths and higher than necessary costs, Nursing has been overlooked in Chile as a solution to healthcare quality and access problems; this study shows investments in improving hospital nurse staffing would result in highe
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Full-Dose Blood Thinners Reduce The Need For Organ Support In Moderately Ill Covid-19 Patients, But Not In Critically Ill Patients
A large clinical trial conducted worldwide shows that treating moderately ill hospitalized COVID-19 patients with a full-dose blood thinner reduced their need for organ support, such as mechanical ventilation, and improved their chances of leaving the hospital. However, the use of this treatment strategy for critically ill COVID-19 patients requiring intensive care did not result in the same outcomes. The formal conclusions from the trial, which was supported in part by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health, appear online in The New England Journal of Medicine.
“These results make for a compelling example of how important it is to stratify patients with different disease severity in clinical trials. What might help one subgroup of patients might be of no benefit, or even harmful, in another,” said NHLBI Director Gary H. Gibbons,
