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Picking A Hospital Can Give You A Headache 
By CORRIE BENFIELD The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 13, 2008

If you needed surgery, and you had to pick a hospital in your area, how would you choose? You could base your decision on word of mouth. Or quality of care. Or even price.

Trying to gather all the information and weigh the facts can be complicated. One place to start is Medicare’s recently updated Hospital Compare tool at www.medicare.gov. The site allows you to gauge patient satisfaction, pricing and quality of care based on patient records submitted by participating hospitals.

The database was created by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Hospital Quality Alliance, a public-private partnership, to track how often hospitals provide certain recommended treatments in four categories: surgery, pneumonia, heart attack and heart failure. It also includes patients’ responses to surveys about overnight stays, as well as the average amount Medicare pays for procedures at specific hospitals.

To give you an idea of how local hospitals measure up, here is information about the health care providers in Hillsborough and Pasco counties included in the database. Of the 14 hospitals, the five that provided the most patient records in each treatment area are compared. In cases in which the recommended treatment would not have benefited the patient, for reasons such as allergies, that information was not counted against the hospital.

Surgery patients who received preventive antibiotics one hour before incision: Continue reading ‘Picking a hospital can give you a headache’

FDA has issued an import alert regarding entry of cantaloupe from Agropecuaria Montelibano, a Honduran grower and packer, because, based on current information, fruit from this company appears to be associated with a Salmonella Litchfield outbreak in the United States and Canada. The import alert advises FDA field offices that all cantaloupes shipped to the United States by this company are to be detained. Continue reading ‘FDA Warns Of Salmonella Risk From Agropecuaria Montelibano’

New research shows how well people get around and keep their balance in old age is linked to the severity of changes happening in their brains. White matter changes, also called leukoaraiosis, are frequently seen in older people and differ in severity. Continue reading ‘Problems Getting Around In Old Age’

Early colon cancer detection is the key to its cure.

According to National Cancer Institute (NCI) about 150000 people are being colon cancer diagnosed each year. About 50000 of these people die every year. Colon cancer is rated the second cancer after breast cancer, but it’s easily treatable if detected early.

About half of all Americans with colon cancer are not aware of the disease. It has a 90% cure if detected early, but some people don’t get screened regularly as advised by doctors.

People are avoiding screening and there are different reasons for it. Some of them are just afraid to find out they have the cancer, some of them are just afraid of colonoscopy that may be painful, some people just feel healthy, don’t have annoying symptoms and think they don’t need a screening.

Colonoscopy is the latest screening to detect colon cancer. It uses a tube with a camera and light, which passes through the colon and enables doctors to closely monitor colon tissue. If there are any suspicious tissues found in colons they are immediately removed for biopsy. These tissues are clumps of cells called polyps.

About 30% of polyps are later turning into cancerous tissues. The process takes from 7 to 10 years allowing patients a plenty of time for early cancer treatment. Proper colon cancer treatment combined with healthy lifestyle successfully cure the disease.

Gastroenterologists advise everyone aged 50 and older to get regularly screened. Those with colon cancer family history are advised to start screenings at age of 40. Any bowel disease, such as diarrhea, constipation, stool bleeding, anemia, gas should be immediately told to a doctor, because these may be signs of cancer.

Do you remember the seventh song that played on your radio on the way to work yesterday? Most of us don’t, thanks to a normal forgetting process that is constantly “cleaning house” – culling inconsequential information from our brains. Researchers at the Buck Institute now believe that this normal memory loss is hyper-activated in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and that this effect is key to the profound memory loss associated with the incurable neurodegenerative disorder. Continue reading ‘Alzheimer’s finding may shed new light on memory loss’