No two hospitals are the same – in architecture, in decor, or even in ability to treat various diseases and illnesses. But one would assume that acute care of heart attacks and heart failure would be the same across the board.
Not so, according to a new study recently published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.
In this study, researchers reviewed three years of experience (July 2005 to June 2008) of Medicare fee-for-service patients with heart failure and heart attack at almost 5,000 hospitals across the nation. Examining the records of nearly 600,000 heart attack admissions and more than 1 million heart …read more

Drug companies are always keen to get on the bandwagon when it comes to diseases that affect millions. Makes sense, I guess. After all, when you running a business, you want to create product that will be used by the masses.
Unfortunately, that leaves a lot of rare and neglected diseases (around 6,000 according to the NIH) under researched and under treated because they only occur in a small percentage of the population.
The National Institute of Health (NIH) is hoping to change this with a influx of funds – to the tune of $120 million over five years – through a …read more

Did you know that in the United States alone, there are 19 million new sexually transmitted disease (STD) cases diagnosed each year?
Scary numbers.
But most people will look at those numbers and say, ‘yeah, but that won’t happen to me. I’m safe. My behavior is not risky.”
Unfortunately, it could easily happen to you. All it really takes to get a sexually transmitted disease is one instance of unprotected sex.
Which is why I suggest that anyone who is sexually active or intending to become sexually active read Seductive Delusions: How Everyday People Catch STD’s by Jill Grimes MD.
It’s an easy to read …read more

Check this out.
You can now buy jeans that are not only custom made to your body but can also, according to the company, heal the body. Made by the Make Your Own Jeans company, these jeans are able to treat a variety of medical conditions including skin ailments, diabetes, arthritis, digestive problems, high blood pressure and more.

Here’s how it works…
The Ayurveda Organic Jeans are created
Here’s how it works…
The Ayurveda Organic Jeans are created using the ancient Indian technique of dyeing textiles in medicinal herbs. Each dye can contain up to 50 different herbs that are used to practice Ayurvedic medicine. …read more

Migraine suffers might soon have a new means of getting relief.
A new study has been examining the effectiveness of magnetic impulses on the brain to short circuit pain signals. These magnetic impulses are being sent to the brain by a transcranial magnetic stimulation device, a small hair dryer size machine that is held to the back the migraine sufferer’s head.
In this study,  researchers worked with 201 people who suffer from “migraine with aura” migraines. Half of them were given a genuine magnetic stimulation device and the other half a ‘pseudo’ magnetic stimulation device that was unable to provide a magnet current. …read more

Former Charlies Angel Farrah Fawcett has been fighting a rare form of cancer since 2006 when she was diagnosed with anal cancer.  According to the American Cancer Society, anal cancer is rare (an estimated 4,650 cases in 2006) but the number is rising, with those most affected being female and in their early 60’s.
Farrah’s spent the last couple of years fighting not only the cancer with chemotherapy and radiation treatments, but also the tabloids and paparazzi in an effort to protect her privacy. Having cancer is bad enough, but having to live it out in the eyes of the paparazzi and …read more

Well, it’s finally here. – the very first Healtbolt Carnival and  it is huge.
 You know, when we first decided to do this, we were a little nervous. After all, what if we gave a party and nobody came. A natural fear, but one, it seems, that wasn’t warranted. ‘Cause it looks like everyone, and I mean everyone, has come to the party.
So put on your glad rags, grab a drink and start mingling…
And don’t forget to pass the word on. After all, the more the merrier.

SjP presents the sister study…the battle against breast cancer posted at Sojourner’s Place.The Sister Study is …read more

‘To treat or not to treat’ in the event of a widespread pandemic or disaster is a question that has always haunted health professionals.
Now a group of physicians think that they might have the answer on how to deal this this issue. A task force drawn from universities, medical groups, the military and government agencies (including the Dept of Homeland Security, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Dept of Health and Human Services) in the United States have proposed some guidelines that can act as blueprint for hospitals in times of pandemics or extreme disasters.
The reasoning behind …read more

                                                                
DiabetesMine and Medgadget are co-hosting the 2nd Annual DiabetesMine Design Challenge…
“a competition designed to foster innovation in diabetes design and encourage creative new tools that will improve life with diabetes.”
This challenge is a follow on from the Open Letter to Steve Jobs that Amy Tenderich from DiabetesMine posted last year right after Apple Inc. has sold its 100-Millionth iPod. Amy’s open letter challenged Steve Jobs and the ‘gods of consumer design’ to champion the diabetic cause and help show the medical device industry how to create more feel good and look good diabetic devices – in other words, …read more

Fighting cancer is no game. But thanks to HopeLab, there is a video game designed to help empower kids with cancer.
The video game is Re-Mission and it features an intrepid nanobot called Roxxi who journeys through cancer patients bodies, destroying the cancer cells, fighting the infections, and dealing with the side effects usually associated with different cancers and cancer treatments.
If you think it’s just another video game, think again. To ensure that Re-Mission was on track to help cancer suffers, a controlled research study was undertaken prior to the game’s release. 375 cancer patients between the ages of 13 and 29 from …read more