WASHINGTON, April 12– The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Monday announced Comprehensive Primary Care Plus, an attempt to encourage higher quality “cognitive” care, rather than the quantity of procedures and visits billed. The CPC+ program is the most recent move CMS has taken to transition from the fee-for-service ... Read More »
TUESDAY, April 12, 2016 — Use of the word “breakthrough” in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s expedited approval process could mislead doctors about the new drugs’ actual benefits, researchers warn. The U.S. Congress in 2012 gave FDA the power to designate a drug as a “breakthrough therapy” if preliminary ... Read More »
TUESDAY, April 12, 2016 — It’s probably not a milestone that will do many feminists proud, but teenage girls in the United States now start to drink alcohol sooner than boys do, a new study shows. “This is becoming a public health issue,” said lead researcher Dr. Hui Cheng, an ... Read More »
PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 8 — Using telemedicine — a variety of technologies to work with patients who do not come into the office — has grown in recent years, leading the American College of Physicians to release recommendations on the benefits and risks of the practice. The group said that several ... Read More »
IOWA CITY, Iowa, April 12 — There was a time doctors thought children with autism spectrum disorder had to be treated in person, making it difficult to help frustrated parents deal with communication or behavioral issues, but researchers found in a recent study that telemedicine can help this issue. Researchers ... Read More »
LONDON, April 12 — The visual, auditory and mental effects of lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, result from networks in the brain that usually work separately coming together, according to a recent study. Researchers at Imperial College London found parts of the brain not normally involved with processing visual or ... Read More »
NEW YORK, April 12– Ultrasound may be better than X-rays for imaging children’s lungs for diagnosis because it prevents exposure to radiation, reduces medical costs and cuts the length of time children stay at the emergency room, according to a recent study. Researchers at Mount Sinai Hospital report in the ... Read More »
TUESDAY, April 12, 2016 — Women are a majority of the 4.4 million Americans over age 40 who are visually impaired or blind, Prevent Blindness says. The national organization has declared April as Women’s Eye Health and Safety Awareness Month, and has outlined several things women need to know about ... Read More »
TUESDAY, April 12, 2016 — An over-the-counter antihistamine used to fight allergies may have an important new role: reversing the vision loss sometimes caused by multiple sclerosis. That’s the finding from preliminary research that found that clemastine fumarate partially reversed optic neuropathy in people with MS. Optic neuropathy is damage ... Read More »
TUESDAY, April 12, 2016 — Almost 14 percent of U.S. veterans surveyed during a two-year Veterans Affairs (VA) study reported having suicidal thoughts. More than 2,000 veterans were surveyed in 2011 and again in 2013. Each time they were asked whether they’d had suicidal thoughts in the past two weeks. ... Read More »
In order for clinical trials to be worth the time and money, researchers must enroll enough participants to fairly judge the effects of treatments. Nearly a quarter of trials for cancer drugs, however, fail to enroll enough people for reliability, representing a waste of what researchers in a new study ... Read More »
Smoking cigarettes and exposure to secondhand smoke are well known threats to health. Particles contained in cigarette smoke that settle on surfaces, known as thirdhand smoke, also pose a significant health danger. Although the number of smokers in the United States has reached an all-time low, researchers say a residual ... Read More »
