Editor's Note The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has deemed the recall of Sentec Percussionaire’s Phasitron 5 In-Line Valve—a component of the manufacturer’s Intrapulmonary Percussive Ventilation (IPV) therapy system—a Class 1, the most severe category indicating serious risk of injury or death.   According to the agency’s October 2…

Read More

Editor's Note A recent study in JAMA Surgery showed women with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) were 8% less likely than men to receive a liver transplant and 6% more likely to die or be removed from the waitlist, Healio reported September 9.    The study, which analyzed 31,725 adults waitlisted for…

Read More

Editor's Note A recent study conducted across 185 hospital wards in England highlights the significant impact of nurse staffing levels and staff composition on patient mortality. Published August 19 in JAMA, the study analyzed data from over 626,000 hospital admissions between 2015 and 2020. It found that low staffing levels…

Read More

Editor's Note COVID-19 can be considered endemic worldwide, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on the heels of reporting a drop in overall US death rates from the disease. CDC’s classification of the disease as endemic “means, essentially, that COVID is here to stay in predictable ways,”…

Read More

Editor's Note Medical professionals have long accepted that bilateral mastectomy does not improve survival outcomes for breast cancer patients. However, a study published in JAMA Oncology reveals a puzzling finding: Those who develop a second cancer in the other breast have a higher risk of death. As detailed in a…

Read More

Editor's Note Building on previous evidence favoring thrombectomy even in high-risk cases, the prospective randomized LASTE trial finds the surgical procedure could reduce mortality and improve funcational outcomes in patients with acute stroke and large infarct of unrestricted size. Medpage Today reported the news May 8. Originally published in the…

Read More

Editor's Note New data show 10% of deaths from percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), a common and minimally invasive procedure to unclog arteries, are preventable. The study appeared in PLOS ONE on March 27. PCI is one of the most common surgical procedures. More than 500,000 Americans undergo the procedure each…

Read More

Editor's Note A study published March 8 in the journal Health Policy finds that nurses’ intention to leave the profession has a significant association with patient mortality.   Researchers looked at data from approximately 37,000 patients aged 50 and older admitted to 15 public hospitals in Italy in 2015 for…

Read More

Editor's Note The current method for identifying heart transplant candidates with the most urgent need might not be the best one. In a study published February 13 in Jama Network, a candidate risk score incorporating the latest clinical, laboratory, and hemodynamic data out-performed the current treatment-based categorical allocation system.  …

Read More

Editor's Note Due to its impact on a variety of organ systems, COVID-19 could elevate perioperative risks even among patients with mild symptoms, according to a study published in the February 2024 issue of Anesthesiology. Focused on patients presenting for elective inpatient surgery between April 2020 and April 2021, the…

Read More