Health & Medicine
Health Watch: Better Snuff It Out
As many as half of smokers diagnosed with cancer keep smoking or relapse after giving up the habit--which, not surprisingly, makes matters worse. According to a study appearing online in the journal Cancer, smoking increases the chances of developing a second cancer and interferes with treatment.
The study, mostly a review of existing research, points out that the time of diagnosis is an opportune moment to quit, since motivation can be high. But doctors need to offer support during the often-stressful rounds of treatment, the study says. Some patients may feel that "the damage is done," points out study coauthor Damon Vidrine, a postdoctoral fellow in the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center's behavioral science department. That's a dangerous misperception. It's known that radiation treatment doesn't work as well in smokers. Chemotherapy may be less effective, and the comeback from surgery is apt to be tougher, too.
Health Watch: Are Your Shots Hitting the Target?
As if baring one's backside to get an injection weren't bad enough, a new study by researchers in Dublin adds medical insult to ego injury: The injections may not work. The standard 11/4-inch needle is just too short to pass through the fat on the modern fanny into muscle tissue. (Painkillers, antinausea drugs, and other medications typically are administered into buttocks muscle.) The study team examined 50 patients who received an abdominal or pelvic CT scan along with an injection, looking for the small air bubble that normally appears at the end of the needle. The bottom line: The bubble reached muscle in only 16 of the 50 people. One solution, said researcher Victoria Chan, who described the findings at last week's meeting of the Radiological Society of North America, would be to switch to the upper arm or thigh. Another would be development of drugs that are better absorbed in fatty tissue. And, of course, longer needles could be employed--without, Chan assured, any increase in risk.
Health Watch: It Might Be Best to Hold the Drugs
Antipsychotic drugs for mania and schizophrenia are often given to elderly people with dementia to tame agitated behavior. But that may put them at a higher risk of death. It's been known that newer antipsychotics, including Risperdal and Seroquel, pose a danger to people with dementia. But older drugs such as Thorazine and Haldol could be even riskier, according to a report in last week's New England Journal of Medicine . Says lead researcher Philip Wang, a psychiatrist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston: "People should not be switched from newer drugs to older or be casually prescribed these drugs." People who took older antipsychotics for dementia had a 37 percent higher risk of death than those on newer drugs. (Previous studies found that people on the newer drugs are 60 to 70 percent more apt to die than those taking a placebo.) It wasn't clear what caused the deaths, though the drugs can cause heart problems and pneumonia.
Health Watch: More Pumping, Less Breathing
When the guy in front of you in the lunch line has a cardiac arrest and falls to the floor, your first job is to call 911. The second is to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation--pumping his chest to keep blood moving and occasionally breathing into his mouth--until a pro can take over. Last week, the American Heart Association released new CPR guidelines for lay rescuers: Instead of giving two breaths after every 15 compressions, they should compress 30 times between breaths. The idea is to improve blood flow and, presumably, oxygen delivery to the brain. Rescue breathing takes time away from chest compressions and is technically difficult, so it's tough to do well.
This story appears in the December 12, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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