- California Healthline Original Stories 2
- Battle Lines Drawn As Abortion-Rights Activists Leave Their Mark Outside Clinics
- ‘No One Is Ever Really Ready': Aid-In-Dying Patient Chooses His Last Day
- Hospital Roundup 1
- UCSF Medical Center And Three Other Calif. Facilities Make Top Ten On Respected National Hospital List
- Pharmaceuticals 1
- Amid Giddiness Over First-Ever Gene-Silencing Drug's Approval Is An Acknowledgment Of Its Limitations
Latest From California Healthline:
California Healthline Original Stories
Battle Lines Drawn As Abortion-Rights Activists Leave Their Mark Outside Clinics
Armed with poster board and catchy advertising slogans, abortion-rights activists in California and elsewhere are taking to sidewalks, buses and mobile phone apps to fight a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of crisis pregnancy centers. (Ana B. Ibarra, )
‘No One Is Ever Really Ready': Aid-In-Dying Patient Chooses His Last Day
With its expansion to Hawaii this year, medical aid-in-dying is now approved in eight U.S. jurisdictions. Even when legal, the controversial practice of choosing to die after a terminal diagnosis is difficult, said one Seattle man who shared his final deliberations. (JoNel Aleccia, )
More News From Across The State
The U.S. News & World Report analyzed 4,500 hospitals based on several factors, including performance in 16 specialty areas and reputation. This year, the report put a greater emphasis on patient outcomes. Joining USCF in the top ten of the Honor Roll were: UCLA Medical Center, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Stanford Health Care-Stanford Hospital.
Sacramento Bee:
Mercy San Juan, Sutter Roseville Grab Spots On U.S. News List Of Top Local Hospitals
Carmichael’s Mercy San Juan Medical Center and Sutter Roseville Medical Center claimed spots this year on U.S. News & World Report’s rankings of best regional hospitals, knocking Kaiser Permanente Roseville Medical Center off the list. The magazine on Tuesday released its highly respected rankings of national, state and regional hospitals. On the local list, Sacramento’s UC Davis Medical Center again came in at No. 1 and Sacramento’s Sutter Medical Center was ranked No. 2. Mercy San Juan tied with Sacramento’s Mercy General Hospital for the No. 3 spot, and Sutter Roseville Medical Center came in at No. 5. (Anderson, 8/14)
In other hospital news —
KPBS:
Rady Children's Hospital Opens Pediatric Outpatient Campus In Murrieta
Rady Children’s Hospital of San Diego celebrated the opening on Saturday of a new outpatient pediatric campus in Murrieta, built to serve the region’s growing population. ...Rady Children’s has offered some services in various medical buildings in Riverside County for two decades, Kearns said. But the new three-story, 62,000-square-foot facility off Interstate 215 provides primary care services and 15 specialty clinics under one roof. (Murphy, 8/13)
Right now, the RNAi drug is limited to cells that go through the liver, which is -- in relative terms -- easy to target. Getting the drug to other tissue, like the skin or brain, is more challenging. “It’s always been the same problem. And it’s delivery, delivery, delivery,” Steven Dowdy, a cancer biologist at the University of California, San Diego’s school of medicine, tells Stat. “It’s always been the 800-pound gorilla in the room.”
Stat:
The Future Of RNAi Medicine Is Exciting — But Incredibly Uncertain
On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first-ever drug to rely on a Nobel-prize-winning technique that mutes disease-causing genes — a watershed moment for that field of research, and a starting pistol for the race to find a way to use the therapy for other debilitating genetic diseases like ALS or Huntington’s. But already, a major question looms: What if the technique won’t work in other parts of the body? The first-ever RNAi drug, patisiran, targets the liver. So, too, do similar, already-approved therapies in the broader category of “sequence-based drugs.” There’s a simple reason for that: The liver is an easy target. The liver is the body’s filter; if something is in your blood, it will eventually pass into the organ. (Sheridan, 8/13)
Being able to explain how the artificial intelligence technology reached its diagnoses for dozens of eye ailments is a breakthrough and a crucial step toward outperforming the work of human doctors, according to the study in Nature Medicine.
Stat:
Google DeepMind AI System Diagnoses Eye Diseases And Shows Its Work
In eye care, artificial intelligence systems have shown they can match the accuracy of doctors in diagnosing specific diseases. But a new system designed by Google DeepMind and British doctors goes a crucial step further: It can show users how it reached its conclusions. A study published Monday in Nature Medicine reports that the DeepMind system can identify dozens of diseases and point out the portions of optical coherence tomography scans that it relies upon to make its diagnoses. That’s a crucial factor in validating the safety and efficacy of AI technologies being developed for use in diagnosing or recommending treatments for a broad range of diseases, from cancer to neurological and vision problems. (Ross, 8/13)
Bloomberg:
Google’s DeepMind To Create Product To Spot Eye Disease
DeepMind and its partners in the research, London’s Moorfields Eye Hospital and the University College London Institute of Ophthalmology, said they plan prospective clinical trials of the technology in 2019. If those trials are successful, DeepMind said it would seek to create a regulator-approved product that Moorfields could roll out across the U.K. It said the product would be free for an initial five-year period. The software would be the first time a DeepMind AI algorithm using machine learning has ended up in a healthcare product. (Kahn, 8/13)
Carcinogenic Arsenic May Actually Help Cure Cancer
Studies are starting to point to the benefits of the poison when used in combination with other therapies.
San Jose Mercury News:
Arsenic May Help Cure Cancer, Studies Show
Arsenic has long been notorious for its poisonous properties but now it is being investigated as a part of a cure for cancer. A new study is exploring how some arsenic compounds, parsed out in carefully measured doses, might help treat cancer, as Medical News reports. That’s ironic because arsenic itself is a carcinogen, a substance whose presence in a person’s environment can lead to the development of cancer. (D'Souza, 8/13)
In other public health news —
San Jose Mercury News:
Report: Demi Lovato's Overdose Likely Caused By Fentanyl
Demi Lovato’s near-death overdose in July was likely caused by free-basing Oxycodone laced with fentanyl, the same high-powered opioid implicated in the deaths of Prince and Lil Peep, TMZ reported. The 25-year-old singer had been on a downward spiral for several months after admitting she had relapsed after six years of sobriety. On the morning of July 24, she returned to her Los Angeles home after being at a birthday party at a West Hollywood club on the Sunset Strip, TMZ reported. (Ross, 8/14)
Health data is often siloed and doesn't move fluidly through the health system. Improving that communication could save billions of dollars a year, according to some estimates.
The Wall Street Journal:
Tech Giants Pledge To Ease Patient, Provider Access To Health Data
Major tech companies committed Monday to removing technological barriers that have hindered patient and provider access to health-care data online. At a Trump administration event focused on developing more health-care apps, companies including Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc. unit Google and Microsoft Corp. said they would “share the common quest to unlock the potential in health care data, to deliver better outcomes at lower costs.” (McKinnon, 8/13)
The Hill:
Tech Companies Earn White House Praise For Committing To Easier Health Data Access
Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce and Oracle, along with the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), all pledged their support to improving healthcare data interoperability. The pledges came during Monday's Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference. "Today’s announcements represent a watershed moment toward fostering more innovation in America’s healthcare systems," White House senior advisor Matt Lira said in a statement to The Hill. (Breland, 8/13)
The researchers are now building a website that will allow anyone to upload genetic data. Users will receive risk scores for heart disease, breast cancer, Type 2 diabetes, chronic inflammatory bowel disease and atrial fibrillation. But scientists emphasize that DNA is not destiny, and that the results don't account for a healthy diet and exercise.
The New York Times:
Clues To Your Health Are Hidden At 6.6 Million Spots In Your DNA
Scientists have created a powerful new tool to calculate a person’s inherited risks for heart disease, breast cancer and three other serious conditions. By surveying changes in DNA at 6.6 million places in the human genome, investigators at the Broad Institute and Harvard University were able to identify many more people at risk than do the usual genetic tests, which take into account very few genes. (Kolata, 8/13)
In other national health care news —
The Hill:
Patients Often End Up With Expensive Medical Bills, Even When They Go To In-Network Facilities: Analysis
About 1 in 6 hospital stays for patients enrolled in large employer health plans results in out-of-network bills, which tend to be costly and not fully covered by insurance, according to an analysis released Monday. The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) study of medical bills from large employer plans found that 18 percent of inpatient admissions result in out-of-network claims. (Hellmann, 8/13)
The New York Times:
They Thought Hemophilia Was A ‘Lifelong Thing.’ They May Be Wrong.
Scientists are edging closer to defeating a longtime enemy of human health: hemophilia, the inability to form blood clots. After trying for decades to develop a gene therapy to treat this disease, researchers are starting to succeed. In recent experiments, brief intravenous infusions of powerful new treatments have rid patients — for now, at least — of a condition that has shadowed them all their lives. (Kolata, 8/13)
The New York Times:
To Address School Shootings, U.S. Wants Students To Learn Bleeding-Control Techniques
In a nod to the sad reality that shootings at the nation’s schools are far too prevalent, the United States government will award a $1.8 million grant to create a program to teach high school students proper bleeding-control techniques. The goal of the program, called School-Age Trauma Training, is “to enhance a bystander’s ability to take decisive, lifesaving action to assist victims with traumatic injuries,” according to the Department of Homeland Security, which posted notice of the grant online last month. (Gomez, 8/13)
Reuters:
Icahn Reverses Position On Cigna-Express Scripts Deal
Activist investor Carl Icahn said on Monday that he no longer intended to solicit proxies to vote against the $52 billion Cigna-Express Scripts deal, a turn around from his position last week when he urged the health insurer's shareholders to vote against it. Icahn's comments come after proxy advisory firms Glass Lewis & Co and Institutional Shareholder Services Inc (ISS), as well as hedge fund Glenview Capital Management, extended their support for the deal. (8/13)
The Associated Press:
White House Called Toxins Contamination ‘PR Nightmare'
Lauren Woeher wonders if her 16-month-old daughter has been harmed by tap water contaminated with toxic industrial compounds used in products like nonstick cookware, carpets, firefighting foam and fast-food wrappers. Henry Betz, at 76, rattles around his house alone at night, thinking about the water his family unknowingly drank for years that was tainted by the same contaminants, and the pancreatic cancers that killed wife Betty Jean and two others in his household. (Knickmeyer, 8/13)
The Washington Post:
Prenatal Tdap Vaccine: Kaiser Permanente Study Shows No Link With Autism In Children
New research has shown that a common childhood vaccination given to pregnant women does not put their children at any increased risk of autism. A Kaiser Permanente study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics found no association between the prenatal Tdap (for tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis, also known as whooping cough) vaccine and autism spectrum disorder when looking at tens of thousands of children in the hospital system. It is the latest in a long line of studies showing that there is no link between vaccines and autism. Despite the abundant scientific evidence, a persistent conspiracy theory has misled some parents into fearing vaccines. (Bever, 8/13)