Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has issued an advisory to hospitals, stating that more lives could be saved if medical professionals diagnosed and treated blood clots in the legs and lungs more quickly.
According to a BBC report, NICE is urging hospitals in England and Wales to test for blood clots within 24 hours of identifying symptoms. The report says blood clots in the legs or lungs affected ...
continue reading...The Coalition to Prevent Deep Vein Thrombosis provides some advice on preventing DVT, which is the formation of a potentially deadly blood clot in one of the deep veins.
Much of the information deals with recognizing the signs, symptoms and risk factors for developing blood clots. They include long periods of physical inactivity, smoking, recent surgery and pregnancy.
Use of birth control pills can also be a risk factor for developing blood ...
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The executive board of the National Aphasia Association has drawn up a Bill of Rights designed to minimize the isolation and frustration commonly experienced by people with the condition.
Aphasia impairs a patient’s ability to speak, read, write or understand others, but does not affect intelligence. According to the National Aphasia Association, it affects anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of stroke survivors and stroke is the most common cause.
Strokes are ...
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In an article on problems with the Yaz line of contraceptives for BNET online magazine, Jim Edwards writes that Yaz manufacturer Bayer seems to have a troubling perspective on the very concept of risk.
As Edwards writes, Yaz is the focus of concerns that it causes more blood clots in users than older safer pills.
A number of studies show that pills containing the ...
continue reading...A report on NBC 10 out of Massachusetts mentions a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine dealing with risks of birth control pills.
Researchers found that otherwise young, healthy women doubled their risk of heart attack and stroke if they use oral contraceptives that contain low-dose estrogen and progestin, such as the compound drospirenone.
Pregnancy itself is a risk factor for the blood clots that cause strokes. But a ...
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A recent report on CBS’s 60 Minutes questions whether antidepressants are any more effective than placebos.
The report features an interview with Irving Kirsch, associate director of the Placebo Studies Program at Harvard Medical School, who says clinical trials simply don’t show a clinically significant advantage to antidepressants over dummy sugar pills.
“People get better when they take the drug,” Kirsch acknowledges. “But it’s not the chemical ingredients of the pills that ...
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