Grand Rounds 5.14 Holiday Edition

Seasons Greetings! Welcome to the Holiday Edition of Grand Rounds, featuring some of the best articles of the biomedical and healthcare blogosphere.

There’s a revolution occurring on the Web: those “authoritative” articles written on traditional, static websites are being replaced with blogs, wikis and online social networks. In the sphere of health, medicine and information technology, this “real-time Web” consists of many who are professionals in the field; their posts are listed below.
In the digital age, these are the characteristics of new media: recent, relevant, reachable and reliable.

At this time last year, I announced the Highlight HEALTH Network, a single source that aggregates content from all the Highlight HEALTH websites. This year, I have a similar gift for biomedical and healthcare blogosphere readers:

Health and Medicine blog carnival email and RSS subscriptions!

Health Highlights – October 7th, 2008

Health Highlights is a biweekly summary of particularly interesting articles from credible sources of health and medical information that we follow & read. For a complete list of recommeded sources, see our links page.

Health Highlights

Warfarin Dosing Accuracy and Genomic Medicine: A Helix Health CliniCast

Warfarin, also known under the brand names of Coumadin, Jantoven, Marevan and Waran, is an oral anticoagulant used worldwide for the treatment and prevention of thromboembolic disease. However, warfarin therapy can be difficult to manage because there is a wide variability in patient response and the drug has a narrow therapeutic index. Taking too small a dose can lead to a blood clot while too much can cause life-threatening bleeding.

More Education Decreases the Risk of Death

Everyone knows that a good education is important for getting a good job. Now researchers are finding that being well-educated can lengthen your life. The study, published earlier this month in the journal PLoS ONE, finds that socioeconomic inequalities in the U.S. death rate between people with less than a high school education and college graduates increased from 1993 to 2001 [1]. The widening gap is due to (i) significant decreases in mortality from all causes, heart disease, cancer, stroke and other conditions, in the most educated and (ii) unchanged or increasing death rates in the least educated.

Nirvana in the Right Hemisphere: A Stroke of Insight

In January 2007, a meta-analysis published in the journal Neurology determined updated rates of the most common neurological disorders [1]. The review found that 183 out of every 100,000 people suffer a stroke each year. Most studies included in the analysis attributed 80% or more of all strokes to ischemia (meaning a localized deficiency of blood caused by a clot obstructing arterial flow). In contrast, the incidence of a hemorrhagic stroke (meaning bleeding in the brain) is much more rare and is associated with higher mortality rates. Indeed, a study of stroke incidence rates and case fatality in 15,792 middle-aged adults found that hemorrhagic strokes were 4.5 times as fatal as ischemic strokes [2].