Adults with congenital heart disease (CHD) have been considered potentially high risk for novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) mortality or other complications. There is much uncertainty about what cardiac conditions merit inclusion under “high-risk.” In the absence of data, consensus recommendations for COVID-19 and CHD have been made based on sensible suppositions regarding at-risk subtypes, including a proposed risk stratification for …
The CDC’s national genomic surveillance program identifies new and emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants to determine implications for COVID-19 diagnostics, treatments, or vaccines authorized for use in the United States. Monitoring the spread of emerging variants in the United States relies on widespread, rapid sequencing. To accelerate sequencing in the United States, CDC has contracted with commercial diagnostic laboratories and, in partnership …
The AHRQ ECHO National Nursing Home COVID-19 Action Network, a partnership between AHRQ, the University of New Mexico’s ECHO Institute and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), provides free training and mentorship to nursing homes across the country to increase the implementation of evidence-based infection prevention and safety practices to protect residents and staff. Background In early Fall 2020, nearly …
There has been great interest in the area of geriatric emergency care programs. The first geriatric emergency department was proposed in 2007 and the first accreditation program was created in 2018 by the American College of Emergency Physicians to recognize hospitals for higher levels of geriatric care; there are now more than 170 accredited GEDs around the world. In a …
Loneliness has been linked to Alzheimer’s pathology and cognitive function among older adults, but little research has looked at loneliness as a dementia risk factor for younger people. In a study conducted at the Boston School of Medicine, being persistently lonely during midlife (ages 45-64) appears to make people more likely to develop dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) later in …
To manage nurse shortages and fluctuations in patient censuses, nurses often work overtime. This increase nurses’ work hours and causes them to have fewer breaks. Such extended work schedules, long shift length, long weekly work hours, and insufficient breaks can be considered adverse nurse work schedules. Understanding how these adverse nurse work schedules affect patient outcomes is important to ensure …
On March 26, 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the marketing of a new device indicated for use as a short-term treatment of gait deficit due to mild to moderate symptoms from multiple sclerosis (MS). The device is intended to be used by prescription only as an adjunct to a supervised therapeutic exercise program in patients 22 years …
As mass vaccination campaigns against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) commence worldwide, vaccine effectiveness needs to be assessed for a range of outcomes across diverse populations in a non-controlled setting. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine cited data from Israel’s largest health care organization to evaluate the effectiveness of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine. The study evaluated the …
Weight is a clinically relevant health outcome that is independently associated with all-causemortality. It is also a helpful proxy for physical activity, another measurement associated withall-cause mortality. In analyzing weight trends around initial “stay in place” (SIP) orders, therewas a significant increase in weight over the post-SIP period at a rate of roughly a pound and ahalf weight gain per …
Herd immunity is the point where there’s enough people that have been either infected or vaccinated that you basically can’t sustain transmission in the community and if one case leads to less than one new infection, then eventually it can’t be sustained. Estimates vary on how much of the population needs to have immunity to reach that goal. Dr. Anthony …
