Surgery/Specialties Editor's Note According to a May 2022 study from UCLA Health, liquid biopsies for certain cancers are becoming more popular because they are less invasive, Healthcare Purchasing News July 18 reports. This method can be used to monitor cancer treatment and accurately evaluate effectiveness. In this study, UCLA researchers studied…
Editor's Note This study led by researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, UCHealth, Aurora, finds an association between healthcare workers (HCWs) reporting high childcare stress and burnout during COVID-19. The researchers surveyed 58,408 HCWs in 208 organizations from October 2021 to May 2022 on their concerns about…
Editor's Note The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced new guidance on July 11 to ascertain that “abortion is covered under the federal law requiring Medicare hospitals to provide all patients appropriate emergency care—including abortion care—regardless of state law,” Becker’s Hospital Review July 12 reports. The HHS…
Editor's Note Researchers at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, gathered an interdisciplinary team to organize a safe and time efficient precleaning workflow for their fast-paced GI clinic that decreased time spent precleaning by 50%. The researchers identified inadequate precleaning processes, including staff who did not follow…
Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), on June 23, identified the recall by Medtronic of its HeartWare Ventricular Assist Device (HVAD) batteries as Class I, the most serious. The recall for a single lot (Model Number:1650DE) of HVAD batteries was initiated because of welding defects that allow separation…
Editor's Note In this clinical trial, scientists at University College London and the University of Sheffield found that robot-assisted surgery to remove and rebuild bladder cancer allowed patients to “recover much faster and spend considerably (20%) less time” in the hospital, SciTechDaily June 13 reports. Other findings included 52% less…
Editor's Note In this study, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Mercy Hospital, find that routinely doing borescope examinations and microbial culturing during endoscope reprocessing is a highly effective way to identify endoscopes with damage, abnormalities, and microorganisms of concern. A total of…
Editor's Note For the ninth year in a row, Boston Children’s Hospital is ranked the best children’s hospital in the country, the June 14 US News reports. The publication looked at 119 children’s hospitals across the country and ranked them in 10 specialties, incorporating data on patient outcomes, health equity,…
Editor's Note In this study, researchers from the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, find that the use of eye protection by health care workers (HCWs) is important in preventing patient-to-HCW transmission of COVID-19. Of 345 HCWs who had a significant occupational exposure to patients with COVID-19, nurses accounted for 55.8%,…
Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on June 8 identified the recall by Medtronic of its HeartWare Ventricular Assist Device (HVAD) Pump Implant Kit as Class I, the most serious. The HVAD System is used as a bridge to cardiac transplants. The Kit was recalled because of a…
