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HEALTH/EDUCATION ARCHIVES -- AUGUST 2010
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BIG BOOM IN NUMBER OF TEENS WITH HEARING LOSS
The dangerous SPL at clubs and concerts has resulted in hearing loss for their audiences. I'm an audio engineer for the SF Opera, and i've been to clubs and concerts where the peak SPL level was averaging 115dB. At this exposure level you'll experience permanent hearing damage after just 30 seconds without earplugs. There is no reason for this excruciatingly high sound level other than stupidity of the operator. Read the article SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE/Study: 30% increase in teenage hearing loss <> It has everything to do with those portable music players. Hearing loss is extremely probably especially if you are blasting your ears with those in-canal headphones which brings everything closer to the ear drum and with a device that will hold thousands of songs so the wear is doing it for an extended period of time (like all day). Read the article SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE/Study: 30% increase in teenage hearing loss <> My kids can’t go to school dances because the music is so loud kids start crying with headaches and adults tell them to “get over it”. My daughter’s friend at the age of 12, can no longer hear crickets or even some song birds. Her parents gave her a cell phone at the age of 8, and a music player by the age of 10. I remember warning her that it was too loud when I could hear it. Her father also played music too loud in the house. Decibel monitoring controls need to be built into any sound equipment. We know what does hearing damage, so it needs to stop! Read the article REUTERS/Teenagers urged to turn down IPods as hearing loss rises RATING THE RANKING OF AMERICA'S TOP COLLEGES
Rankings do not mean a hill of beans. Read the article BOSTON GLOBE/Magazine ranks Harvard top US university, Williams, top college <> Here is the problem with these ranking - comparing a University with students population of 30,000+ students (Penn state, Rutgers, University of Maryland etc.) with a University with 5000-10000 students (like Caltech, MIT, Harvard, Princeton etc.) is almost like comparing Elephants with Horses. How do you compare a University offering 250+ majors with a University offering just 50 majors? Putting a single number on a university is always going to be a subjective judgment and will change on the formula used. It should not be a dominating criteria for anyone to go to a University. Each university has departments that excel and are deemed world class and then some departments that are just average. A University is more than a number - some campuses are so beautiful that you can spend your life there. On the other hands, many universities are in a area - that you wouldn't like to spend a day more than you have to. At one university you will pay $40K while at a comparable in-state University one will pay just about $10K. No ranking can capture these secondary factors which are far more important than these numbers. One easy way to compare universities is to assign them various groups A+ (all departments are world class), A (Most departments/ schools are world class) and so on so forth. It is easy to assign grades to the departments based on research papers and research grants criteria. Read the article U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT/Harvard once again tops the best college rankings <> As a former college professor, I take exception to your favoring schools that graduate so-called at-risk students. Too many schools graduate students who fail to pass composition and other entry-level courses. I witnessed it happen too many times. The only schools that are worth their salt are the ones who either don't accept or who are unafraid to fail such students. We need to remember college was never meant to serve as a remedial institution for people who did not learn basic skills during their previous educational experiences. Color me unimpressed by your new ranking system. Read the article U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT/How U.S. News calculates the college rankings
A $76,000 EMERGENCY APPENDECTOMY AND OTHER "HORROR" BILLS
Yes, that's about what surgical treatment for a ruptured appendix costs. Keep in mind, cleaning up after one bursts is a much more complicated procedure then just making a small hole and excising an inflamed one. So this would have been opening up the abdomen enough to work on the guy, removing what's left of the appendix. Cleaning all traces of the burst appendix from the abdominal cavity, directly treating with anti-biotics, and then closing him up for the procedure, then probably a day or two of observation with IV antibiotics. So, not a simple appendectomy. Yes, this is very common in America. Health insurance for some drives up the retail price of health care, as all insurance companies demand a discount off of what the non-insured pay. Before the insurance crisis hit, most people were completely unaware because they never saw the raw bill that the insurance company got, just a bill from the hospital for either their deducible and any co-pays the owed. For example, when I was in junior high school, many years ago, I needed some reconstruction done on my hand to get a joint to work again. The work was done in a local hospital day surgery clinic by the leading hand specialist on the West Coast. It cost my folks about $1000 after the deductive and all the co-pays for the surgery and all the physical therapy. We never saw the bill, but the bill included several visits with the regular orthopedist, consultation and surgery from the specialist, the surgery itself, and a dozen physical therapy sessions. Now you know why medical bills are at the root of 80% of personal bankruptcies in America. Read the article BOINGBOING/$76,000 for an emergency appendectomy operation <> In 2007 I had an Aortic Aneurysm repaired but with complications, leading to a 60-day stay in ICU. The hospital bill alone was $750k+. Amazingly the insurance company had a negotiated rate of less than $300k. How the heck does that happen? Maybe they had a coupon. Thank goodness I had adequate insurance and low 'maximum out of pocket' totals. However, I am still broke and paying my share. Insurance never covers everything. Read the article BOINGBOING/$76,000 for an emergency appendectomy operation <> I just went through hernia repair, and the hospital and surgeon both had a process for reducing the rates for self-payers (I essentially cannot get my own insurance due to past health problems). Without the deductions for self-payers that the Catholic hospital did, I would be on the hook for $16,000 between the surgical center, surgeon, implants for repair, and anesthesia. With the deductions, it came out to be around $6,300. Which I can pay, but it took a fair chunk out of my income for the year and blew my savings out. I am extremely thankful that the hospital and the surgeon show some human decency to people who cannot get insurance. I am furious, however, that America is so callous that we cannot take care of each other. I love this country, but every once in a while, it feels more like the love of an abused spouse... Read the article BOINGBOING/$76,000 for an emergency appendectomy operation <> A few years ago I had a thyroid tumour. My GP referred me to the thyroid specialist, who left a dinner party at the football club where he was a patron, and drove 40 minutes to see me after hours in his consulting rooms. A CT scan the next day. A thyroidectomy two days later. And seven days in hospital, with painkillers, drip, antibiotics, hourly checks for first 48 hours, etc. Then a follow up CT scan. Radioactive iodine treatment. Another follow up CT scan. And now, ongoing thyroid hormone replacement medication. The cost? I received no bill. I don't know what it cost, but I am glad my income tax made it possible. This was in Australia. I hope America finds a way to fix its health care system. Read the article BOINGBOING/$76,000 for an emergency appendectomy operation <> When my boys were born, they were 8 weeks premature. The bill for the procedure, hospital stay, and a month in the NICU came to $1,000,000.00. That's a million dollars and zero cents. I'm well aware of that NICU case is extremely resource-intensive, even for our boys who were healthy other than their size. I imagine though that the bill added up something close to a million, and someone jiggered a few numbers to get a round figure (while bringing a pinkie to their lips). It is definitely the only medical bill that I've ever seen that I found humorous. In the end, the insurance company paid out about $400k Read the article BOINGBOING/$76,000 for an emergency appendectomy operation
The article is questionable–it says physicians and nurses must 'wear gloves' when working with these patients, Since the AIDs epidemic, all hospitals in the US enforce something called 'universal body substance precautions'–all staff wear gloves all the time, when touching any patient. I've seen nurses violate this standard, but they do it at their own risk (or, in the case of 'bug' transmission, their other patients) and can be fired for not wearing gloves. Despite what other commenters think about value to 'big pharma' or reasons to stop 'medical tourism, this is real. There are also countries to which you can go for medical care (Israel for eye surgery, dental surgery, Brazil for cosmetic work,Sweden for cardiac care) which don't have these problems...I assume there are also others. Remember that almost everyone in many Asian countries has HepB, and tropical countries have parasites we don't have here which are communicable. It's not a joke/plot. People who go abroad for medical care should familiarize themselves with the problems they might encounter and pick the safest alternative. Read the article CNN/Medical tourists bring home new superbug
HANDS-ONLY CPR MAY BE JUST AS GOOD AS TRADITIONAL METHOD
Such is the age we live in.
Read the article NPR/During CPR, locking lips may not be necessary <> I've performed CPR hundreds of times, in a wide range of situations - both clinical and non-clinical. The arrival of EMTs in very many areas can take in excess of 15 minutes and significantly longer than this in rural areas. So a layman first responder doing only chest compressions for more than about 5-7 minutes has nearly no chance of success. Beyond this, even if the effort is successful, an adult will most probably have some degree of brain damage. (There are notable exceptions, of course). This doesn't mean that CPR by the layman shouldn't try, with or without rescue breathing, since anything is better than nothing. But for the AHA to modify the accepted procedure to exclude rescue breathing simply because laymen are reluctant to do it is ludicrous. Read the article NPR/During CPR, locking lips may not be necessary <> The article states, A big part of the thinking is that people are more likely to attempt resuscitation if they don't have to perform rescue breaths, also known as mouth-to-mouth.
Read the article CNN/Hands-only CPR as effective as traditional, study shows
TAKING CARE WITH KIDS AND MEDICAL DEVICES
Children and health-care professionals need to pay more attention to proper use and care of contact lenses, which is involved in nearly one-quarter of all device-related injuries that needed emergency care including scratches of the cornea,ulcers on the eye and infection. . Read the article NPR/Medical devices problems send kids to emergency rooms <> Our daughter was in the ICU for three days because of an insulin pump that failed. Not only did it fail to deliver insulin...its screens said that delivery was occurring. We could have lost her over that. Read the article NPR/Medical devices problems send kids to emergency rooms
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