Some folks who don’t seem to listen may just have a lazy ear.

A new study in rats shows that short-term hearing impairments at any
stage of life can lead to rewiring in the part of the brain that
processes sounds, making the ear seem as if it is loafing on its duty
to make sense from noise.

Ear infections and fluid buildup in the middle ear — a condition
known as otitis media with effusion — can dampen incoming sound
waves. These problems are extremely common in children and represent
the top reason children go to the doctor. Such temporary hearing
impairment can lead to lingering hearing deficits even after the
infection or fluid clears up. The long-term difficulties result from a
problem with how the brain adjusts to hearing changes rather than a
malfunction in the ear’s ability to detect sounds, researchers
report in the March 11 Neuron.

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Emma Wilkinson

People with occasionally high blood

pressure are more at risk of stroke than those with consistently high
readings, research suggests.

Current guidelines focus on the need to lower blood pressure levels to reduce the chance of suffering a stroke.

The research suggests doctors should no longer ignore an occasional high
reading and give the drugs that produce the most steady blood pressure
levels.

The Stroke Association called for national guidelines to be overhauled.

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People blessed with youthful faces are more likely to live to a ripe old age than those who look more than their years, work shows.

Danish scientists say appearance alone can predict survival, after they studied 387 pairs of twins.

The researchers asked nurses, trainee teachers and peers to guess the age of the twins from mug shots.

Those rated younger-looking tended to outlive their older-looking sibling, the British Medical Journal reports.

Survival advantage

The researchers also found a plausible biological explanation for their results.

Key pieces of DNA called telomeres, which indicate the ability of cells to replicate, are also linked to how young a person looks.

Perceived age, which is widely used by clinicians as a general indication of a patient’s health, is a robust biomarker of ageing that predicts survival among those aged over 70 The report authors

A telomere of shorter length is thought to signify faster ageing and has been linked with a number of diseases.

In the study, the people who looked younger had longer telomeres.

All of the twins were in their 70s, 80s or 90s when they were photographed.

Over a seven-year follow-up the researchers, led by Professor Kaare Christensen of the University of Southern Denmark, found that the bigger the difference in perceived age within a pair, the more likely it was that the older-looking twin died first.

Under current law, the Medicare Part D coverage gap, or “doughnut hole,” is projected to double
in size by 2021, exposing seniors to drastically increased liability for the costs of their
medications. This characteristic of the coverage gap makes it exceedingly expensive to correct –
Congress must dedicate significant resources simply to keep the gap from becoming larger every
year; reversing the momentum takes an even greater commitment of funds. The House of
Representatives has proposed to provide additional protection to seniors from the cost of
prescription drugs by closing the doughnut hole completely, though the high cost requires this
closure to be phased- in over time. According to a recent analysis by the National Committee to
Preserve Social Security and Medicare, the provisions to close the coverage gap in the House’s
America’s Affordable Health Choices Act (H.R. 3200) would close the gap by 2023. The
financial protection afforded by the bill becomes progressively stronger beginning in 2011,
providing increasing relief to seniors experiencing the coverage gap throughout the phase-out
period.
 from: National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare

1. FAST FACT

Proposed health reform legislation from the House of Representatives will completely eliminate the Part D doughnut hole in 14 years, but would provide more immediate assistance to people using high-cost specialty drugs by progressively narrowing the coverage gap. (Avalere Health, Avalere Analysis of Proposed Elimination of Coverage Gap, June 2009)
  from Medicarerights.org

Article: Medical schools in the era of managed care: An interview with Arnold Relman

Article from:

Academe

Article date:

November 1, 1999

Author:

Anonymous

More results for:

Arnold Reiman

| Copyright informationCopyright American Association of University Professors Nov/Dec 1999. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)

RPOBABLY NO ONE IN THE UNITED STATES knows as much about the current situation in American medicine as Arnold Reiman, professor emeritus of medicine and social medicine at Harvard Medical School and editor-In-chief emeritus of the New En,dand Journal of Medicine. At the AAUP conference, “Academic Values in the Transformation of American Medicine,” held in Boston in May, Relman described the impact of the corporatization of the health-care system on the medical profession and on the cost and quality Of care. When Academe interviewed Relman at the Harvard Medical School in July, we asked him to talk about the ways in which those changes are affecting medical education as well. Reiman: Medical …

Anonymous Anonymous

Asclepios
Your Weekly Medicare Consumer Advocacy Update
An End to the Wait
May 21, 2009 • Volume 9, Issue 20

The Senate Finance Committee, which is writing legislation designed to extend affordable health care coverage to all Americans, has put forward four options to deal with the two-year delay in Medicare coverage for people with disabilities.

Option One shortens the waiting period to 12 months.

Option Two phases out the waiting period in six-month increments, with total elimination by April 2011.

Option Three has a slower phase-out, ending the waiting period in July 2015.

Option Four maintains the waiting period for people with access to private insurance (not including COBRA coverage from a former employer) and phases it out for everyone else.

The Medicare Rights Center believes that the sooner we completely end the waiting period for all people with disabilities, the better. Option Two achieves that goal.

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