American Healthcare

There is growing evidence that air pollution – as well as contributing to lung problems – can do harm to the heart. A new Canadian study suggests that the cardiac risk of smog is even greater than previously understood.

The work by doctors at Toronto General and St. Michael’s hospitals found that normal levels of air pollution changed the electro-physiological operation of the hearts of a small group of healthy people. The r

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Health chiefs today closed a hospital to visitors in an effort to contain an outbreak of swine flu.

As 22 people battled the virus in intensive care across Merseyside and Cheshire, bosses banned friends and relatives from visiting wards at Arrowe Park Hospital.

A hospital spokesman said the drastic steps had been taken to ‘reduce the risk of visitors with cold and flu symptoms spreading infections to patients and staff’.

Most friends and family will be turned away from Arrowe Park, but officials will decide whether to allow visitors for patients with life-threatening illnesses on a case by case basis

The closure comes as latest figures suggested overall cases of flu had soared by 45 per cent in the last week – most of which are suspected to be the H1N1 swine flu strain.

Visitors to Arrowe Park will be turned away at the gates from 4pm today in an effort to stop the virus spreading further.

Liverpool (PCT) confirmed that 22 patients in Merseyside and Cheshire are now being treated in critical care beds swine flu, and Arrowe Park Hospital is expected to remain closed into the weekend.

At least one scheduled clinic was cancelled today and bosses said they were meeting on a daily basis to revise the situation.

The hospital stressed that patients battling life-threatening illnesses would be allowed visitors depending on their condition and that ward managers would make those decisions on a case by case basis.

At Wirral Women and Children’s Hospital, connected to Arrowe Park, patients in the maternity and gynaecology wards will be allowed visits from their partners – as long as they do not have flu-like symptoms.

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Tina Long, Director of Nursing and Midwifery at the Hospital, said: ‘We are asking visitors to please bear with us at this time and not to come to the hospital to visit friends or family members unless they are very seriously ill.

‘This temporary suspension of visiting will help us to concentrate on looking after those patients who need to be in hospital. Full Post…

EPA Guidance: The Environmental Protection Agency is recommending that U.S. schools ditch certain electrical components of light fixtures that may leak PCBs and cause health harm over time, the WSJ reports. The problems are most likely to be found in schools built before 1979, and fixing them could carry a high cost — an estimated $1 billion for New York City schools, the paper says.

Where’s the Beef Nutritional Info?: Sharp-eyed and nutritionally conscious shoppers know that meat, unlike other foods in the grocery store, doesn’t bear the standardized nutrition labels that other foods have. As th

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The Supreme Court of Canada ended almost two years of deliberation Wednesday with a decision that rules much of the federal fertility law unconstitutional, but upholds a hotly contested section that restricts payments to sperm and egg donors and surrogate mothers.

A majority of the judges also deemed that the booming business of using technology to help people have children is essentially just another form of health care, rejecting the argument that it transcends mere medicine into a unique, morally risky realm of creating human life.

The Supreme Court was ruling on a challenge by Quebec that said the Assisted Human Reproduction Act trespassed on provincial turf, violating the Constitution.

In a complex, three-way split that left some observers scratching their heads, the court said parts of the 2004 Act dealing with the operation of fertility clinics, gathering of medical information and the way in-vitro fertilization and other treatments are performed were outside of federal jurisdiction.

In his tie-breaking decision, though, Justice Thomas Cromwell upheld federal jurisdiction over the key provision that deals with reimbursement of expenses for people who donate sperm or eggs or act as surrogates. Full Post…

Back in September, the National Post reported that a shortage of many prescription drugs, most of them generics, was creating problems and patient angst across the country. Generic manufacturers indicated at the time that the situation would soon improve. But now the Canadian Pharmacists’ Association has weighed in with an eye-opening survey of its members that suggests the problem is still widespread, and undermining patient care.

Of the 427 pharmacists surveyed, more than 90% said they had dealt with a drug shortage in the previous week and 81% had in their most recent shift.

On average, they were having trouble locating 10 different drugs in any given week. A

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