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Want to know why some antibiotics are no longer working and some infections are incurable?  Thank the doctors who, according to The Washington Post, are prescribing " up to three times as many antibiotics as doctors at other hospitals, putting patients at greater risk for deadly superbug infections, according to a federal study released Tuesday. Leah H. Sun at The Washington Post notes, "A bout one-third of the time, prescriptions to treat urinary tract infections and prescriptions for the drug vancomycin were given without proper testing or evaluation, or prescribed for too long, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention." Why?   One reason doctors may prescribe antibiotics more often than necessary is because they want to avoid withholding a prescription from a hospitalized patient ultimately found to have a bacterial infection, which can lead to sepsis, and ultimately death, University of Michigan doctors say in a new commentary, newswise.co...

Did you know you have a better chance of dying from a heart attack if you have it at night or on the weekend? A new study has found that "6,000 extra deaths a year" are a result of factors that occur after patients arrive at the hospital after regular business hours, according to Medical News Today.  It may be because emergency treatment is slower after business hours or that there are less medical professionals on hand, or a host of many other reasons, but the odds are relatively good that, if you have a heart attack in the evening or outside business hours, you might well die. In fact, if you arrive "after hours," your mortality risk is 5% higher than those who are treated during regular hours.   The study also found that patients arriving with  ST elevation myocardial infarction had a 15-minute wait before treatment for a stent to re-open their arteries, increasing their risk of death by 10-15%.   Heart attacks are the number-one killer of both men and...

If you ask just about anyone, they'd rather die at home.  But one in four cancer patients dies in the hospital. According to a study done by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, most advanced cancer patients only go to a hospice within the last three days of their life, something that caused a wonderful hospice organization, where patients could sit in the garden with their families, or have any dinner they liked, even have a family member stay with them, to have to close its doors in my hometown. "While patients are spending fewer days hospitalized in the last month of life, the number of days in ICUs has increased," the foundation reports. Hospice days have also increased, "but a growing proportion of patients begin receiving hospice services in the last three days of life, a time period often too short to provide patients the full benefit of hospice care." Here are some key findings from the Dartmouth Atlas Project: Between 2003-2007 and 2010, the pe...