Increased cancer risk associated with Hookah

Increased cancer risk associated with Hookah

PITTSBURGH

Fewer than 1 percent of businesses promoting hookah tobacco smoking on the Internet included a tobacco-related warning about the practice on the first page of their Web sites; and none required any type of age verification, according to a University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine study funded by the National Cancer Institute.

A hookah is a water pipe with a smoke chamber, a bowl, a pipe and a hose. Specially made tobacco is heated and the smoke passes through water and is then drawn through a rubber hose to a mouthpiece.

Hookah tobacco smoking is increasing in the United States, but many people are unaware that it has been linked to serious diseases like cancer and cardiovascular disease, said Dr. Brian Primack, associate professor of medicine and pediatrics at Pitt’s School of Medicine.

It’s believed that one session of smoking tobacco through a hookah can deliver 50 to 100 times the smoke volume, 40 times the tar and twice the nicotine usually delivered by a single cigarette,” he said.

Study finds valve repair is safe in elderly patients

PITTSBURGH

Mitral valve repair in the elderly is safe and should be considered not as a last resort but as a treatment option for patients over 65 suffering from mitral regurgitation, according to findings of a multicenter study that analyzed more than 14,000 valve repair operations among this age group.

“We found that mitral repair in older individuals is well tolerated, with low mortality, low morbidity and that re-operations are uncommon. Most importantly, following mitral repair, patient’s 10-year survival is restored to the normal matched U.S. population,” said Dr. Vinay Badhwar, codirector of UPMC’s Center for Mitral Valve Disease and the study’s lead author.

Young patients suffering from mitral regurgitation, or a leaking mitral valve in the heart, have their valves repaired as a first course of treatment. However, current treatment guidelines in elderly patients call for medical treatments to be tried first because advanced age was believed to put these patients at high risk for complications and little was known about their long-term outcomes. Mitral valve repair often was only done in the elderly once symptoms worsened.

Study: More mental health care needed

Columbus

A national study of Medicaid data shows most young people who come to emergency departments with deliberate self-harm are discharged without receiving an emergency mental health assessment and receive no outpatient mental health care in the following month.

The study, conducted by researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, said 80 to 90 percent of young people who deliberately harm themselves meet criteria for at least one psychiatric disorder, most commonly mood disorders.

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence has advised that all patients presenting to emergency departments with an episode of deliberate self-harm should receive a mental health evaluation before discharge.

“Emergency department personnel can play a unique role in suicide prevention by assessing the mental health of patients after deliberate self-harm and providing potentially life-saving referrals for outpatient mental health care,” said Dr. Jeff Bridge, Ph.D, principal investigator in the Center for Innovation in Pediatric Practice at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and lead study author.