Personal Health: News and Notes

Hospitals that participated in medical studies appeared to provide better care, according to a study in the current issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Researchers tracked 174,064 patients who were admitted to 494 hospitals across the country between January 2001 and June 2006 for a type of heart attack and another serious coronary condition. Of those, 4,590 patients were enrolled in a clinical trial related to the heart problems.

The 145 hospitals that enrolled no patients in the trial were less likely to follow treatment guidelines than were hospitals that enrolled either some or a lot of patients. And patients at the 123 hospitals that participated in the study at the highest rates were significantly less likely to die than patients at the hospitals that did not.

The study's authors, from medical schools in Ohio, North Carolina and Alberta, Canada, concluded that hospitals that participated in clinical trials seemed to provide better care and have better patient outcomes than those that didn't participate - at least in the case of the serious heart conditions examined for their study.

- Josh Goldstein

Research suggests that softening of the skull bones is common in many normal-looking newborns and goes away without treatment. But Japanese scientists believe the condition, called craniotabes, may be a sign of Vitamin D deficiency.

Kyoto University Hospital researchers found craniotabes present in 22 percent of 1,120 infants about a week after birth. Babies born at sunnier times of year were less likely to have the condition, suggesting a link to sun exposure in pregnancy.

At one month of age, blood tests found about 7 percent of the babies had evidence of low Vitamin D levels. But when researchers analyzed the method of feeding, they found that 60 percent of breast-fed babies had low levels of the storage form of Vitamin D - vs. none of the babies who received a Vitamin D-supplemented formula.

Persistent Vitamin D deficiency can lead to skeletal problems, as well as to higher risks of diabetes and colon cancer, the researchers say in their paper, published online in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

They concluded that pregnant women should take Vitamin D supplements, as should breast-fed infants with craniotabes.

- Marie McCullough

Are you forgetting your pills?

With roughly one in four Americans failing to take medicines as prescribed - particularly problematic for those with chronic illnesses - the government is getting creative.

To help patients and their caregivers keep better track of medication schedules, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, developed free online instructions for creating a "pill card." Both a visual aid and a reminder, it shows each medicine, its purpose, how much to take, and when to take it.

To download the instructions, go to

» READ MORE: www.ahrq.gov/qual/pillcard/pillcard.htm

. It's pretty nifty - as long as you have Internet access.

- Sandy Bauers

Mechanical ventilators used by 39 percent of hospital patients in intensive care damaged breathing muscles after as little as 18 hours, according to a study that could change the way the machines are used.

Doctors regularly use ventilators to relieve tired lung muscles in injured or ill patients who have breathing problems or whose lungs may stop. But giving lungs a break may actually worsen those outcomes by causing muscle fibers to shrink over 50 percent, the researchers, from the University of Pennsylvania's Muscle Institute, write in the current New England Journal of Medicine. Most of the authors are affiliated with Penn, the Gift of Life Donor Program, and the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

Most intensive-care patients get mechanical ventilation for even longer than those in the study and suffer dangerous complications when they're weaned off the machines. Doctors should reduce how often and how long they use them, according to the authors of an accompanying editorial.

The effects of "atrophy and weakening in these patients cannot be ignored," Gary Sieck and Carlos Mantilla, researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., write in the editorial. They note that forms of mechanical ventilation that require work from patients' diaphragms may not have the same weakening effects.

- Bloomberg News