February 2012 Archive - Penn Medicine News Blog

To celebrate February as American Heart Month, the News Blog is highlighting some of the latest heart-centric news and stories from all parts of Penn Medicine. This month marks the five-year anniversary of Penn Medicine’s first implantation of a temporary total artificial heart (TAH) in a patient suffering from end-stage...

Earlier this year, the Penn campus received a visit from one of the nation’s most prominent sociologists of medicine and health care –- Paul Starr, PhD. As Joshua Metlay, MD, PhD, professor of medicine and epidemiology in the Perelman School of Medicine, said in his introduction, Starr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (1982), “is the mandatory starting point” in discussions of health care’s future and health care’s reform. As the Republican presidential primaries show, that topic remains one of the most important issues in the nation. Starr is a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University.

Would you be able to find an automated external defibrillator if someone’s life depended on it? Despite an estimated one million AEDs scattered around the United States, the answer, all too often when people suffer sudden cardiac arrests, is no. In a Perspective piece published online this week in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality Outcomes, Penn Medicine emergency physician Dr. Raina Merchant outlines the tremendous potential associated with greater utilization of AEDs in public places. In cases of ventricular fibrillation – a wild, disorganized cardiac rhythm that leaves the heart unable to properly pump blood through the body, which is the leading cause of sudden cardiac death – quick use of an AED and CPR improve a patient’s chance of surviving by more than 50 percent.

To celebrate February as American Heart Month, the News Blog is highlighting some of the latest heart-centric news and stories from all parts of Penn Medicine. Hot flashes. Night sweats. Sleep disturbances. Mood swings. Irregular and racing hearts. These are all signs of menopause setting in, the time in a...

Nothing beats mother’s milk when it comes to helping infants thrive. It contains all the vitamins and nutrients a baby needs in its first six months of life. Breast milk is especially good for premature babies because it is also filled with disease-fighting substances and is much easier for their...

Educators, researchers, and practitioners across in the United States and abroad have been working to address the rift between personal and impersonal care by developing models that introduce ways to encourage humanism and professionalism to the practice of 21st century medicine.

To celebrate February as American Heart Month, the News Blog is highlighting some of the latest heart-centric news and stories from all parts of Penn Medicine. The flowers and cards have all been delivered. The chocolates were devoured and Cupid can now take his annual break. But just because Valentine’s...

Perelman School of Medicine student Dan Hashimoto recently made Penn Medicine proud when he claimed the top spot in the Top Gun Laparoscopic Skills Challenge at the annual Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons (ACS). Hashimoto defeated a chief resident and a third year surgical resident from another...

To celebrate February as American Heart Month, the News Blog is highlighting some of the latest heart-centric news and stories from all parts of Penn Medicine. It may seem thoroughly unromantic, but researchers at Penn Medicine’s Cardiovascular Institute are hoping for some broken hearts this Valentine’s Day. But these broken...

For diseases historically considered in the domain of distinct neurological sub-specialties - movement disorders, neuromuscular conditions, and dementia - the steady increase in our understanding of their overlapping causes and symptoms, as well as their co-existence in the same individual, has led to a shift in how care is delivered. Physicians, nurse practitioners, therapists, and other care-team members are cross-training and collaborating more than ever.