Mon, Mar 27 – Top 10 Medical News Stories

1 – Gates Foundation announces open-access publishing venture – Nature News (free)

See also: Open science: The findings of medical research are disseminated too slowly – That is about to change – The Economist (free) AND Cooming Soom: Gates Open Research – Bill and Melinda Gates foundation (free) AND Gates Foundation joins shift towards open access platforms – Times Higher Education (free) AND Gates Open Research: the journey continues – F1000 Blog (free)

Another victory for open science.

2 – Going Under the Knife, With Eyes and Ears Wide Open – New York Times (free access to 10 articles per month)

“More and more surgeries are being performed with the patient awake and looking on, for financial and medical reasons”.

3 – Telehealth Doctor Visits May Be Handy, But Aren’t Cheaper Overall – NPR Health News (free)

Link to original article abstract ($ required for full-text): Direct-To-Consumer Telehealth May Increase Access to Care But Does Not Decrease Spending – Health Affairs

Costs have increased in this study because 88 percent of telehealth visits represented people who would not have gone to a doctor otherwise.

4 – ESPEN guideline: Clinical nutrition in surgery – Clinical Nutrition (free)

Source: Critical Care Reviews Newsletter

5 – HER2 Testing and Clinical Decision Making in Gastroesophageal Adenocarcinoma: Guideline From the College of American Pathologists, American Society for Clinical Pathology, and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (free)

Source: EvidenceAlerts (free registration required)

6 – Adverse Effects of Prostate Cancer Treatments Vary – MedPage Today (free registration required)

Study 1 – Link to abstract ($ required for full-text): Association Between Radiation Therapy, Surgery, or Observation for Localized Prostate Cancer and Patient-Reported Outcomes After 3 Years – JAMA

Study 2 – Link to abstract ($ required for full-text): Association Between Choice of Radical Prostatectomy, External Beam Radiotherapy, Brachytherapy, or Active Surveillance and Patient-Reported Quality of Life Among Men With Localized Prostate Cancer – JAMA

7 – Revised Framingham Stroke Risk Profile to Reflect Temporal Trends – Circulation (free)

“A revised Framingham Stroke Risk Profile more accurate at predicting contemporary stroke risk”.

“Instant classic paper on stroke risk prediction?! Will patients be interested in this?” (RT @MaryCushmanMD)

8 – Association between clinically recorded alcohol consumption and initial presentation of 12 cardiovascular diseases: population based cohort study using linked health records – The BMJ (free)

Editorial: Alcohol and cardiovascular disease (free)

See also: Alcohol and the Heart: Moderation Still Best – Generally higher risks seen with no or heavy drinking – MedPage Today (free registration required)

9 – Maternal multiple micronutrient supplementation and other biomedical and socioenvironmental influences on children’s cognition at age 9–12 years in Indonesia: follow-up of the SUMMIT randomised trial – The Lancet Global Health (free)

Related commentary: Prenatal nutrition, socioenvironmental conditions, and child development (free)

“Maternal MMN had long-term benefits for child cognitive development at 9–12 years of age, thereby supporting its role in early childhood development, and policy change toward MMN”. The related commentary above does not seem to agree with this statement from the authors, stating that the new evidence does not provide enough weight for a policy change from prenatal iron and folate to MMN supplementation.

10 – #WorldTBDay (24 March 2017) – New Commentaries (see previous commentaries and resources)

New estimate suggests a quarter of the world’s population has latent tuberculosis – The Conversation (free) AND Report warns of rise in drug-resistant tuberculosis – CIDRAP (free) AND Latest transmission patterns for drug resistant TB pose a new challenge – The Conversation (free)