Current Events

The bulldozer was clearing land outside a day care center in Hapeville, Ga., when it broke open a buried 1-inch pipeline. The escaping gas ignited into a fireball that killed nine people, including seven children settling down for their afternoon naps.

That was 1968. Since then, there have been at least 270 similar accidents across the country that could have been prevented or made less dangerous by a valve that cuts off leaking gas and costs as little as $10-$15 for homes and small businesses and $200-$300 for larger buildings, an Associated Press investigation found.

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Safety at chemical plants and refineries has not improved despite scores of fatalities over the last decade, and it won't until companies develop better systems for identifying red flags that point to potential disaster, panelists said at a Monday hearing in Houston.

The first day of a two-day hearing by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board focused on safety shortcomings that contributed to deadly incidents such as the 2005 explosion at BP's Texas City refinery that killed 15 workers and injured scores. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill will be the main topic as the hearing continues today.
 

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A medical technician accused of infecting at least 30 patients at a New Hampshire hospital with hepatitis C also worked in the past five years at hospitals in New York, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, and Maryland, health officials in those states said Friday.

A day after federal prosecutors in Concord, N.H., charged David ­Matthew Kwiatkowski, state and federal investigators worked to ­determine whether the 32-year-old former Exeter Hospital employee, referred to by US Attorney John ­Kacavas as a “serial infector,” may have exposed other patients around the country to the virus, which can cause serious liver damage.

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What was once a no-man’s-land is about to become a pharmaceutical battleground.

The Food and Drug Administration approved a second new weight-loss drug on Tuesday, expanding the range of medical options for the one-third of American adults who are obese.

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Providers may be underreporting to the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) as more physicians become hospital employees, Medscape reported.

Malpractice payments hit a record low in 2011, according to a report from consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. The number of malpractice payments on behalf of doctors (9,758 payments) was the lowest since 1991, the first full year of data after the NPDB started collecting information. The average size of medical malpractice payments (about $327,000) amounted to $3.2 billion, adjusted for inflation.

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(Reuters) - Johnson & Johnson faces a potentially more damaging and costly sequel to the $3 billion recall of its ASR all-metal artificial hips two years ago, one of the most expensive medical device failures in U.S. history.

A successor to ASR, the Pinnacle metal-on-metal hip system has nearly 1,600 lawsuits pending in U.S. courts. Doctors who are tracking large groups of patients with both products estimate that more than 10 percent of the Pinnacle all-metal hips will have failed in the next two to three years.

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In April, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) updated the warning to finasteride, Merck & Co.’s drug marketed to treat both male pattern baldness (Propecia) and enlarged prostate (Proscar). The new warnings noted that the sexual side effects associated with the medication, including problems with libido, ejaculations and orgasm, could last even after patients stop taking the drug.

Now a new study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine finds that side effects may not only continue after stopping finasteride, but they may last for months or even years.

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Quick, name America’s three best hospitals. Many people would probably identify places like the Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, and the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minn., which usually top the list in U.S. News & World Report‘s annual “Best Hospitals Guide.” But are they really the best?

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Virtually all nursing facilities are not compliant with federal regulations governing residents who take atypical antipsychotic medications, a federal review released Monday reveals.

The report, which is a review of a previous study by the Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General, found that in nearly all (99.5%) of the records reviewed, nursing facility staff failed to meet one or more federal requirements for resident assessments and/or care plans for residents taking atypical antipsychotics.

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Stryker Orthopaedics has voluntarily recalled two brands of devices used in conjunction with artificial hips in hip replacement surgeries, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration website.

There have been at least 45 adverse event reports from patients who say the devices caused pain and/or tissue swelling.

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Billings Clinic in Montana is the safest hospital in the US, while Sacred Heart Hospital in Chicago scored lowest, according to Consumer Reports’ first-ever list of the best and worst medical facilities.

According to the organization, a 2010 US Department of Health and Human Services report said that infections, surgical error, and other types of medical malpractice contribute to the deaths of as many as 180,000 Medicare patients each year, and most likely numerous non-Medicare patients as well.

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