Heart Disease Category Archives — DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog Published by Washington, D.C. Personal Injury Lawyers

May 5, 2021

U.S. will ban targeted health menace of menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars

The Biden Administration will ban menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars with new regulations to be issued within the next year — actions that Big Tobacco is expected to battle but which proponents say could have big health benefits for those who have been targeted to buy and use these products.

Smoking is a leading cause of death in this country, and especially among African Americans, with critics saying cigarette makers have exploited communities of color, the poor, and LGBTQ people with flavorings to popularize damaging goods. As the Washington Post reported of the announced plans of the federal Food and Drug Administration:

“[Its] menthol ban would reduce health disparities between white and black smokers. About 85% of African American smokers use menthol cigarettes, three times the rate of white smokers, and their rate of quitting smoking has not declined as quickly as it has for whites. As a result, black smokers suffer disproportionate rates of disease and death. Similarly … the effort to remove menthol and flavorings from small cigars [is] a way to prevent young people from starting the smoking habit and helping them quit. The small cigars are increasingly popular with young smokers; more high school smokers now use small cigars than cigarettes.”

March 5, 2021

Panicked over prediabetes? For older patients, more evidence to say: Not to worry

by Patrick A. Malone

It’s not an invitation to pile on the ice cream, cake, and candy. But older adults may get to say pshaw to the finger-wagging they may have endured from doctors and loved ones about their raised blood sugar levels and the condition that specialists ginned up to caution them about it: prediabetes.

As the New York Times reported, a newly published study by researchers at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere looked at data over six years on almost 3,500 older patients with elevated blood sugar measurements and found they “were far more likely to have their blood sugar levels return to normal than to progress to diabetes. And they were no more likely to die during the follow-up period than their peers with normal blood sugar.”

This is an important finding, the newspaper reported, quoting Elizabeth Selvin, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and the senior author on the study:

July 6, 2020

With half of a terrible ’20 now done, can federal torpor on pandemic change?

by Patrick A. Malone

The nation shudders into the second half of 2020, months deep into an unchecked Covid-19 pandemic that has infected 2.8 million Americans and killed roughly 130,000 of us.

America has become the coronavirus’s outbreak epicenter, its would-be travelers shunned by leading nations around the world as too risky to allow without quarantines or outright bans.

Five states set new infection records, and 40 of the 50 states report worrisome spikes in detected coronavirus cases (see New York Times graphic, above, of newly reported U.S. Covid-19 cases).

May 15, 2020

Researchers digging in to discover how novel coronavirus affects youngsters

by Patrick A. Malone

Federal officials have launched what may be an aptly named, important, and reassuring study for kids, parents, families, and communities — the large-scale “Heros” investigation on Covid-19 and youngsters.

As the National Institutes of Health explains the “Human Epidemiology and Response to SARS-CoV-2” work:

“[It will] help determine the rate of novel coronavirus infection in children and their family members in the United States [and] will help determine what percentage of children infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, develop symptoms of the disease. In addition, the HEROS study will examine whether rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection differ between children who have asthma or other allergic conditions and children who do not.”

April 21, 2020

For doctors and patients, worries are rising about pandemic-delayed treatments for other conditions

by Patrick A. Malone

The public health restrictions put on much of the nation to battle the Covid-19 pandemic also have created complications for patients’ receiving other kinds of health care — a reality that the nation will need to deal with in the weeks ahead.

Doctors and hospitals will need to see whether their coronavirus case loads are such that they can begin to reconsider providing what were deemed nonessential medical services, including often performed procedures like shoulder, knee, and hip surgeries.

Most hospitals, responding to federal and state requests, put off elective procedures, notably because they did not want to put patients and heightened risk and because medical facilities nationwide have experienced desperate shortages of personal protective equipment and drugs. Some institutions have pressed ahead with operations they have deemed needed, despite questions from critics.

April 9, 2020

Global vaping snub suggests other nations are learning from United States’ bad example

by Patrick A. Malone

Here’s a glimmer of good health news: It seems that nations around the world may be avoiding what, just a blink ago, was one of the United States’ significant public health concerns — vaping and e-cigarettes.

Juul, the San Francisco-based company at the heart of this controversy, has seen doors shut in its face as it tries to expand its U.S.-curtailed business, the New York Times reported:

“The company has been met with ferocious anti-vaping sentiment and a barrage of newly enacted e-cigarette restrictions, or outright bans, in country after country. As a result, its ambitious overseas plans have collapsed. Juul was kicked off the market in China last fall after just four days. The company has had to abandon plans for India after the government there banned all electronic cigarettes. Thailand, Singapore, Cambodia and Laos have also closed the door to e-cigarettes. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the arrest of anyone caught vaping outside designated smoking areas. Juul has postponed its launch in the Netherlands and has pulled out of Israel. In South Korea, the number of Juul customers has plummeted after the government issued dire health warnings about e-cigarettes, and the company has scaled back its distribution there.”

January 31, 2020

Here’s why the U.S. surgeon general and WHO want smokers to quit, asap

by Patrick A. Malone

Cigarette smokers got yet more chiding from public health officials about why and how they should quit an addictive and destructive habit. To do so isn’t easy, and a “shocking” number of doctors aren’t helping enough, the Surgeon General of the United States conceded. But there are big reasons to give up the nasty vice, especially before elective surgery, the World Health Organization warned.

The health experts found much to agree on when it comes to the carnage smoking causes. As the New York Times reported on the surgeon general’s work:

“More than 55 years after the first surgeon general’s report warned that smoking causes cancer, it remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of smoking in the United States has declined to an all-time low of 14%. More than 3 of every 5 adult Americans who have smoked have quit, the report said. Still, 34 million Americans currently smoke, and an estimated 480,000 die from smoking-related illnesses each year, the agency said. About 16 million people in the United States now suffer from cancer, heart disease and smoking-related disorders, according to the CDC. The financial toll is enormous too, with annual health care spending attributed to smoking exceeding $170 billion, the agency said.”

January 23, 2020

Yes, you may suffer heart disease, even in the most fitness-fanatical state of the union

by Patrick A. Malone

Sure, it can be fun to watch two East Coasters take a long, sharp pin and pop the fantasy bubble that Westerners, especially Coloradans, like to float around in. Mountain state residents may like to tell themselves how the people on the Front Range skew young, educated, and active. How blue skies and open spaces keep folks busy and outdoors. And did they mention super healthy?

Or maybe not.

There’s a bigger takeaway in the recent focus on the Rockies by reporters Betsy McKay and Paul Overberg. As the Wall Street Journal duo found:

January 20, 2020

On MLK Day, never forget his view: ‘Injustice in health is the most shocking …’

by Patrick A. Malone

With the nation taking a holiday to celebrate the remarkable life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and his pioneering push for Americans’ civil rights, it may be worth remembering that his far-reaching visions of equality and social justice were deeply unpopular in their time, as was he.

King infuriated many, including in medicine and health care, observing, for example, that:

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman because it often results in physical death.”

January 10, 2020

Need simple, clear, and direct ideas to be healthier? Heed these 48 words

by Patrick A. Malone

Bravo, brevity. Four dozen words is all it takes for a doctor and noted writer on diet and obesity to offer plenty of sound advice on how to get and stay healthy.

Here are the suggestions from Yoni Freedhoff, associate professor of family medicine at the University of Ottawa, founder and medical director of Ottawa’s Bariatric Medical Institute, blogger at Weighty Matters, and author of “The Diet Fix: Why Diets Fail and How to Make Yours Work:”

“Don’t smoke. Get vaccinated. Avoid trans fats. Replace saturated fats with unsaturated if you can. Cook from whole ingredients — and minimize restaurant meals. Minimize ultra-processed foods. Cultivate relationships. Nurture sleep. Drink alcohol at most moderately. Exercise as often as you can enjoy. Drink only the calories you love.”