From the AP, via Google:

Uninsured patients with traumatic injuries, such as car crashes, falls and gunshot wounds, were almost twice as likely to die in the hospital as similarly injured patients with health insurance, according to a troubling new study.

The findings by Harvard University researchers surprised doctors and health experts who have believed emergency room care was equitable.

From the NY Times:

The nation is set to begin an ambitious program, backed by $19 billion in government incentives, to accelerate the adoption of computerized patient records in doctors’ offices and hospitals, replacing ink and paper. There is wide agreement that the conversion will bring better care and lower costs, saving the American health care system up to $100 billion a year by some estimates.

But a new study comparing 3,000 hospitals at various stages in the adoption of computerized health records has found little difference in the cost and quality of care.

“The way electronic medical records are used now has not yet had a real impact on the quality or cost of health care,” said Dr. Ashish K. Jha, an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, who led the research project.

Ed. I’d not heard of RhinoChill, mentioned in the AHA study post, so I decided to investigate.

From BeneChill, the manufacturer’s website:

BeneChill’s mission is to develop novel cooling technologies to improve patient outcomes after acute ischemic events such as cardiac arrest, stroke, and traumatic brain injury.

The RhinoChill System has been developed as a means of initiating and providing therapeutic cooling with limited delays. It is non-invasive, easy-to-use, portable, and requires no external power. RhinoChill is designed to overcome limitations of other temperature reduction technologies—limitations that prevent early and rapid initiation of patient cooling.
Surface cooling devices such as water-filled blankets and pads, while easy to apply, are inefficient, cumbersome, require large refrigeration units and may interfere with patient management.
Intravascular cooling devices which cool the blood, while more efficient than surface cooling devices, are invasive, require large refrigeration units, and need to be placed by specially trained physicians under restricted conditions. The invasive nature of these devices carries risk of additional complications.

The RhinoChill System uses the nasal cavity for cooling. This is advantageous due to the nasal cavity being:
A natural orifice into the body
In close proximity to the brain
A natural heat exchanger

Use of the nasal cavity enables treatment by non-specialized medical personnel using non-sterile technique in any environment.

From DealNews

:

The iTunes App Store offers downloads of PocketCPR for iPhone / iPod touch for free. That’s $6 off and the lowest price we could find for this accelerometer-based CPR training tool.

Note from the developer’s site: “The Pocket CPR for iPhone is currently for training and practice purposes only. The application is not yet cleared by the U.S. FDA for use in an actual rescue.”

AHA: Cooling Cardiac Arrest Victims’ Brains Before Admission Appears Beneficial

From MedPage Today:

Cooling the brain of a person shortly after an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest may improve the chances of survival without brain damage, researchers reported here.

Across 15 EMS systems in Europe, patients who had intranasal brain cooling within 10 minutes of CPR initiation were more likely to have good neurological function at discharge than those who received standard treatment (45.5% versus 17.6%, P=0.01), according to Maaret Castrén, MD, of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

Brain-cooled patients also demonstrated significantly better survival to discharge (59.1% versus 29.4%, P<0.05).

In patients who had CPR started more than 10 minutes after the arrest, there were trends toward a benefit in the intranasal cooling group, although the study was not powered for efficacy outcomes, Castrén reported at the American Heart Association meeting.

The PRINCE (Pre-resuscitation Intranasal Cooling Effectiveness) study set out to assess the safety and feasibility of using an intranasal cooling device during CPR in the pre-hospital setting.

The device, called RhinoChill, is noninvasive and introduces a volatile coolant that evaporates and removes heat through nasal prongs. It is battery powered and does not require refrigeration.

From the Boston Globe:

Though the association that oversees high school sports requires coaches to undergo first-aid training, regulations are not the norm among the patchwork of youth leagues and teams serving hundreds of thousands of children across the state.

In some communities, however, fire departments and hospitals are reaching out to train youth coaches. And legislation now on Beacon Hill would require all high school coaches to be certified in CPR and the use of an automatic external defibrillator.

From CNN:

A medical helicopter crashed early Saturday near Doyle, California, killing all three people on board, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said.

Ian Gregor said the Aerospatiale AS350 helicopter was returning to Susanville, California, from dropping a patient in Reno, Nevada, when it crashed near Doyle around 2 a.m.

All three people on board the helicopter, which was operated by Mountain Life Flight, were crew members, Gregor said. He said the crash impact and subsequent fire destroyed the aircraft.

It was not immediately known what caused the crash.

From Modern Healthcare:

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius named seven healthcare professionals to the National Advisory Council for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

(Among the seven are)

Keith Mueller, director of the Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis and Nebraska Center for Rural Health Research, both in Omaha

Xavier Sevilla, chief of pediatrics for Manatee County Rural Health Services, Parrish, Fla.

From JEMS:

Rick Parker’s existence is baffling. He credits part of it to a miracle and the other part to state-of-the-art treatment given to him by McDowell County Emergency Services (EMS) paramedics. On the night of Friday, June 12, Parker lost his life. “He was pulseless and breathless,” said EMS Director William Kehler. “Medically, he was dead.” Last Thursday evening, Parker, 56, and his daughter, Tonya, of Weaverville met with some of the folks who brought the heart attack victim back to life that night. It was a reunion of sorts, but the gathering also marked the first anniversary of the local EMS’s implementation of therapeutic hypothermia, a cutting-edge treatment used by only 100 EMS agencies out of 24,000 across the nation, according to EMS magazine. Therapeutic hypothermia. Those are big words for a relatively simple procedure that could greatly increase the quality of life for heart attack patients. In layman’s terms, it involves lowering a person’s body temperature once he’s been resuscitation from cardiac arrest. The idea behind the concept is to preserve brain and neurological function, therefore preserving the patient’s quality of life. When a person becomes lifeless and is not breathing, his body temperature rises, increasing the potential for swelling in the brain and cellular damage through the body. With therapeutic hypothermia, paramedics use cold IV solutions and ice packs to drop the person’s temperature to 93 degrees and maintain it.

From JEMS:

FDA notified healthcare professionals that it is investigating energy levels in external biphasic defibrillators with shocks of less than or equal to 200 Joules (J). FDA received reports of 14 events since 2006 in which a 200 J biphasic defibrillator was ineffective in providing defibrillation/cardioversion therapy to a patient, whereas a subsequent shock from a different 360 J biphasic defibrillator resulted in immediate defibrillation/cardioversion. The majority of events occurred during attempts at cardioversion of atrial fibrillation, but there was at least one instance with defibrillation of a ventricular arrhythmia as well. Analysis of the 14 cases does not suggest the need for any change to current clinical practice, and as FDA continues its evaluation of this situation, providers are encouraged to follow the American Heart Association’s guidelines/algorithms for treatment of cardiac arrhythmias, and to follow manufacturers’ instructions for using defibrillators.

FDA is seeking additional information in order to interpret the significance of these events, and to determine whether FDA activities are advised. If you suspect a problem with a defibrillator, such as a situation where a patient received shocks from multiple devices, the problem should be reported to the FDA’s MedWatch Safety Information and Adverse Event Reporting Program online (at www.fda.gov/MedWatch/report.htm,) by phone 800/332-1088, or by returning the postage-paid FDA form 3500 (which may be downloaded from the MedWatch “Download Forms” page) by mail (to address on the pre-addressed form) or fax (800/FDA-0178.)