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Rave online reviews about a hospital stay may not mean much about the actual medical care there, if a new study is any indication. Researchers found that across U.S. hospitals, patient-satisfaction scores were more dependent on “hospitality” factors — like friendly nurses, quiet rooms and good food — than on hard measures of health care quality. At hospitals with the lowest death rates, patient satisfaction tended to be higher, but only by a small amount, the study found. Instead, quiet, comfort and friendly staff were much stronger influences. It’s not exactly surprising: Patients know whether their food is palatable, their room is comfortable or hospital staffers are responsive, noted Cristobal Young, the lead researcher. “Those front-stage factors are visible to them,” said Young, an associate professor of sociology at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. The “backstage” happenings, meanwhile, are critical, but not necessarily apparent. “The steps a hospital takes to control infection, for example, are very important,” Young said. “But they’re not visible to us.” And if patient satisfaction ratings do not capture those variables, people should take Yelp reviews with a grain of salt, according to Young. The study, published recently in the journal Social Forces, conflicts with some past research that found high patient-satisfaction ratings do correlate with the quality of a hospital’s medical care. But the fact that medical care affects patient… read on >

U.S. soldiers who suffer a moderate or severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) are more likely to suffer other mental health woes than those with other serious injuries, a new study finds. It also showed that the rate of mental health disorders among seriously injured soldiers is much higher than previously reported. “A central takeaway is that severe TBI is associated with a greater risk of mental health conditions — not just PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder],” said lead investigator David Chin, an assistant professor of health policy and management at University of Massachusetts Amherst. “Our findings suggest that patients who are critically injured in combat and sustain severe TBIs have particularly high rates of mental health disorders,” Chin said in a university news release. He and his colleagues analyzed the records of nearly 5,000 U.S. military members — mostly from the Army or Marines — who were severely injured during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2002 and 2011. Nearly a third suffered moderate or severe TBIs. Overall, 71% of the severely injured soldiers in the study were later diagnosed with at least one of five mental health conditions: post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and mood disorders, adjustment reactions, schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, and cognitive disorders. While previous research concluded that far fewer (42%) seriously injured combat soldiers were later diagnosed with mental health disorders,… read on >

Many U.S. teenagers may be using their smartphones to harass, humiliate or otherwise abuse their dating partners. That’s according to a recent national survey of teens who’d been in a romantic relationship in the past year. Researchers found that 28% had been victims of “digital dating abuse” — surprisingly, with boys being targets more often than girls. While teen dating abuse has long been a problem, digital technology has opened up new ways for it to happen, according to lead researcher Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center and a professor of criminology at Florida Atlantic University. Teens might send threats by text; make embarrassing posts on social media; publicly share private, sometimes sexual, pictures; or secretly look through a partner’s device to monitor him or her. The new findings, from a nationally representative survey, give a better sense of how common the problem is among U.S. teens, Hinduja said. “This helps clarify what’s going on with youth who are in romantic relationships,” he said. “Many teenagers,” Hinduja said, “really don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to building healthy relationships.” Digital dating abuse is generally not an isolated issue: Many teens in the study (36%) said they’d been abused offline — physically, verbally or through coercive, controlling behavior. And it often went hand-in-hand with digital abuse. That’s not surprising, according to Hinduja,… read on >

Choosing the right antidepressant for someone who is depressed can be hit or miss. But a new study shows that artificial intelligence (AI) technology may be able to help. Researchers input information from electrical signals in the brain into a computer program that learns as it goes. Based on brain activity, the AI technology helped predict whether or not an antidepressant will help treat a particular person’s depression. So far, the new technology has only been tested on one type of antidepressant — sertraline (Zoloft). But the researchers think it will be useful for other antidepressants. They also hope it can predict how well other types of depression treatments might work, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation. “Right now in psychiatry, when we see a patient with depression, we have very little idea of what the most effective treatment will be. Then we start treatment in a trial-and-error fashion, which can lead to a lot of frustration,” explained senior study author Dr. Amit Etkin, a psychiatry professor at Stanford University in California. He’s currently on leave from Stanford to work on developing this technology as CEO of a company called Alto Neuroscience. “It’s not that antidepressants don’t work well. Some work extremely well. An objective test could help bridge the gap in knowing which treatments are effective and for whom they will be effective,” Etkin said.… read on >

For better or worse, your social media friends might be influencing your eating habits, British researchers report. They asked nearly 400 college students to estimate how much fruit, veggies, snacks and sugary drinks their Facebook friends ate each day. Those participants who believed their social media buddies ate the recommended five daily portions of fruits and vegetables in turn ate one extra serving. But they also helped themselves to an extra portion of unhealthy snacks and sugary drinks for every three portions they believed their online friends had. “This study suggests we may be influenced by our social peers more than we realize when choosing certain foods,” said study co-leader Lily Hawkins, a doctoral student in health psychology at Aston University in Birmingham, England. “We seem to be subconsciously accounting for how others behave when making our own food choices.” The findings offer evidence that online social circles influence people’s eating habits, and they suggest it might be possible to use social media to encourage healthy eating, according to the researchers. “The implication is that we can use social media as a tool to ‘nudge’ each other’s eating behavior within friendship groups, and potentially use this knowledge as a tool for public health interventions,” Hawkins said in a university news release. Researchers found no significant link between participants’ eating habits and their body mass index… read on >

Vaping has been deemed hazardous for your health by public officials across America, but you wouldn’t know it by scrolling through Instagram. Instead, researchers discovered that Instagram posts that promote use of the devices outnumber anti-vaping content by a shocking ratio of 10,000 to 1. Nearly one-third of U.S. teens use e-cigarettes. In 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration launched a campaign to discourage vaping among youth, according to authors of the study published Jan. 22 in the journal Frontiers in Communication. “U.S. public health officials have been calling vaping among youth an epidemic and have been putting a lot of effort into trying to stop this epidemic by introducing #TheRealCost anti-vaping campaign,” said researcher Julia Vassey, from the University of California, Berkeley. “But this stark imbalance in the volume of posts has caused the FDA message to be overwhelmed by marketing from the vaping brands,” she said in a journal news release. Vassey and her colleagues analyzed nearly 246,000 Instagram posts from before and after the #TheRealCost campaign launch, and interviewed five vaping influencers and eight college-age social media users. “We focused on Instagram because the vaping influencers we interviewed for this study identified Instagram as their most important social media marketing platform,” Vassey said. “Based on the results, the FDA anti-vaping campaign is not very popular and we saw Instagram user comments… read on >

(HealthDay News) — Drowsy driving was responsible for more than 72,000 vehicle crashes in 2013, according to the most recent statistics available from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Drowsiness slows your reaction time, affects your ability to make good decisions and distracts from the road. The CDC mentions these possible warning signs of drowsy driving: Yawning or blinking frequently. Difficulty remembering the past few miles driven. Missing your exit. Drifting from your lane. Going over a rumble strip on the side of the road.

From carpal tunnel to a stiff neck, too much time on the computer can cause a slew of health problems. But what if you ditch the keyboard and mouse for virtual reality? New research from Oregon State University in Corvallis showed that even stepping into virtual reality may be bad for the body. Virtual reality isn’t just for playing games. It’s also used for education and industrial training. In most cases, a headset is worn and users are expected to perform full-body movements. But common virtual reality movements can result in muscle strain and discomfort, the study found. “There are no standards and guidelines for virtual and augmented reality interactions,” said study author Jay Kim, assistant professor in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences. “We wanted to evaluate the effects of the target distances, locations and sizes so we can better design these interfaces to reduce the risk for potential musculoskeletal injuries.” For the study, the researchers placed sensors on participants’ joints and muscles during virtual reality sessions, and asked them to point to specific dots around a circle or to color in an area with their finger. The tasks were repeated at varying degrees above and below eye level. At all angles, extending the arm straight out caused shoulder discomfort in under 3 minutes, the study found. Over the long-term, virtual reality… read on >

Turning to Facebook for help is probably the wrong move for depressed college students, new research shows. In a small study of 33 students who posted on Facebook about feelings of depression, not one was advised to reach out to a mental health professional for help. Rather, friends sent supportive and encouraging messages. “It makes me concerned that none of the Facebook friends of students in this study were proactive in helping their friend get help,” said lead author Scottye Cash, an associate professor of social work at Ohio State University, in Columbus. “We need to figure out why.” Study participants reported the posts they made and how their friends reacted. They also completed a questionnaire on depression. Nearly half had symptoms of moderate or severe depression and 33% said they had had recent suicidal thoughts. “There’s no doubt that many of the students in our study needed mental health help,” Cash said. Student posts included feelings of loneliness or having a bad day or feeling things couldn’t get worse. Only one student asked for help and only three mentioned “depression” or related words, Cash said. Most indicated their depression through song lyrics, emoji or quotes that expressed sadness. “They didn’t use words like ‘depressed’ in their Facebook posts,” Cash said. “It may be because of the stigma around mental illness. Or maybe they didn’t… read on >

In another step toward using artificial intelligence in medicine, a new study shows that computers can be trained to match human experts in judging the severity of prostate tumors. Researchers found that their artificial intelligence system was “near perfect” in determining whether prostate tissue contained cancer cells. And it was on par with 23 “world-leading” pathologists in judging the severity of prostate tumors. No one is suggesting computers should replace doctors. But some researchers do think AI technology could improve the accuracy and efficiency of medical diagnoses. Typically, it works like this: Researchers develop an algorithm using “deep learning” — where a computer system mimics the brain’s neural networks. It’s exposed to a large number of images — digital mammograms, for example — and it teaches itself to recognize key features, such as signs of a tumor. Earlier this month, researchers reported on an AI system that appeared to best radiologists in interpreting screening mammograms. Other studies have found that AI can outperform doctors in distinguishing harmless moles from skin cancer, and detecting breast tumor cells in lymph node samples. The new study looked at whether it’s possible to train an AI system to detect and “grade” prostate cancer in biopsied tissue samples. Normally, that’s the work of clinical pathologists — specialists who examine tissue under the microscope to help diagnose disease and judge how… read on >