Emergency room visits for injuries related to driving under the influence of cannabis skyrocketed in Canada after the drug was legalized there, a new study reports. In October 2018, Canada became the second country to nationally legalize recreational or nonmedical cannabis for adult use. While known cannabis-involved emergency department (ED) visits for traffic injuries were still rare, they grew by 475% over 13 years, with a sharper rise in accidents after legalization, the researchers found. “Our findings highlight a concerning increase in cannabis-involvement in traffic-injury emergency visits over time, with even sharper spikes following the phases of legalization and commercialization,” said lead author Dr. Daniel Myran, a post-doctoral trainee at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) and a family physician at the Ottawa Hospital. “Conversely, alcohol-involvement in traffic injury ED visits did not increase over the study period, which suggests that legalization of cannabis has played an important role in rising rates,” Myran said in an ICES news release. For the study, the researchers looked at cannabis-involved ED visits for traffic injuries between 2010 and 2021, looking for changes after the October 2018 commercialization of the legal cannabis market, which expanded products and retail stores. The investigators reviewed data from more than 947,000 ED visits for traffic injuries in the province of Ontario. Annual rates of cannabis-involved visits surged from 0.18 visits per 1,000…  read on >  read on >

Another study is showing that artificial intelligence (AI) is as good as a specialist doctor in spotting breast cancer on a mammogram. But don’t expect computers to take over the job from humans, experts say. In a study that compared the mammography-reading skills of an AI tool with those of more than 500 medical professionals, researchers found that it was basically a tie. On average, both humans and AI caught about 90% of breast tumors, and correctly gave an all-clear to just over three-quarters of mammograms from women without cancer. That meant neither was perfect, and experts said it’s still unclear how AI will ultimately fit into breast cancer screening. Mammography has long been a routine experience for women. But mammography-reading may actually be the most challenging task in radiology, said Dr. Liane Philpotts, a professor of radiology at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn. That’s because a mammogram is an old-fashioned X-ray — although in the United States, Philpotts noted, better-performing digital 3D mammography is increasingly replacing the conventional kind. Detecting a tumor on standard mammograms means hunting for subtle patterns — something that has proved difficult even for the best AI, said Philpotts, who wrote an editorial published with the new findings in the September issue of Radiology. “In this study, we’re still talking about imperfect sensitivity,” Philpotts said, referring to…  read on >  read on >

If you need quick directions on performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in an emergency, don’t rely on Alexa, Siri or another voice assistant. A new study finds the directions provided by these AI (artificial intelligence) helpers are inconsistent and lack relevance. “Our findings suggest that bystanders should call emergency services rather than relying on a voice assistant,” said co-author Dr. Adam Landman, chief information officer and senior vice president of digital operations at Mass General Brigham in Boston. “Voice assistants have potential to help provide CPR instructions, but need to have more standardized, evidence-based guidance built into their core functionalities,” Landman, an attending emergency physician, said in a hospital news release. Researchers presented eight verbal questions to four voice assistants: Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant’s Nest Mini, and Microsoft’s Cortana. The study authors also typed the same questions into ChatGPT. The responses were evaluated by two board-certified emergency medicine physicians. Nearly half of the responses from the voice assistants were unrelated to CPR, the study found. This included information related to a movie called “CPR” and a link to Colorado Public Radio News. Only 28% of the replies suggested calling emergency services. Only 34% provided CPR instruction and just 12% gave verbal instructions. The most relevant information offered through AI was on ChatGPT. Using existing AI voice assistant tools may delay care and yield inappropriate…  read on >  read on >

AI might not always be your most accurate source of health information, especially when it comes to cancer care, new research finds. Two new studies assessed the quality of responses offered by AI chatbots to a variety of questions about cancer care. One, published Aug. 24 in JAMA Oncology, zeroed in on the full-sentence conversational AI service known as ChatGPT, which launched to great fanfare last November. The upside: About two-thirds of cancer information offered by ChatGPT accurately matched current guidelines from the U.S. National Comprehensive Cancer Network. The downside: The rest did not. “Some recommendations were clearly completely incorrect,” said study author Dr. Danielle Bitterman, an assistant professor of radiation oncology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and at Harvard Medical School in Boston. “For example, instances where curative treatment was recommended for an incurable diagnosis.” Other times, incorrect recommendations were more subtle — for instance, including some, but not all, parts of a treatment regimen, such as recommending surgery alone, when standard treatment also includes radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy, Bitterman said. That’s concerning, she said, given the degree to which “incorrect information was mixed in with correct information, which made it especially difficult to detect errors even for experts.” A second study in the same journal issue offered a much rosier assessment of AI accuracy. In this instance, investigators looked at answers…  read on >  read on >

If you’ve had a heart attack, your doctor likely told you to take a low-dose aspirin daily to stave off a second heart attack or stroke, but most people don’t follow through with this advice over the long-term. Those folks who don’t take daily low-dose aspirin consistently are more likely to have another heart attack, stroke or die compared with their counterparts who consistently take aspirin, a new study shows. Aspirin keeps platelets from clumping together, which can help prevent or reduce the blood clots that can cause heart attacks and strokes. ”Most people should be on lifelong aspirin after a heart attack,” said Dr. Deepak Bhatt, director of Mount Sinai Heart and professor of cardiovascular medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York City. “Long-term adherence to medication is a problem worldwide, including in the USA, and this is true even for inexpensive drugs such as aspirin, which can be life saving in heart attack patients,” said Bhatt, who had no role in the research. The study was led by Dr. Anna Meta Kristensen of Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital in Frederiksberg, Denmark. The researchers followed more than 40,100 people aged 40 or older who had a first-time heart attack from 2004 through 2017. The study team checked up on aspirin use two, four, six, and eight years after their heart attacks to…  read on >  read on >

Too much screen time can lead to developmental delays in babies, researchers say. When 1-year-olds viewed screens for more than four hours a day, they had delays in communication and problem-solving skills when assessed at ages 2 and 4, according to a new study published Aug. 21 in JAMA Pediatrics. They also had delays in fine motor and social skills at age 2, though that gap was gone by age 4, researchers. It may not be the screens, but what they replace, a Yale expert said. Face-to-face interaction between a parent and child gives babies information about language and meaning through facial expressions, words, tone of voice and physical feedback, said David Lewkowicz, a developmental psychologist at the Yale Child Study Center in New Haven, Conn. “It doesn’t happen when you’re watching the screen,” Lewkowicz told the New York Times. For the study, Japanese researchers led by Ippei Takahashi of Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, asked nearly 7,100 parents of young children to answer questions about development and screen time. More screen time meant greater likelihood of seeing delays. About 4% of the babies in the study had four or more hours of daily screen time, while 18% had two to four. Most had less than two hours. Mothers of babies with high levels of screen time were more likely to be younger, first-time moms,…  read on >  read on >