At least 20 million hernia surgeries are performed globally each year, making it one of the most common medical procedures in the world. But does gender matter when it comes to hernia risk? New Australian research says yes: Half of the nearly 436,000 hernia repair procedures performed in adults in that country between 2017 and 2021 were for inguinal (groin) hernias, with men accounting for 89.6% of those operations. And the age-standardized prevalence in men was more than seven times that of women. Inguinal hernias were the most common type of hernia seen in the study. Why are men more susceptible? Researchers say the gender difference is due to higher rates of smoking, heavy exercise, bladder issues, chronic airway disorders, hypertension and heart disease. It’s important that doctors know “those patients who have higher risks of hernia repair, so we can develop health campaigns and policies to improve their quality of life and lower their risks of developing hernias,” study co-author Dr. Marianne Gillam, from the University of South Australia, said in a university news release. A hernia occurs when one of your organs pushes through the muscle or tissue that contains it. This can trigger discomfort and abdominal pain and in severe cases can strangulate the bowel, which requires emergency surgery. In the study, the team turned to data from the Australian Institute of Health &…  read on >  read on >

Drinking can increase a senior’s risk of a brain bleed following a fall, even if they only occasionally imbibe, a new study finds. In fact, the risk of a brain bleed increases with a senior’s level of drinking, researchers found. Occasional or weekly drinking doubled a person’s risk of a brain bleed following a fall, while daily drinking made it 2.5 times more likely that falling would cause a bleed, results show. “One of the unexpected findings in our study was the strong dose‒response relationship between reported alcohol use and intracranial hemorrhage,” said senior researcher Dr. Richard Shih, a professor of emergency medicine with the Florida Atlantic University College of Medicine. Nationally, falls are the leading cause of both fatal and non-fatal injuries in seniors, researchers said in background notes. In 2021, falls led to the deaths of 36,500 older adults in the United States. For the study, researchers analyzed data for more than 3,100 seniors ages 65 and older who were treated at two Palm Beach County trauma centers for a head injury sustained during a fall. About 18% of the patients said they drink alcohol, with 6% indicating daily consumption, results show. Nearly 14% of all the Palm Beach fall victims were diagnosed with a brain bleed, formally known as an intracranial hemorrhage, researchers found. Brain bleeds occurred in nearly 20% of those…  read on >  read on >

Most folks know that a good sunscreen can guard against the sun’s harmful rays, but many might not realize that some medications and creams can undo some of that protection. “There are multiple reasons we should be mindful of excessive sun exposure aside from skin cancer, although that’s certainly important,” said Dr. Kaveh Nezafati, an assistant professor of dermatology at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. “There may also be some external factors that can make us more sensitive to sunlight.” Nezafati explained that certain medications can render your skin more vulnerable to the sun’s harmful rays and offered some advice on how to protect yourself. Certain drugs contain ingredients that can trigger a physical reaction when the skin is exposed to UV light, according to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. The severity of the reaction depends on the drug dosage and the amount of time spent outdoors or in the tanning booth. Blood pressure medications such as hydrochlorothiazide are a common example. “Basically, what happens is the ultraviolet radiation reacts with the medicine circulating in the patient’s blood, converting that drug into a chemical byproduct that can directly damage skin cells and cause sunburns,” Nezafati said in a UT Southwestern news release. Some antibiotics like ciprofloxacin and doxycycline, which treat a wide assortment of infections, work the same way, he added. “The most…  read on >  read on >

Deaths among Americans dropped by a significant 6.1% between 2022 and 2023, a new government tally finds. Much of this was due to COVID-19’s ebbing effect on deaths. During the pandemic, over a million Americans lost their lives, and in 2021 it was the third leading cause of death. However, new data shows that as vaccinations and natural immunity levels rose, the illness had dropped to 10th position in terms of lethality by 2023. Still, more than 76,000 people lost their lives either directly or indirectly from COVID last year, so it remains a dire threat, concluded a team of researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nevertheless, that’s a nearly 69% decline compared to the nearly 246,000 lives lost to COVID in 2022. The pandemic’s impact on U.S. mortality has changed, concluded a team led by Farida Bhuiya Ahmad, of the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. “In 2020, COVID-19 altered the rankings of leading causes of death substantially. The mortality burden of COVID-19 has decreased since then,” the researchers said. Her team looked at U.S. death data for the years 2019 through 2023, compiled by the U.S. National Vital Statistics System. The leading cause of death by far during all those years was heart disease, which in 2019 killed nearly 2.85 million Americans. That number rose during the pandemic, to…  read on >  read on >

Newly developed battery-powered electric bandages could help wounds heal more quickly, a new study reports. In animal testing, wounds treated with electric bandages healed 30% faster than wounds treated with conventional bandages, researchers reported Aug. 7 in the journal Science Advances. The bandages could be a game-changer in treating slow-healing wounds caused by diabetes and other chronic illnesses, researchers say. Those sorts of wounds significantly increase a person’s risk of amputation and death. “Our goal here was to develop a far less expensive technology that accelerates healing in patients with chronic wounds,” said researcher Amay Bandodkar, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University. “We also wanted to make sure that the technology is easy enough for people to use at home, rather than something that patients can only receive in clinical settings,” Bandodkar noted in a university news release. The study is part of a larger Defense Department-funded effort to accelerate wound healing through different types of innovative dressings, researchers said. These electric bandages have electrodes on one side and a small water-powered battery on the other, researchers said. The dressing is applied so that the electrodes contact the wound, and the battery is activated with a drop of water. The bandage then produces an electric field for several hours. “That electric field is critical, because it’s well established…  read on >  read on >

Many people with Parkinson’s disease may fear dementia as a common consequence of the disease. But new research suggests dementia is not inevitable with Parkinson’s, and in fact is less common than presumed. If dementia does occur, it typically does so much later in life than was previously assumed, the study also found. “These results provide more hopeful estimates of the long-term risk of dementia for people with Parkinson’s disease, suggesting that there is a longer window to intervene to prevent or delay cognitive decline,” said study lead author Dr. Daniel Weintraub, of the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) in Philadelphia. The findings were published Aug. 7 in the journal Neurology. As Weintraub noted in a journal news release, “the development of dementia is feared by people with Parkinson’s, and the combination of both a movement disorder and a cognitive disorder can be devastating to them and their loved ones.” Prior studies had suggested that 80% of Parkinson’s patients might develop dementia within 15 to 20 years of being diagnosed with Parkinson’s. “While these studies were important in highlighting the issue of cognitive decline in Parkinson’s disease, the studies were conducted many years ago, were relatively small and had other limitations, so we wanted to re-evaluate these findings,” noted Weintraub, an assistant professor of psychiatry at UPenn. To get a clearer picture of the incidence of…  read on >  read on >

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 7, 2024 (HealthDay news) — Medicare and Medicaid patients are less likely to get cutting-edge weight-loss drugs than people with private insurance are, a new study finds. Medicaid accounted for less than 10% of semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) prescription fills in 2023, researchers found. Similarly, Medicare Part D accounted for less than 29% of Ozempic fills and a little more than 1% of Wegovy fills. “If only certain patient populations get access to these medications — those primarily with private insurance, more generous health plans — then there’s a huge percentage of the U.S. population that isn’t getting access to these medications. And that brings up a very significant equity issue,” said lead researcher Dr. Christopher Scannell, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern California’s (USC) Center for Health Policy & Economics. For the study, researchers reviewed a pharmaceutical database that captures about 92% of prescriptions filled and dispensed at retail pharmacies in the United States. Ozempic is a once-weekly semaglutide injection approved for use in treating type 2 diabetes in 2017. A higher-dose version called Wegovy was approved in 2021 specifically for weight loss. Ozempic costs about $1,000 a month, while Wegovy is $1,350 a month, researchers noted. Prescription fills for semaglutide drugs skyrocketed by more than 400% between 2021 and 2023, reaching 2.6 million by December 2023, researchers found. However, most…  read on >  read on >

Wildfire smoke could interfere with the safety of surgeries, a new study warns. Inhaling the smoke could complicate the effects of anesthesia on surgical patients, and it also might hamper their recovery, researchers reported Aug. 6 in the journal Anesthesiology. “Wildfire smoke poses significant health risks, particularly in people with preexisting heart and lung disease, obese patients, infants and young children, and other vulnerable groups,” said senior researcher Dr. Vijay Krishnamoorthy, chief of critical care medicine at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, N.C. “At a time of rising global exposure, anesthesiologists need to be equipped to manage the potential adverse effects of wildfire smoke exposure” on patient outcomes, Krishnamoorthy added in a journal news release. Nearly 100 wildfires are currently raging across the United States, burning more than 2 million acres, researchers noted. Wildfire smoke contains a complex mix of fine particles and chemicals that, when inhaled, enter the circulatory system. Organs like the heart and lungs can be damaged as a result, researchers said. The inhaled particles produce inflammation, damage the lining of blood vessels and cause clotting abnormalities in smaller blood vessels, they added. Exposure to such particle pollution also increases the risk of heart attack, heart rhythm problems, heart failure and stroke, they noted. All these factors lead to increased rates of complications among patients undergoing surgery, the researchers concluded.…  read on >  read on >