A hearing test screening, designed to detect hearing impairments in newborns, shell help prevent irreversible and permanent hearing problems in about 2000 babies in Germany per year. From 1 January 2009, this test might be covered by the statutory health insurances
Pharmaceutical companies are not allowed to inform consumers on the internet or in ads about side effects, application and ingredients of medicines. The pharmaceutical industry would like to relax this ban and mustered support from EU Commissioner Günter Verheugen who will present a legislative proposal later this year.
Patient monitoring technology offers enormous benefits for the patient. But reimbursement is insufficiently regulated all over Europe. Therefore, telemedicine generates a loss for the physicians although it can very well cut costs for all parties involved and improve the quality of care.
The Old Dominion University in Virginia and Regensburg University Medical Center in Germany are jointly organizing an international conference to discuss recent advances and strategic needs in personalised healthcare (pHealth) care and to foster collaboration between industry and academia.
Researchers have discovered a potential new treatment for diabetes by isolating and killing defective cells which prevent the natural production of insulin. The investigation opens the door to a potential therapy for patients with type 1 diabetes.
Approximately 31 million people in the European Union are suffering from diabetes, a devastating disease with severe consequences for patients and their families, but also for the society at large and the economic prosperity of Europe. This week EH Online will focus on innovative strategies in diabetes care and on new management systems to support physicians and patients alike. Moreover, we will…
Researchers at Linköping University and Uppsala University in Sweden can show that accumulation of protein aggregatess, amyloid, in the transplanted cells may be causing their death. With the aid of their results, physicians can enhance survival of islets transplants and improve treatment of type 1 diabetes.
ESC speaker John Cleland from the University of Hull, UK, sumed up the latest treatment available for patients with diabetes mellitus and expressed his worries about side-effects and efficacy of available anti-diabetic drugs. If you want to read his ESC abstract, just click the “read more” button.
The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research recently agreed funding for a diabetes competence network — the first diabetes mellitus project to be funded by the ministry's new “Health Research — Research for People” programme.
Theatre management is one of the most challenging jobs in a hospital. Picis offers a solution: Recently it has launched the Picis Perioperative Dashboard, a Business Intelligence (BI) solution for the perioperative areas of the hospitals in Europe.
Irish and German neurology associations warn of an imminent shortage of neurologists. In Ireland, according to experts the situation is “lacking at best” and “catastrophic at worst”. German physicians as well detect increasing deficiencies in neurological care coverage primarily due to an aging population and concomitant morbidity.
Over 70 million people in Southern Asia ingest involuntary arsenic through the groundwater. Arsenic poisoning is the reason for many instances of ill-health, including a rising number of cancer cases. Researchers from Belfast invented a low-cost technology to provide people with arsenic-free water.
The common parlance knew it long before experts paid attention to it: a persons mood can be associated to its heart. But indeed in recent years much attention has been spend to depression following heart attack and its effects on prognosis. On the Congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) two Dutch studies have been introduced indicating that especially somatic and incident depression…
French findings support the notion that gastric bypass can rapidly reverse diabetes symptoms' a side-effect that lap-band surgery does not show. The benefit results from a new-found element of glucose production by the intestine which also increases insulin sensitivity and lowers blood sugar.
A new analysis presented during the ESC on the effects of cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) in patients with mild heart failure shows improvement in several areas, including left ventricular ejection fraction, a standard measure of the heart's pumping effectiveness and key indicator of heart health.
Joint replacemtents are daily hospital routine. A first national study in England gives information about the outcome of the often performed hip resurfacing and unicondylar knee replacement techniques. Both surgical operations try to preserve bone - but are they medically sensible?
It seems like the innovative non surgical technique of transcatheter aortic valve replacement heralds the start for radical changes in the field of valvular heart disease. Promising results from different clinical studys underline the positive impact.
The inverse epidemiological association between serum levels of HDL-C and risk of coronary artery disease (CAD) is graded and has been validated in multiple studies. However, there is remaining controversy whether a low HDL-C should not predominantly be considered a marker of poor lifestyle (obesity, lack of exercise, hypertriglyceridemia, diet, etc.), rather than a primary causal agent for…
Lifestyle and risk factor results show that recommended scientific guidelines form a contrast to what is achieved in daily practice in high risk individuals in primary prevention of CVD. Together with its partners the ESC demands a comprehensive and multisdicplinary primary prevention programme involving the high-risk population, their GP's and other health professionals, a health insurance…
Between June 2004 and April 2008 the Dutch DECREASE III Study observed patients treated with Fluvastatin. The results show that Fluvastatin XL therapy can be associated with improved postoperative cardiac outcome in high-risk patients undergoing elective vascular surgery.
The International Chair on Cardiometabolic Risk (ICCR) is pleased to announce the three winners of the European Media Prize co-sponsored by the ICCR and the Association of European Journalists (AEJ) and launched in November 2007 to reward articles that best inform readers about a growing public health issue: abdominal obesity and related risk of cardiovascular disease.
"Surgery should be performed using as often as possible surgical mitral valve repair, as this treatment has shown safety, efficacy and good long-term results," says French Prof Alec Vahanian on Monday, the third ESC day.
Since Rofecoxib (Vioxx) was withdrawn from the worldwide market based on the safety findings of the Adenomatous Polyp Prevention on Vioxx (APPROVe) study, the uncertainty around the cardiovascular safety of NSAIDs and COX-2 inhibitors remains and leaves practitioners with difficult management decisions for the hundreds of millions of patients worldwide who continue to require pain-relieving…
The BACH (Biomarkers in Acute Congestive Heart Failure) trail, an international, multi-marker study, analysed the diagnostic and prognostic precision of new biomarkers in patients with dyspnea (Shortness of Breath).
The Acuson SC2000 volume imaging ultrasound system - reported to be the first system in the world to acquire non-stitched real-time full-volume 3-D images of the heart in one single heart cycle - is launched at the ESC meeting in Munich.
