Heart Patients Benefit From At-Home Care, Study Finds

(HealthDay News) -- Patients with worsening chronic heart failure may find "hospital-at-home" care is a good alternative to treatment in a traditional hospital, Italian researchers report.

An estimated 5 million North Americans suffer from chronic heart failure, a condition in which the heart struggles to pump blood to the body. In the United States, worsening chronic heart failure is the cause of more than 1 million hospital admissions a year, and patients have a 50 percent risk of readmission within six months of discharge, according to the authors of a study published in the Sept. 28 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

But the hospital is often dangerous in itself, the study authors noted.

In the study, Dr. Vittoria Tibaldi and colleagues at the University of Torino, San Giovanni Battista Hospital in Torino, Italy, enrolled patients aged 75 years or older with worsening chronic heart failure. Some were treated at a general medical ward, while others received hospital-at-home care supervised by a doctor.

After six months, 15 percent of the patients had died. There wasn't any difference in the death rate between the groups, but it took longer, on average, for those who were treated at home to be readmitted. Read more...

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Cheap Drug Helps Smokers Quit, Study Finds

(HealthDay News) -- For people trying to quit smoking, the drug cytisine works better than a placebo, and its comparatively low cost makes it an appealing alternative to newer stop-smoking medications, researchers say.

Over the course of a year, researchers found cytisine, a nicotine substitute, more effective than a placebo in helping smokers stop the habit, and the researchers said its affordability could be an advantage in poorer countries.

"Many smokers can stop without help, but many are addicted and will continue until they die unless they get help," said lead researcher Robert West, from the Health Behaviour Research Center at University College London in England.

"The key feature of this drug is that it is extremely cheap and so affordable by just about anyone in the world who can afford to smoke," he added. Read more...

Immunice for Immune Support

Coffee, Sex, Smog Can All Trigger Heart Attack, Study Finds

(HealthDay News) -- A major analysis of data on potential triggers for heart attacks finds that many of the substances and activities Americans indulge in every day -- coffee, alcohol, sex, even breathing -- can all help spur an attack.

Because so many people are exposed to dirty air, air pollution while stuck in traffic topped the list of potential heart attack triggers, with the researchers pegging 7.4 percent of heart attacks to roadway smog.

But coffee was also linked to 5 percent of attacks, booze to another 5 percent, and pot smoking to just under 1 percent, the European researchers found.

Among everyday activities, exerting yourself physically was linked to 6.2 percent of heart attacks, indulging in a heavy meal was estimated to trigger 2.7 percent, and sex was linked to 2.2 percent. Read more...

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Popular cancer drugs increase risk of death, study finds

A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association has revealed that the popular cancer drug Avastin (bevacizumab) raises patients' risk of death by up to 350 percent when combined with chemotherapy. Designed to stop the production of new blood vessels in the body, and thus the spread of cancer cells, Avastin is also responsible for causing blood clots in legs and lungs when used as directed.

Vishal Ranpura and doctors from Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York analyzed a series of 16 previously published randomized controlled trials involving more than 10,000 patients with tumors to see how Avastin was related to fatal adverse events (FAE). Depending on the combination of treatments, Avastin was linked with a significantly higher risk of FAEs, especially when combined with other conventional cancer treatments.

"Compared with chemotherapy alone, the addition of bevacizumab was associated with a 1.5 times increased risk of FAEs," states the study. "Bevacizumab was associated with a 3.5 times increased risk of FAEs in patients receiving taxanes or platinum agents (two specific forms of chemotherapy)." Read more...

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