RedScrubs
The Resource for Medical Professionals

“Another hospital has entered a legal settlement over allegations of “dumping” homeless patients on skid row in Los Angeles.”

Continue reading…. a shocking expose’ of what hospitals are doing with their homeless population. Is the U.S. not capable of better discharge planning than dropping someone off in the middle of the city with nowhere to go, no continuity of care, no basic living needs to look forward to?

“Bruxism or teeth grinding is considered a sleep disorder when a person is experiencing it chronically and often leads to possible complications. Bruxism happens when a person is clenching their teeth forcefully during sleep or even when awake. Old and young people can both experience bruxisms although it is commonly seen among children especially during sleep. Some complications associated with bruxism are aspiration of blood during sleep and tooth loss.”

Read on to learn more about bruxism.

The editors at Open Medicine would like to announce publication of the article “Better access to outpatient magnetic resonance imaging in Ontario – But for whom?” by You et al.
“The access gap to MRI screening between wealthy and poor Ontarians has widened, despite an injection of provincial funding that succeeded in doubling the number of scans performed yearly, report Dr. John You, a research at Toronto’s Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES).
Read this blog to follow the link to the article being discussed in the discussion on the availability of an MRI based on income level in a province in Canada.

Most Americans know about a massive recall of peanut products linked to salmonella cases across the country, but many do not know which foods are involved, a Harvard survey released today reports.
A quarter of people polled earlier this month by the Harvard Opinion Research Program mistakenly believed that national brands of peanut butter are included in the recall of almost 2,000 products, from snack bars to ice cream, that began last month.
This blog reviews some of the specific foods recalled.

Stories about the importance of advance care planning (ACP) are printed every day in mass media newspapers, magazines, and journals across the United States. Earlier this week, the Orlando Sentinel ran a story titled, An Advance Directive Ensures a Person’s Wishes Are Carried Out.

This blog narrates a surprising lack of concern over the wishes stated in an advanced directive.

Data suggests the efficacy of selenium for prevention of colon cancer in humans. The source of selenium may be an important factor as well since selenium in broccoli does not accumulate in the body as fast as other forms of Selenium.
In one experiment, rats (n = 45) were assigned to torula yeast-based diets supplemented with the following: 1) no Se; 2) selenium as selenate; 3) selenized broccoli. In another experiment, rats were assigned to same basal diet supplemented with the following: 1) no added Se; 2) selenium as selenite; 3) selenium as as selenite + low Selenium broccoli; and 4) selenized broccoli.
This is a short and sweet blog about nutrition and our health and how the form our nutrients are in may make a difference in medical outcome.

Professor Nikhil Dhurandhar says a common cold virus can interfere with our normal body processes and make us fat - he has reached this rather astonishing conclusion following ten years of research with both animals and humans into the virus, Adenovirus-36.
Obesity experts say the virus is not the reason why there is a major epidemic of obesity but may be instead a small contributing factor and all avenues must be explored but the basic message remains that people need to eat less and exercise more.

A little over a year ago I put a post up documenting research out of Canada which found methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in Canadian pigs. This had also been seen in Europe (with a lot of research coming out of the Netherlands). What I didn’t note at the time was that we were gearing up to start some sampling of our own on area swine farms. Some of you saw that we presented the results of that research last year at ICEID and ASM; now the paper is out describing our pilot project in PLoS ONE. (Note: the paper was available earlier, but now they seem to have removed it…keeps an eye on that link).

For this research, we swabbed pigs and humans from 2 large swine farming companies in the area. The first (”production system A”, PSA) had about 60,000 pigs at any one time; the second (PSB) was smaller, with about 27,000 pigs. These were distributed over several different farms in the area (with several thousand animals on each farm) and are typically age-segregated. The episodes of zoonosis have been ever increasing and this is a blog worth reading with regards to the zoonosis related research. The other question is, why was the PloS ONE paper removed?

Biological events as issues of serious socioeconomic concern have risen to the forefront in recent years. Examples include the globalization of Human Immunodeficiency Virus / Acquired ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome (HIV / AIDS), the recent introduction of West Nile Virus and monkeypox to the United States, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and the current global concern about a potential influenza pandemic involving Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI)-H5N1.