Editor's Note A recent study in JAMA Surgery showed women with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) were 8% less likely than men to receive a liver transplant and 6% more likely to die or be removed from the waitlist, Healio reported September 9.    The study, which analyzed 31,725 adults waitlisted for…

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Editor's Note Recalls of certain devices and instruction updates for others prompted the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to issue Class 1 recalls—the most severe category indicating risk of serious injury or death—for two groups of products: Medtronic’s McGrath MAC and MAC EMS Video Laryngoscopes and Breas Medical’s Vivo…

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Editor's Note A recent study conducted across 185 hospital wards in England highlights the significant impact of nurse staffing levels and staff composition on patient mortality. Published August 19 in JAMA, the study analyzed data from over 626,000 hospital admissions between 2015 and 2020. It found that low staffing levels…

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Editor's Note A post hoc analysis of the SCOT phase 3 randomized clinical trial reveals that initiating adjuvant chemotherapy more than 6 weeks after surgery is linked to worse disease-free survival (DFS) in patients with high-risk stage II and stage III colorectal cancer. Published June 12 in JAMA Surgery, the…

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Editor's Note For diabetic patients with obesity and chronic kidney disease (CKD), metabolic bariatric surgery could protect the kidneys better than therapy with glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RA), according to research published in the September issue of the Annals of Surgery. Conducted at a large US health system, the study…

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Editor's Note COVID-19 can be considered endemic worldwide, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on the heels of reporting a drop in overall US death rates from the disease. CDC’s classification of the disease as endemic “means, essentially, that COVID is here to stay in predictable ways,”…

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Editor's Note The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) designated recalls of Medtronic’s NIM Vital Nerve Monitoring System and Smith Medical’s CADD-Solis Ambulatory Infusion Pumps as Class 1, the most severe category indicating serious risk of injury or death. Reports of false negative responses prompted Medtronic to recall the nerve…

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Editor's Note Medical professionals have long accepted that bilateral mastectomy does not improve survival outcomes for breast cancer patients. However, a study published in JAMA Oncology reveals a puzzling finding: Those who develop a second cancer in the other breast have a higher risk of death. As detailed in a…

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Editor's Note The American Medical Association (AMA) annual, nationwide prior authorization survey reveals that over 90% of physicians believe prior authorization negatively impacts patient clinical outcomes. “More telling,” AMA reported July 17, is the fact that 78% of physicians report that this process “sometimes or often” leads to patients abandoning…

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Editor's Note The US Food & Drug Administration has designated recalls of Baxter’s Life2000 Ventilator and the I-Pack Injection Kit from Bausch + Lomb and subsidiary Synergetics Inc. as Class 1, the most severe category indicating serious risk of injury or death. According to FDA’s July 15 announcement, the ventilator…

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