Tag: health concern

New Medicare/Medicaid Guidelines for Nursing Home Nutrition and Sanitary Conditions

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has released new Interpretive Guidelines for nutrition and sanitary conditions in nursing homes effective September 1, 2008. The changes clarify areas such as assessment, care planning, and interventions for LTC residents.

The new guidelines are significant as it contains detailed instructions for acceptable parameters of nutritional status, details on required nutritional assessment, food and fluid intake, care planning, and weight-related interventions. There are also added sections on wound healing and feeding tubes which were not in the previous Interpretive Guidelines. Appendix PP – Guidance to Surveyors for Long Term Care Facilities updates … Read the rest

Do You Think The Food and Beverage Industry Can Self-Regulate Its $1.6 Billion Marketing Towards Children and Adolescents?

A report of the Federal Trade Commission, Marketing Food to Children and Adolescents: A Review of Industry Expenditures, Activities, and Self-Regulation, finds that 44 major food and beverage marketers spent $1.6 billion to promote their products to children under 12 and adolescents ages 12 to 17 in the United States in 2006.

The report finds that food advertising to youth is dominated by integrated advertising campaigns that combine traditional media, such as television, with previously unmeasured forms of marketing, such as packaging, in-store advertising, sweepstakes, and Internet. These campaigns often involve cross-promotion with a new movie or popular television program.… Read the rest

Drug Makers Release Test Results That Shows That Their Cholesterol Drug Zetia Has No Benefits

Merck and Schering- Plough, the makers of the popular cholesterol drug, Zetia, announced that Zetia and Vytorin, a pill containing Zetia and Zocor, had failed to benefit patients of a two-year trial which was completed in April of 2006. Merck and Schering-Plough’s press release stated that Zetia not only failed to slow down the accumulation of fatty plaque in the arteries, it contributed to the formation of plaque. Patients taking Vytorin to reduce the growth of fatty plaque in the arteries actually experienced a growth of plaque in their arteries twice as fast as those taking Zetia alone.

This … Read the rest

8,500 More Patients of Dr. Harvey Finkelstein are Advised to Get Tested as Tests Find Additional Hepatitis Cases Among His Patients

Approximately 8,500 additional patients of Dr. Harvey Finkelstein will be advised to get tested for blood-borne diseases as a probe into his practice expands, a New York State Health Department spokeswoman said. Meanwhile, the Nassau County Health Department has said recent tests found six hepatitis B cases and six hepatitis C cases among Finkelstein’s patients, although it is unclear whether the liver infections stemmed from Finkelstein’s improper re-use of syringes.

Initially this past November, 628 patients of Dr. Finkelstein were advised to get tested for hepatitis B and C and HIV, all blood borne diseases, because they had received … Read the rest

Daily Eater of Popcorn Sues Over Butter-Flavor Chemical Diacetyl, Saying “I Inhaled.”

Exposure to the chemical known as diacetyl, which adds the buttery flavor to popcorn, has been tied to hundreds of cases of workers whose lungs have been damaged or destroyed. When it is heated diacetyl becomes a vapor and when it is inhaled over a long period of time, it can cause various problematic symptoms. Exposure to this chemical can cause one to experience difficulty breathing and exhaling, and one’s lungs can become scarred. The severe form of the disease is called “bronchiolitis obliterans,” also known as “popcorn workers’ lung,” which can be lethal.

In fact, in July of 2005, … Read the rest