28 April 2020
TUESDAY, April 28, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- More green spaces in cities could significantly reduce premature deaths and their costs, researchers say.
Focusing on Philadelphia, they concluded that increasing the city's tree canopy by about one-third -- from 20% to 30% of land area -- could prevent more than 400 premature deaths a year and save nearly $4 billion in related economic costs.
Increases of 5% and 10% in tree canopy could prevent premature deaths a year by 271 and 376, respectively, according to the study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) in Spain and the U.S. Forest Service.
Poorer neighborhoods would see the greatest benefits from an increase in green spaces.
"Many of the deaths prevented would be in the poorest areas of the city, even with a...
28 April 2020
TUESDAY, April 28, 2020 (American Heart Association News) -- Even when there isn't a pandemic, America's growing population of senior immigrants faces health care challenges.
"Because of linguistic and cultural barriers, their needs are vast," said Dr. XinQi Dong, director of the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. "And we really are not well-equipped as a society, and certainly as a health care system, to meet the challenges for their needs."
Now, the fight against COVID-19 has made problems worse for many, Dong said. "There's a multi-level set of barriers that may make the experience of elderly immigrants even more difficult."
Just communicating basic information about the virus can be difficult – especially...
23 April 2020
THURSDAY, April 23, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Seniors hospitalized with pneumonia are much more likely to die in the hospital and within two years of leaving the hospital than those with hip fractures, new research shows.
But many older people don't recognize the serious threat posed by pneumonia, the researchers said. The study took place in 2009 to 2015, years before the coronavirus pandemic and its respiratory effects became a well-known threat to human life.
For the study, the investigators compared outcomes among patients in France, aged 80 and older, who were hospitalized for either pneumonia (nearly 12,200) or hip fractures (nearly 4,800).
The pneumonia patients had a greater number of other health problems ("co-morbidities") and a higher in-hospital death rate than the hip...
22 April 2020
WEDNESDAY, April 22, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- The largest analysis of hospitalized U.S. COVID-19 patients to date finds that most did not survive after being placed on a mechanical ventilator.
The study included the health records of 5,700 COVID-19 patients hospitalized between March 1 and April 4 at facilities overseen by Northwell Health, New York State's largest health system.
Among the 2,634 patients for whom outcomes were known, the overall death rate was 21%, but it rose to 88% for those who received mechanical ventilation, the Northwell Health COVID-19 Research Consortium reported.
The new findings "provide a crucial early insight into the front-line response to the COVID-19 outbreak in New York," Dr. Kevin Tracey, president and CEO of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical...