Taking care of Mom & Dad is a blog site based in the Inland empire that focuses on quality health care for our parents. If you are fortunate enough to live a long and fruitful life there will probably come a day when you may require some assistance. A day when your muscles and bones may no longer work they way they used to and you will no longer be able to fully take care of yourself the way you did in your youth. When that day comes you will want to have someone around you that you can trust with your health and well being.
Unfortunately in this day in age the world moves so fast that most of us between our 9 to 5 jobs and hectic home life cant provide the type of assistance that is necessary to fully take care of our parents and we need to look outside of family for assistance. How do you find someone that you can trust? That is where we come in at taking care of Mom & Dad we work hard to not only give you the leads to the most Quality Elderly care facilities in the Inland Empire and Palm Desert areas but we also bring you the most up to date articles in Health care for seniors and Tips to keep you and your parents healthy in your Golden years !!!
Hospital chiefs ‘failing the elderly’
HOSPITAL bosses were under fire today after an independent health watchdog found they were failing elderly patients.
After an unannounced visit by a team from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to two wards at South Tyneside District Hospital in South Shields, a report has highlighted a lack of dignity and respect shown to some old folk.
The visitors also raised concerns at the quality of provision to patients at meal times.
South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trust has a month to formally respond to the criticism, but borough health chiefs hit back today calling the assessment “wrong and out of context”.
The CQC’s report highlighted a series of incidents which raised concern during April’s visit.
One patient in a single room on the elderly care unit was seen to call for assistance for 25 minutes – during which time he rattled a bedrail – before help eventually arrived.
A health care assistant was witnessed being “verbally sharp” to another elderly patient, while another patient was spotted being wheeled across a corridor to and from the toilet with bare legs and feet exposed.
The report did find that the majority of patients were satisfied with the care and treatment they received, but added that “people were not consistently treated with respect, and their dignity was compromised.”
Criticism was also made that napkins were no longer provided at meal times and that no condiments were offered to patients.
And although the report found patients were offered a “healthy balanced diet”, the report added: “Practices and support needed to be developed to improve the meal time experience.”
Today a spokesman for South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trust questioned the findings, saying: “After a positive visit to two ward areas, the CQC team provided the Trust with verbal feedback which was largely very positive and did not highlight any issues of immediate or significant concern.
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PET Imaging May Aid Alzheimer's Diagnosis
There were significant differences in brain amyloid content exhibited on positron emission tomography of patients with normal and impaired cognition, suggesting PET might have a role in differential diagnosis of dementia, investigators in a multicenter study concluded.
The standard uptake value ratios (SUVRs) for the tracer florbetapir F 18 declined in linear fashion from patients with probable Alzheimer's disease to those with mild cognitive impairment to a group of older normal controls.
The pattern of differences in SUVR persisted in analyses of mean cortical florbetapir, proportion of patients with amyloid levels associated with Alzheimer's disease, and the proportion with any identifiable fibrillar beta-amyloid (P<1 x 10-7 for all comparisons), as reported online in Archives of Neurology.
"The findings of our analysis confirm the ability of florbetapir-PET SUVRs to characterize amyloid levels in clinically probable Alzheimer's disease, mild cognitive impairment, and older healthy control groups using continuous and binary measures of fibrillar beta-amyloid burden," Adam Fleisher, MD, of the Banner Alzheimer's Institute in Phoenix, and co-authors wrote in conclusion.
"It introduces criteria to determine whether an image is associated with an intermediate-to-high likelihood of pathologic Alzheimer's disease or with having any identifiable cortical amyloid level above that seen in low-risk young controls."
In another article published online ahead of print, investigators reported a significant association between PET tracer uptake and amount of beta-amyloid in patients with normal-pressure hydrocephalus.
Amyloid imaging has shown promise as a means of evaluating patients with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia and cognitive impairment. In particular, florbetapir has demonstrated potential for measuring cortical fibrillar beta-amyloid in preclinical and clinical studies.
Continuing the investigation of florbetapir-PET imaging, Fleisher and colleagues analyzed pooled data from four phase I-II trials of the imaging modality. They sought to determine whether measures of florbetapir-PET activity would allow them to assess global differences between diagnostic groups, confirm expected regional distribution patterns of beta-amyloid, and calculate the proportion of positive scans by various cutoffs for tracer activity.
The investigators considered an SUVR ≥1.17 as reflecting amyloid levels associated with Alzheimer's disease, a threshold based on antemortem PET and postmortem neuropathologic data from 19 patients.
Additionally, the investigators considered an SUVR greater than 1.08 as the threshold for signifying the presence of any identifiable beta-amyloid, a cutoff derived from a study of younger individuals who were not APOE ε4 carriers.
The analysis involved 68 patients with probable Alzheimer's disease, 60 with mild cognitive impairment, and a control group of 82 healthy individuals 55 or older.
The three groups differed significantly with respect to:
- Mean cortical florbetapir SUVR (1.39, 1.17, and 1.05)
- Percentage with beta-amyloid levels associated with Alzheimer's disease (80.9%, 40.0%, and 20.7%)
- Percentage meeting SUVR criteria for presence of any beta-amyloid (85.3%, 46,6%, and 28.1%)
Among participants in the control group, florbetapir activity increased linearly by age decile (P=0.05).
Additionally, of the 54 control participants with known APOE ε4 status, carriers had a significantly higher mean cortical SUVR for florbetapir than did noncarriers (1.14 vs 1.03, P=0.048).
Limitations of this study included choice of whole cerebellum as the reference region for SUVR calculations as this has not been verified to be better than other regions and potential for cohort selection bias.
The second study of PET imaging of amyloid involved seven patients who had undergone previous cortical biopsy related to normal-pressure hydrocephalus.
The investigators compared brain uptake of 18F-labeled flutemetamol PET imaging with immunohistochemical estimates of amyloid levels in the biopsy specimens.
Comparison of the two measures showed 100% agreement between PET and immunohistochemical data.
Regression analysis revealed a significant relationship between tracer uptake on PET and the immunohistochemical results (P=0.01).
"To our knowledge, these data are the first to demonstrate the concordance of 18F-flutemetamol PET imaging with histopathology, supporting its sensitivity to detect amyloid and potential use in the study and detection of Alzheimer disease," David A. Wolk, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and co-authors wrote in conclusion.
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PET Imaging May Aid Alzheimer's Diagnosis |
to everything MedPage Today has to offer! |
PET Imaging May Aid Alzheimer's Diagnosis |
to everything MedPage Today has to offer! |
PET Imaging May Aid Alzheimer's Diagnosis |
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