Making Perfect Sense is a Web community about aging and healthcare for seniors, relatives and friends, their caregivers and anyone interested in more healthful living.
HealthNewsReview.org offers a much needed resource for evaluating the accuracy of health news reporting. The multidisciplinary team of people from journalism, medicine, health services research and public health is dedicated to:
• Improving the accuracy of news stories about medical treatments, tests, products and procedures.
• Helping consumers evaluate the evidence for and against new ideas in health care.
The reviewers use a standardized rating system to evaluate the quality of stories making therapeutic claims about:
• Specific treatments
• Procedures
• Investigational drugs or devices
• Vitamins or nutritional supplements
• Diagnostic and screening tests
The site is searchable by date, news organization, number of rating stars and keyword. Email updates and an RSS feed are available.
The founders support and encourage the “ABC’s of health journalism”: Accuracy, Balance and Completeness.
The website is modeled in part on the Media Doctor Australia, a website launched by an Australian team in 2004.
Researchers have presented findings to a Royal College of Psychiatrists meeting that suggests girls with mild symptoms of autism are less likely to be diagnosed than boys, according to an article posted by BBC News. The researchers studied 493 boys and 100 girls with autistic spectrum disorders. The girls demonstrated different symptoms, and fewer symptoms generally considered autistic, such as repetitive behavior.
Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, an autism expert at the University of Cambridge, responded to the research:
“There may be many factors leading to these conditions either being underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed in females, or leading females to require a diagnosis less often.”
As of this report the research had yet to be published.
New research suggests cognitive rehabilitation can help the mind after a serious brain injury or stroke similar to the way physical therapy helps the body. The data suggests treatmentshould be tailored to age, injury, symptoms, and time since injury. The findings may lead to evidence-based treatment guidelines.
The study results led authors to offer these preliminary treatment guidelines:
Generally, it is better to start treating patients as early as possible, rather than waiting for a more complete neurological recovery.
Even older patients (age 55 and up) may benefit from cognitive rehabilitation, particularly if the brain injury is due to stroke.
Clinicians should focus their efforts on direct cognitive skills training in specific cognitive domains (such as attention or visuospatial processing). More holistic, non-targeted interventions appear to be less effective.
This study was performed by researchers from the University of South Alabama and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Every other Monday, we’ll explore living with disability; its challenges and solutions. Topics cover disability both overt and hidden, chronic and temporary, including: visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, and neurological.
This resource also offers assistance for content publishers seeking to meet accessibility standards.
Edwin Rivera, a severely disabled 22-year-old, was abandoned by the driver and bus matron responsible for taking him to his family’s home. Instead, he spent a frigid New Year’s Eve alone, strapped into a seat in a Brooklyn bus yard. The first police search of the lot failed to find him. When the parents joined police the next day he was found in a portion of the lot not previous searched. He had been there for more than 17 hours.
Hockaday told police she knew Rivera hadn’t been dropped off and was asleep on the bus when she got off, the complaint said. But she didn’t tell the driver because she was headed for an appointment and didn’t want to go back to Rivera’s East Harlem home, according to the complaint.
CNN reports that Hockaday, 51, faces charges of first- and second-degree reckless endangerment.
Several organizations have reported that the driver, Walter Gibbs, 41, has been arrested dozens of times, as recently as August 5, 2008, and that his employer, Outstanding Transport Bus Company, may have failed to seek a background check, as required by law. (NYDailyNews.com and the New York Post stories do not agree.)
Mr. Rivera was hospitalized for hypothermia, and released on Monday, January 4, 2009.
