Dementia screening - is it time?

The article, Dementia screening in primary care: Is it time? was interesting to me. We are hearing more and more about dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and the social, emotional, physical, and financial toll that the disease takes.

Some people feel that screening for dementia would catch a significant number of people who could slip through the cracks. However, currently there are no methods for across-the-board screening. In this article, it is argued that such screening could, in fact, have detrimental effects. It says, “Harms include possible stigma, loss of long term care insurance, emotional dislocation for both the individual and family, and resources’ shifting from other health problems.”

It’s a tough one. It’s a sad and frustrating situation when an elderly person does slip through the cracks when dementia develops and doesn’t receive the care he or she needs. There has to be a way to identify the people at risk without causing a whole new problem, as could be with overall screening.

News for Today:

Women happier when babies delivered by midwives: Statscan survey
Surgery allows amputees to 'feel' in missing hand
Dementia screening in primary care: Is it time?
Hospital superbugs now in nursing homes and the community
High-trauma fractures in older adults linked to osteoporosis, increased risk of another fracture
Factors identified to help predict risk of hip fracture in postmenopausal women
Another complication for gastric bypass patients
PET/CT brings new hope to patients with deadly form of breast cancer
PET imaging may improve lung cancer diagnosis
Freezing bone cancer tumors reduces pain, Mayo Clinic study shows

Good and bad cholesterol?

We often hear about good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, such as when we read articles like Not enough 'good' cholesterol makes it harder to recover from stroke. Unfortunately, many people don’t understand what bad or good cholesterol are and what the difference is between the two.

First, what is cholesterol? Cholesterol is a fat-like substance that is produced by our liver and ingested through food. We need cholesterol as a building block for healthy cells walls and tissues, among other things. However, cholesterol can also be dangerous as it can build up and block blood flow.

The so-called good cholesterol, the one we need to keep healthy is called high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and the so-called bad cholesterol is called low-density lipoprotein (LDL). A trick to remember which is which – you want the good cholesterol to be high so HDL; you want the bad cholesterol to be low, so LDL.

The American Heart Association has this great section, What Your Cholesterol Levels Mean to help you understand the numbers and what numbers you want to see when your blood is tested.

Since it’s known that high LDL can contribute to heart disease and stroke, everyone – particularly those with heart disease in the family – should know their baseline cholesterol levels. The earlier you know your levels, the earlier you can begin working on prevention. If your levels are normal, your goal is to keep it normal; if your levels are too high for LDL, then your goals are lower your numbers.

News for Today:

Trained patients show improved cholesterol levels
Too little milk, exercise, sunshine hurting kids
Mental health hotlines help American farmers
City women more likely to have denser breasts, study suggests
High-glycemic index carbohydrates associated with risk for developing type 2 diabetes in women
Patient knowledge of heart risk profile may help improve cholesterol management
Not enough 'good' cholesterol makes it harder to recover from stroke
Attitudes toward mammography differ across ethnicities, cultures, backgrounds

News stories

What are the important health news stories of 2007 and the upcoming year? I’d like to hear what you have to say. I’ve written about different kinds of cancers, high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, and many other commonly discussed issues. I’ve also tackled issues like mental illness, addiction, and suicide – the last one being something that has affected me personally.

Of course, the news isn’t going to report a lot on issues that aren’t popular, that don’t raise too many eyebrows. If a disease, disorder, or disability is a concern, it’s up to us to raise the awareness because no-one else will. The more noise we make, the more news gets made.

So, how do we do that? Take suicide for example. I wrote a post earlier this year about suicide and I called it Suicide, not a disease, so no walkathons, ribbons, or research race. I also wrote: Quebec has one of the highest young male suicide rates in the country. Young men are one of the highest risk groups for suicide. In a youth suicide report published by the Canadian Task Force on Preventative Health Care, it says: “Suicide has accounted for about 2% of annual deaths in Canada since the late 1970s. Eighty percent of all suicides in 1991 involved men. The male:female ratio for suicide risk was 3.8 to 1. In both males and females, the greatest increase between 1960 and 1991 occurred in the 15- to 19-year age group, with a four-and-a-half-fold increase for males, and a three-fold increase for females.”

Where are the hue and outcry that so many lives are being lost?

What do other people feel are important health issues? I will look for information and news on the different topics suggested.

News for Today:

FDA mulls psych warning for 2 flu drugs
Montreal doctor exploring link between football and ALS
Cryoablation continues to show good results for kidney cancer patients
'Mismatched' prostate cancer treatment more common than expected
Non-Caucasians at higher risk for severe metastatic breast cancer pain

Nurses and addiction

One of the leading stories in Montreal yesterday was the temporary license suspension of two nurses who were found guilty of diverting morphine from their patients: Two Montreal nurses suspended for using morphine. Sadly, this does happen – nurses have access to these types of medications and if they are drug-dependent, the temptation may be too strong for them to resist.

There was an outcry on one of the talk radio stations; the host felt that the nurses should never be allowed to get their license back – that they should be banned from working as a nurse forever. He blamed the union for the nurses to be allowed to one day regain their license.

I’m of two minds about this. I do see where the radio host was coming from. The news reports stated one of the nurses injected patients with saline in order to keep the narcotic for himself. I can only imagine the pain the patient must have been experiencing and how awful it must have been to be unrelieved. The anger the host had for this act was understandable. After all, this calls into question if this could ever happen to us.

But the other side of the story is, what if nurses successfully complete drug rehabilitation – should they be forever banned from earning a living in their profession? Isn’t that the point of rehabilitation? This particular story says that the nurses have been clean now since they were caught.

Is it really a one or the other option? Or is there another option; is it possible that nurses who have abused drugs can work again but without access to narcotics? Does such an option exist?

My fear for allowing recovering addicts to return would be the temptation that they may fall into. As successful as a rehab can be, if the temptation is there in front of the nurses every day, how easy might it be to fall back under the spell of the addiction? Did those nurses develop this problem after they were nurses or did they enter the profession with this addiction already? This could make a difference.

There are no easy answers.

News for Today:

Thalidomide resurfaces as treatment for multiple myeloma
B.C. community pleads for help to halt suicide 'epidemic'
Two Montreal nurses suspended for using morphine
Mirror helps relieve phantom limb pain