Law Firm Resources & News

According to an article on Medical News Today, several children’s’ hospitals are implementing safety procedures used by the aviation industry to reduce errors in their hospitals. LifeWings is the largest provider of CRM (Crew Resource Management) based systems in the United States. Life Wings is implementing the program at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital in Nashville, TN.…

Check out this article in yesterday’s Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/10/AR2007061001148.html “WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New tests involving blood and brain scans can detect symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, and brief appraisals of real-life functioning can predict who is likely to develop it, researchers saidSunday.The tests will be critical, experts told a meeting on Alzheimer’s disease, because more than…

An article on MSN Health concludes there is a correlation between elderly people who take anti-psychotic drugs and earlier deaths. Elderly people are often given anti-psychotic drugs when their behavior problems become too much for doctors or family members to handle. Anti-psychotics have been used since the 1950s to treat people with schizophrenia and other…

Researchers have found that certain anti-cancer drugs improved the long term memory of mice. These drugs, called histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors are hoped to strengthen connectors in the brain and improve long term memory in people with Alzheimers and other brain diseases. One of the co-authors of the study, Marcelo Wood, is quoted in this…

This one is hard to believe! Swain Walter Wright Jr., a 71-year-old father of two, was homicidal and suicidal in December 2001 when he twice sought admission to the psychiatric unit at Piedmont Medical Center in Rock Hill, South Carolina. He later hanged himself from a tree in his backyard. Swain Wright had struggled with…

Chronic lower extremity ulcers affect approximately 2.5 million to 4.5 million people in the US. This growing clinical problem is most prominent among the elderly residents of nursing homes. In many of our cases against nursing homes where poor care has resulted in the development of decubitus ulcers, the facilities defend their inaction by arguing…

Alzheimer’s disease patients experienced a more rapid decline in their mental abilities after being placed in a nursing home, except for those that had prior experience in adult day care. These patients did not experience this faster rate of cognitive decline according to a new study by the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center. The study, published…

I wonder if we will ever read a report like this one in SW Virginia – my guess is, we might someday. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/05/AR2007060502558.html?hpid=topnews “From an emergency department with faulty monitors, IV pumps and broken stretchers to an operating room running part time for lack of staff, patient care is increasingly limited and uncertain at Greater…

According to this article, a woman in Charleston, West Virginia has filed suit against Sunbridge Care and Rehabilitation Center in Dunbar, West Virginia. Tammy Rae Combs filed the suit alleging the nursing home was negligent and that as a result her father, Ray Combs, suffered from pneumonia, dehydration, pressure sores, multiple fractures, malnutrition, contractures and…

My friends at the Washington Post must have had access to the whole study on elderly patients with dementia, and psychotropic drugs – their very detailed article can be found: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/05/AR2007060500572.html