Discoveries
Research Briefs
Parental guidance suggested
Parents concerned about alcohol use by adolescents
may want to consider saying "no" to
R-rated movies, according to a survey of
2,406 students from 15 New England middle
schools. Students who had never drunk alcohol
without their parents' knowledge
were surveyed twice, 13 to 26
months apart. The DMS team, led
by pediatrician Susanne Tanski, M.D.,
controlled for "sociodemographics, personality
characteristics, and authoritative parenting
style." Writing in the Journal of Studies
on Alcohol and Drugs, the researchers concluded
that children whose parents were
more lenient regarding R-rated movies were
more likely to drink in the near future.
Change of heart
The likelihood that your cardiologist will
recommend certain heart procedures may depend
more on where you live and your doctor's
fear of being sued than on your condition,
according to a recent study by
researchers at Dartmouth and Maine
Medical Center. Using patient vignettes,
they surveyed cardiologists and found that in
certain regions cardiologists are more apt to
recommend cardiac catheterization based on
"nonclinical" factors such as fear of malpractice
suits. The study was published in Circulation:
Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.
An ongoing epidemic
Watch some of the presentations at the conference.
Watch video
Charles Wira, Ph.D., organized a conference at DMS in June, funded by the National Institutes of Health, that brought together leading worldwide researchers on AIDS transmission and prevention.
Relative risk of smoking
Taking a close look at data on colorectal adenomas
yielded some intriguing results for researchers
at Dartmouth's Norris Cotton Cancer
Center. In an analysis of several thousand
patients, they found that smoking for more
than 15 years was associated with a 55%
greater risk of developing colorectal
adenomas. But for those with a family
history of colorectal adenomas, smoking
made little difference in their risk. "Patients
with no family history should be counseled
about smoking as a significantly added risk
factor for adenoma occurrence," the authors
wrote in the Journal of Cancer Epidemiology.
Caught red-handed
Many anesthesia providers are giving bacteria
a free ride from one operating room to another,
DHMC physician-researchers discovered.
Led by anesthesiologist Randy Loftus,
M.D., the team examined 164 cases, comparing
bacteria from IV tubing and other
equipment to bacteria isolated from the
hands of anesthesia providers. Bacterial
transmission to IV tubing, for example,
was identified in 11.5% of cases; 47% were
traced to the hands of anesthesia providers.
"Contaminated hands of anesthesia pro -
viders serve as a significant source of . . . contamination
in the operating room," the authors
concluded in Anesthesia and Analgesia.
A study led by DMS's Brent Berwin, Ph.D., looking at how certain bacteria can resist attack from the immune system, was chosen for the Research Highlights section of Nature Immunology.
Mental images
Treatment decisions made by people with severe
mental illness may be strongly influenced
by their ethnicity and race, concluded
a study led by Elizabeth Carpenter-Song,
Ph.D. The researchers found that mentalhealth
patients of differing ethnic backgrounds
view their conditions, and mental
health services, differently. They
wrote in Transcultural Psychiatry that
African-American and Latino patients
were more likely to hold "non-biomedical interpretations"
of mental illness and to be
"critical of mental health services." By contrast,
Euro-American patients held "diseaseoriented"
views of their conditions and were
more likely to seek mental-health treatment.
Millions more
When a team of DMS researchers examined
trends in Americans' use of chiropractic care,
they found that chiropractors have attracted
millions of new patients since the late
1990s. Inflation-adjusted expenditures
on chiropracty rose from $3.8
billion in 1997 to $5.9 billion in 2006, they
reported in Health Services Research. The
surge was due to a 57% increase in the overall
number of patients, from 7.7 million in
2000 to 12.1 million in 2003. From 2003 to
2006, however, the number of chiropractic
patients remained relatively stable.
Harold Swartz, M.D., Ph.D., was awarded $16.6 million from the National Institutes of Health to develop a portable device to measure radiation exposure in survivors of a nuclear catastrophe.
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