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In 2009, Jose Gonzalez, MD, the medical director for the Texas Medicaid/State Children's Health Insurance Program, discovered the devastating results of a medical error in a very personal way. When his niece, Kaelyn Sosa, then 18 months old, was brought into a Miami hospital after receiving a bump on her head from a fall, she was sedated and given an MRI. During the test, her breathing tube became dislodged, resulting in a severe brain injury.
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New 2010 Amendments to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act ("Dodd-Frank Act") make clear that prosecutors and regulators expect to see an effective compliance program that protects whistleblowers, including risk managers, says Reid Bowman, JD, general counsel with ELT Inc., a San Francisco company that provides compliance and ethics training.
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In a retrospective review of consecutive patients with colon cancer, the presence of diabetes mellitus was found to confer negative prognostic information with regard to overall, and cancer-specific, survival. Notably, it was in patients with stage II disease that the presence of diabetes was of most importance.
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A trial undertaken by EORTC was designed to determine if neoadjuvant chemotherapy would be successful in the absence of post-surgical chemotherapy in enhancing overall survival in patients with locally advanced gastric cancer. The trial did not accrue sufficient numbers of patients to demonstrate a survival benefit. However, presurgical chemotherapy was associated with a higher rate of complete resection and fewer positive lymph nodes, features that suggest progression-free and overall survival might be favorably affected.
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Rivaroxaban may be dabigatran's first competitor; a new way to measure non-adherence to medication therapy; FDA Actions.
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently approved denosumab for the prevention of skeletal-related events in patients with bone metastases from solid tumors.
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A 74-year retired veterinarian presents to the emergency department (ED) with shortness of breath. He was recently diagnosed with diffuse large-cell lymphoma with prominent abdominal lymphadenopathy and positive bone marrow and has been treated with two cycles of R-CHOP.
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Did a surgeon examine your abdominal pain patient, or did a gastroenterologist give a second opinion on a complex issue? Unless this is documented appropriately, the ED physician may be the only one left "on the hook" if a bad outcome occurs.