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Test For Strep Bacteria In Pregnant Women Misses More Cases Than Expected, Study Shows
A federal recommendation that all pregnant women undergo testing for Group B strep bacteria has helped increase the number of screenings but also has produced a high level of false negatives, according to a study published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the AP/Newark Star-Ledger reports. Group B strep is a common bacteria in the intestines or lower genital tract. Although it poses no harm to most adults, during delivery it can be spread to infants, who can develop blood infections, pneumonia, meningitis, mental retardation, hearing and vision loss, or death. Problems occur in fewer than one in 3,000 births, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2002 issued a recommendation that all pregnant women be tested because of the potential for serious complications. The study is the first research to examine the screening program. The researchers examined data on Group B strep cases in 10 states, finding that 250 infants out of nearly 7,700 were born with the infection. They compared the results with a similar study that was conducted before the CDC recommendations were in place, finding that the screening rate rose from 48% to 85% of pregnant women. The study also found that infant infections from Group B strep declined by 27%.Researchers predicted there would be between 44 and 86 false negatives in full-term infants, based on data from previous studies. However, their results showed about 60% of infected infants -- 116 cases -- were born to women who had tested negative for Group B strep. Researchers noted that the timing of a Group B test might play a role because the infection can come quickly, and tests could have been performed before the bacteria appeared. CDC recommends that pregnant women be screened between 35 and 37 weeks" gestation. CDC researcher Stephanie Schrag, who co-authored the study, said, "Maybe it was a true negative test, and the mother later became colonized" with the bacteria before delivery (Stobbe, AP/Newark Star-Ledger, 6/17).
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The Lung Association Celebrates Quitters For World No Tobacco Day 2009
On World No Tobacco Day, The Lung Association is celebrating those who have successfully quit smoking and sharing their success stories in the hopes of motivating others to quit.
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Administration Faces Challenges From Democrats On Health Proposals
President Obama has asked Congress to deliver a bill by October that would "cut healthcare costs and provide medical coverage to most of the 46 million uninsured Americans," a goal that may no longer be realistic as members of the president"s own party move to stall efforts, the Reuters/The Washington Post reports (Allen, 7/9).
Cardiovascular

Nurses Open To Idea Of Robots

Front-line staff in the nursing and care sector would welcome sensor and robot technology in nursing homes and the homes of elderly people. The reason is that such a move would free up time that personnel could use for social contact with clients. They also believe that sensors and robots will enable elderly people to stay longer in their own homes. These are some of the results of a study carried out by SINTEF for the Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities. The background for the study is the "elderly boom" and the challenges that the nursing and care sector will face when fewer and fewer people of working age have to look after a rapidly growing population of old people. Freeing up time The survey found that staff regard cleaning, and moving and lifting patients as potential applications for "care and nursing robots". They also concluded that the development and introduction of new technology should take place in such a way that the level of social support that they provide will be maintained, or preferably, be improved. Several different categories of nursing and care personnel in Porsanger, Kongsberg and Trondheim were interviewed; of these, 29 individual staff members were interviewed in depth. At first, many of the informants were sceptical to the idea of introducing robots into Norwegian homes and nursing homes. However, in the course of the interviews many of them began to mention situations in which they could imagine using a robot. Help with dirty clothes "It is worth noting that the staff still prefer themselves to perform tasks that currently require personal contact. However, they would like routine tasks such as dealing with dirty clothes to be handled by a robot," says Kristine HolbÃñ of SINTEF Technology and Society, who led the project. Safety sensors Where sensors are concerned, many care and nursing personnel are most concerned about monitoring the safety of old people. One home nursing respondent mentioned that if people who live at home need to have their health monitored by sensors, they ought to be in a nursing home! As part of the project, SINTEF also carried out a survey of existing and potential technology that could be relevant to the needs mentioned by the interviewees. However, project manager Kristine HolbÃñ warns our politicians that they should not use the report as a signal to let a whole raft of technologies loose in the care and nursing sector. "So far, we have only interviewed personnel. The next step will be to talk to all the user groups, map their wishes and needs, and start to test remedies on a small scale," says HolbÃñ. Avoiding "technology push" The project manager also emphasises that it is by no means certain that modern technology is the answer to all the problems of this sector, but that mechanical solutions and organisational changes may be the best in certain cases. "We need to be sure that any devices that we introduce are functional, and have to avoid "pushing" technology onto the users," says HolbÃñ, who also points out that there already exist technologies that could have been used successfully, but which were stopped by bureaucratic barriers. "For example, consider the situation of a dementia patient who walks out of the house in the middle of the night and wanders around the streets. This could easily be prevented by a simple door-mounted alarm that warns a monitoring centre, but the way things are today, such a person virtually must be declared mentally incompetent before this type of alarm can be installed. And while the mills of officialdom grind exceedingly slow, the patient may well become so reduced that she or he has already been admitted to a nursing home by the time that the alarm can be installed." SINTEF


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