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Living longer with congenital heart disease, beware pre-cut cantaloupe, deciphering radiology reports

December 01, 2023
December 1, 2023
Annalisa-Merelli-avatar-teal
General Assignment Reporter

Hello! Nalis here to wrap up your health news week. In this issue, the challenges presented by patients' anxious need to know their test results right away (I see you refreshing your email), a warning against pre-cut cantaloupe (what will sad office lunches caterers do!) and some good news for conscientious people.

heart health

The challenges of navigating congenital heart disease as an adult

More people than ever are living into adulthood with congenital heart disease thanks to advancements in medicine. But as these patients get older, they don't always receive appropriate care, writes Elaine Chen. 

New research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association found that although the rates of hospital admissions for patients with congenital health disease remained stable from 2010 to 2020, the proportion of admissions for those who have heart failure more than doubled. These patients had higher risk of death or major brain or heart complications. Especially vulnerable to these risks were those who were younger than 45.

These findings suggest adults with congenital heart disease need specialized care for heart failure, experts tell Chen, including better preventative care and more consistent follow-ups. Read more.

public health

Beware of pre-cut cantaloupe

The CDC is warning people to avoid pre-cut cantaloupe if they don't know the source of the melon after the fruits have been linked to 117 cases of salmonella, 61 hospitalizations, and two deaths. 

Two brands of whole cantaloupe (Malichita and Rudy) have been recalled, and so have several brands of pre-cut fruit products that contain them, including those from Aldi, Kroger, and Trader Joe's. At least 18 people have been sickened by the fruit in the last week alone, and the outbreak has affected people in long-term care facilities and childcare centers, the CDC notes.

health care 

The infectious disease pipeline problem grows

The shortage of physicians going into the infectious diseases (ID) field has been a concern for years, seemingly exacerbated by the pandemic. Data released this week from this year's fellowship match process — when doctors finishing their residencies find out which specialized program they're headed to — show the problem is only growing, STAT's Andrew Joseph explains.

Only about two-thirds of ID fellowships slots were filled this year, a drop of 7 percentage points from last year, according to data from the National Resident Matching Program. Some of the causes are long-standing: ID physicians make a lot less than oncologists or cardiologists, and doctors carrying massive debt loads may not want to pursue less lucrative fields. But many experts think the pandemic and its impact on physicians may be dissuading some people from the field.

In a statement this week, Steven Schmitt, the president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said that the group "is forcefully advocating for federal policies that alleviate student loans, ensure competitive reimbursement and establish a more diverse workforce." For further reading, Paul Ruiz, a doctor and congressman, recently wrote this First Opinion piece on the ID physician shortage.

health tech

Working with the new reality of readily available test results

AdobeStock_114828801Adobe 

Recent rule changes have allowed many patients to see their test results as soon as they are uploaded to online portals, sparing them long waits for doctors to become available to explain the data. The downside, Katie Palmer reports, is that medical jargon can be confusing for laypeople and cause unnecessary alarm, as medical imaging specialists discussed at this year's meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago.

The solution in the case of radiology reports may be to make them easier to decipher — perhaps with the use of AI to translate medical speech into easily understandable descriptions, or through the use of multimedia aids. "I'm not sure why our reports don't have pictures and arrows that the patient could look at," said Jonathan Mezrich, a lawyer and emergency radiology professor at Yale School of Medicine. Read more. 

environmental health

The EPA wants to get rid of America's lead pipes

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants to remove essentially all lead pipes in the U.S. in an effort to improve drinking water. The proposed undertaking, estimated to cost $20-30 billion, aims to prevent crises like the one in Flint, Michigan, in which tens of thousands of residents, including up to 12,000 children, were exposed to dangerous levels of lead in drinking water for years. Black Americans are especially vulnerable to the liver damage caused by lead exposure, as they tend to live in areas with a higher concentration of lead pipes.

"Getting the lead out of drinking water will be a big victory for public health as lead is a highly toxic pollutant that affects the IQ and behavior of children and increases the risk of heart attacks and stroke in adults," Elizabeth Southerland, a volunteer with the Environmental Protection Network, an organization of former EPA staffers, said in a statement.

dementia

Being conscientious may reduce risk of dementia diagnosis: Study

Certain personality traits may shape how we deal with cognitive decline. A study published in Alzheimer's & Dementia investigated the link between dementia and the Big Five personality traits: conscientiousness, extraversion, openness to experience, neuroticism, and agreeableness. The research analyzed data on 44,000 people from eight longitudinal studies, of whom 1,700 developed dementia, and compared their personality scores with cognitive test scores and pathology data.

People who were conscientious, extroverted, and more agreeable had a lower risk of a dementia diagnosis compared to their more negative and neurotic peers. But the study found no link between personality traits and the neuropathology results in autopsies on people's brains after death. One possibility, the study's authors suggest, is that traits like conscientiousness help people perform better on cognitive tests, indicative of their ability to cope with the challenges of dementia.

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What we're reading

  • Climate change drives new cases of malaria, complicating efforts to fight the disease, New York Times

  • PEPFAR has been a lifeline in Ukraine. Now it's under threat, STAT

  •  BMI won't die, The Atlantic
  • CDC Director Mandy Cohen unscathed in her first congressional testimony, STAT

  • The clues to longer life that are coming from dogs, Wall Street Journal

  • What works for treating the common cold? Many doctors are saying 'not much', NPR

Thanks for reading! See you Monday — Nalis

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