What are the risks of a gunshot ear wound like Trump's?

Plus: Where does your state rank for reproductive health care?

July 18, 2024 Check out STAT+

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By Theresa Gaffney Morning Rounds Writer and Podcast Producer

Nobody told me that yesterday was National Hot Dog Day! I love hot dogs (and lots of other ultra-processed foods) so much. I recently ate a dog at a local Cambridge institution that was 1) wrapped completely in spicy pepperoni, snug in a regular bun and 2) topped with red sauce spaghetti. Sort of sickening, sort of beautiful. It was dinner time, but the waitress said nobody else had ordered it all day.

politics Experts weigh in on the risks of a gunshot wound like Trump's Andrew Harnik/Getty Images Four days after former president Donald Trump was shot in the ear at a rally in Pennsylvania, his medical team has yet to release detailed records of his condition or treatment. And while his campaign has said he's in good health, numerous experts on gunshot trauma and emergency medicine interviewed by STAT's Usha Lee McFarling and Rohan Rajeev said there could still be outstanding questions. All emphasized that they could not comment specifically about Trump's health, having not examined him themselves, and that the wound appeared minor. But they said in cases like this, it's important to rule out any brain or neck injury.  "Those weapons are very high velocity, and you actually can get a brain injury with what looks like a graze, without even a fracture to the skull," said Nicholas Namias, chief of the division of trauma and acute care surgery at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Read more from Usha and Rohan on the risks from such a gunshot wound and how experts are thinking about it.  one big number 1 in 10 That's the number of adults in England who said in 2023 that they've been vaping with any frequency for more than six months — a major increase from around 1 in 80, which was the number in 2013. Those who vape daily increased from 0.6% to 6.7%, according to a study published in The BMJ yesterday. A lot of that change occurred since 2021, as e-cigarettes became more popular, the authors write. Read STAT's coverage on vaping. diabetes Bad sleep linked to higher risk of type 2 diabetes If the amount of sleep you're getting varies by more than an hour day-to-day, you may be at a higher risk for type 2 diabetes, according to a study published yesterday in Diabetes Care.  The findings are based on analysis of more than 84,000 participants in the U.K. Biobank. People without diabetes wore monitors while sleeping for a week between 2013-2015. Researchers then followed their medical records until May 2022. Those with the most irregular sleep patterns had a 34% higher risk of diabetes than those with more regular sleep patterns.  Of course, these results should be taken with a grain of salt, since sleep habits were only tracked for one week. Those who did go on to develop type 2 diabetes were diagnosed an average of five years later.

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reproductive health Which state ranks highest for women's health care?  The Commonwealth Fund released a report today ranking states in the U.S. for women's health and reproductive care. The scorecard comes at a time when reproductive care — especially abortion — is increasingly restricted in states across the country. Here are some key takeaways: The report ranks Massachusetts as the best-performing health system for women overall, with Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire coming in next. The lowest-ranked states were Mississippi, Texas, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. Maternal mortality is worst in the Mississippi Delta region, where many people live in maternity care deserts without hospitals or birth centers. States with abortion restrictions typically have the fewest number of maternity care providers. cancer What if bone marrow donors didn't need to be a perfect match after all? A bone marrow transplant can be somebody's last chance at a life-saving cure for many blood cancers, but most patients of non-European ancestry don't find a perfect bone marrow donor match. Without a perfect match — meaning the donor cells match the recipient's on eight key immune markers — there's a greater chance of dangerous complications and worse efficacy. But a new study suggests outcomes are similar if donors match recipients on only seven of those markers, as long as the right drugs are used. "Back when I was a fellow, outcomes were dismal when patients got an unmatched donor," Brian Shaffer, lead author on the study, said to STAT's Angus Chen. If that can change, it would substantially reduce racial health disparities in these cancers. Read more from Angus on the science.  coronavirus One action that helps lower risk of long Covid: Study  Vaccination lowers the odds of developing long Covid, according to a study published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The research also found that the risk of serious complications from long Covid diminished but didn't disappear as the delta and omicron variants of the virus emerged. STAT's Liz Cooney has more on the study and how unvaccinated patients fared in comparison to those who got the shot.  STAT's Isa Cueto also flagged another study about long Covid, published yesterday in Science Translational Medicine. This one identifies a signaling molecule that may be a key driver of symptoms in the lungs. But what Isa found notable is that for people with respiratory symptoms, fluid from their lungs showed signs of sustained immune activation — lending further support to recent research that found inflammation and other evidence of the Covid virus in patients years after initial infection.

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What we're reading A Biden rule on heat safety at work could take years — but if you're pregnant, you're already protected, The 19th Moving in childhood contributes to depression, study finds, New York Times IRBs fail to assess trials' scientific merit, putting participants at risk, STAT The unexpected poetry of PhD acknowledgements, ANU College of Science Stanford spinout wants to make a full body scanning machine, and health systems are paying for it, STAT

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Thanks for reading! More tomorrow,

theresa.gaffney@statnews.com

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