closer look
Trading race for zip codes to predict heart risk
Part four of Embedded Bias, STAT's investigation into race-based clinical algorithms, looks at how cardiologists battled to remove race when predicting a patient's risk of heart disease and stroke. While Black people do face higher risks than other populations, doctors worried that in trying to do good, they had overstated the risk and the pendulum had swung too far.
To address the issue, the American Heart Association published a new calculator to predict the risk of heart attack, stroke, and heart failure called PREVENT. It attempts to capture all of the social determinants of health, such as zip code, for which race acts as a flawed proxy. Read more about this experiment here, and don't miss the earlier editions in the series by Katie Palmer and Usha Lee McFarling.
disability
Improving the prosthetic connection for people with amputations
For many people with amputations, wearing prosthetic limbs is uncomfortable and can, at times, be painful. The skin at the site of the amputation is tender and more easily damaged over time by the constant pressure and friction from the prosthetic. In an attempt to tackle this challenge, a group of scientists successfully injected volar skin — the thicker, tougher skin on our palms and feet — into non-volar regions in several humans and found that the volar features lasted up to five months in the area.
The researchers have already enrolled people in a phase 2 trial, according to the study published in Science, and plan to further explore this skin-modifying cell therapy that could help one day people with amputations have a more harmonious relationship with their prosthetic limbs.
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