Counseling on alcohol key to teens' sexual health

news.yahoo.com — When health care providers are talking with adolescents about sexual health, alcohol must be a part of the conversation, conclude two researchers from the UK based on a survey of boys' and girls' attitudes about sexual relationships. "We must ensure that alcohol education is a key element of sex education and help young people to realize the vulnerability to sexual ill health alcohol abuse can create," Dr. Mark Hayter of the University of Sheffield in the UK, who conducted the research with Dr. Christina Harrison of Doncaster Primary Care Trust, told Reuters Health. In most of the world, adolescents are at high risk of sexual health problems such as unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, Hayter and Harrison note in a report in the Journal of Clinical Nursing. To better understand gender differences in how young people think about sex, the researchers conducted 10 focus groups with 35 14- to 16-year-olds. The teens were attending a sexual health clinic based at a youth club serving a "socially deprived" area with a high rate of teen pregnancy. Five groups were all girls, and the rest were all boys. read more...

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Teen lives 4 months with no heart, leaves hospital

news.yahoo.com — D'Zhana Simmons says she felt like a "fake person" for 118 days when she had no heart beating in her chest. "But I know that I really was here," the 14-year-old said, "and I did live without a heart." As she was being released Wednesday from a Miami hospital, the shy teen seemed in awe of what she's endured. Since July, she's had two heart transplants and survived with artificial heart pumps — but no heart — for four months between the transplants. Last spring D'Zhana and her parents learned she had an enlarged heart that was too weak to sufficiently pump blood. They traveled from their home in Clinton, S.C. to Holtz Children's Hospital in Miami for a heart transplant. But her new heart didn't work properly and could have ruptured so surgeons removed it two days later. read more...

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Poor Sleep Plus Hypertension Equals Greater Risk For Heart Disease

healthnews.com — Researchers have reported that people with high blood pressure who do not get the standard amount of sleep may be faced with a significant increase risk of heart disease and stroke. In a study of Japanese adults with hypertension, findings indicated that those who slept less than seven and one half hours nightly were more likely to suffer from a heart attack, stroke or even die of cardiac arrest. Those most at risk are so called "short sleepers" who, in addition, do not experience the blood-pressure decline that normally occurs overnight during rest. read more...

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Study: Same-sex heart transplants are better

news.yahoo.com — Turns out men and women really are different at heart: New research finds that heart transplant patients have better odds of survival and a lower risk of rejection if they get organs from donors of the same sex. Size may be part of the explanation. Men's hearts are bigger than women's and have greater pumping capacity, and men who get men's hearts fare better. But doctors think differences in hormones or immune systems between the sexes may also play a role. The study was paid for by the federal government and led by Dr. Eric Weiss, a cardiac surgery researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He presented his findings Wednesday at an American Heart Association conference. read more...

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Study: Exercise offers little to heart patients

news.yahoo.com — Exercise can do a lot of good for most people, but it apparently isn't much help to those with heart failure, the fastest-growing heart problem in the United States. The study — the largest ever of exercise in patients whose hearts don't pump enough blood — left many doctors disappointed. Results were reported Tuesday at an American Heart Association conference. Although there were some encouraging trends and clear benefits for certain people, exercise failed to deliver on the main goal — keeping people out of the hospital and improving their survival rates. "It's a shame," said Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a quality-of-care researcher at Yale University who had no role in the study. "Exercise is not that magic elixir that we had hoped," at least for these patients. read more...

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Rerouting urinary nerves may help spina bifida

news.yahoo.com — It's a delicate and daring experiment: Could doctors switch a leg nerve to make it operate the bladder instead? Families of a few U.S. children whose spina bifida robs them of the bladder control that most people take for granted dared to try the procedure — and early results suggest the surgery indeed may help, in at least some patients. With the technique, pioneered in China, the kids are supposed to scratch or pinch their thigh to signal the bladder to empty every few hours. But surprisingly, some youngsters instead are starting to feel those need-to-go sensations that their birth defect had always prevented. read more...

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Studies: Elderly fare well in open-heart surgery

news.yahoo.com — Eighty-year-olds with clogged arteries or leaky heart valves used to be sent home with a pat on the arm from their doctors and pills to try to ease their symptoms. Now more are getting open-heart surgery, with remarkable survival rates rivaling those of much younger people, new studies show. Years ago, physicians "were told we were pushing the envelope" to operate on a 70-year-old, said Dr. Vincent Bufalino, a cardiologist at Loyola University in Chicago. But today "we have elderly folks who are extremely viable, mentally quite sharp," who want to decide for themselves whether to take the risk, he said. Even 90-year-olds are having open-heart surgery, said Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a Yale University cardiologist who has researched older heart patients. read more...

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Studies: Vitamin pills don't prevent heart disease

news.yahoo.com — NEW ORLEANS – Vitamins C and E — pills taken by millions of Americans — do nothing to prevent heart disease in men, one of the largest and longest studies of these supplements has found. Vitamin E even appeared to raise the risk of bleeding strokes, a danger seen in at least one earlier study. Besides questioning whether vitamins help, "we have to worry about potential harm," said Barbara Howard, a nutrition scientist at MedStar Research Institute of Hyattsville, Md. She has no role in the research but reviewed and discussed it Sunday at an American Heart Association conference. Results also were published online by the Journal of the American Medical Association. About 12 percent of Americans take supplements of C and E despite growing evidence that these antioxidants do not prevent heart disease and may even be harmful. Male smokers taking vitamin E had a higher rate of bleeding strokes in a previous study, and several others found no benefit for heart health. read more...

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