Media Coverage
The work done by Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine faculty members (and even some students) is regularly highlighted in newspapers, online media outlets and more. Below you’ll find links to articles and videos of Feinberg in the news.
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CNN
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Doctors newly define another type of dementia, sometimes mistaken for Alzheimer’s
Still, the disease itself didn’t come out of the blue. The evidence has been building for years, including reports of patients who didn’t quite fit the mold for known types of dementia such as Alzheimer’s. “There isn’t going to be one single disease that is causing all forms of dementia,” said Sandra Weintraub, a professor of psychiatry, behavioral sciences and neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She was not involved in the new paper. Weintraub said researchers have been well aware of the “heterogeneity of dementia,” but figuring out precisely why each type can look so different has been a challenge.
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The Wall Street Journal
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ER Cubicles Allow Hospitals to Use Their Limited Space More Wisely
By installing 16 pods, Northwestern Memorial officials say, the hospital has been able to more than double its ER’s capacity, and reduce waiting times and crowding in the process. Michael Schmidt, assistant professor of emergency medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, says that patients with less-acute problems can be tended to in the chairs, as opposed to patients with more serious problems who need beds. This helps give pods their smaller footprint—an orientation more vertical than horizontal.
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Chicago Tribune
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Q&A: For baby boomers facing vision loss, early intervention is needed
With a dramatic increase in demand for services from baby boomers dealing with vision loss, doctors say early intervention and better insurance reimbursement are imperative. Dr. Amani Fawzi, MD, a professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, offered up the following advice to baby boomers dealing with vision loss-related conditions that some experts say will reach epidemic levels by 2050.
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The Washington Post
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Scientists turned brain signals into speech. One day, it could help people who can’t talk.
“In this study, we knew what participants were trying [to] say since they could talk, however we will need to adapt our algorithms to work with people who cannot talk,” Chartier said. Marc Slutzky, a neurologist at Northwestern University, told Nature magazine that the study is “a really important step.” But “there’s still a long way to go before synthesized speech is easily intelligible,” he said.
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The Wall Street Journal
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The Humble Stethoscope Gets a High-Tech Makeover
They found that the algorithm was more effective at picking up the murmurs than five pediatric cardiologists who listened to the sounds, when compared against echocardiogram results, according to an abstract of a study presented at an American Heart Association conference in 2018. In March, the company started a clinical trial with Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute to test the heart-murmur algorithm on 800 patients, who will also be screened with an echocardiogram. “It’s one thing to listen with a digital stethoscope. Then you need a whole lot of separate training anyway to see what those squiggles read,” said Patrick McCarthy, executive director at the institute.
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The New York Times
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Should You Be Eating Eggs?
Then a report in JAMA of a very thorough long-term analysis involving nearly 30,000 men and women initially free of cardiovascular disease suggested otherwise. The researchers, headed by Victor W. Zhong of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, found that eating as little as one-half an egg a day could increase a person’s risk of heart disease, stroke and premature death. “My study showed a dose-response relationship,” Dr. Zhong, a nutrition epidemiologist, told me. “The higher the consumption of eggs, the greater the risk. Those who consumed less than one egg a week had no increased risk.”
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HealthDay
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Almost Half of Young Asthma Patients Misuse Inhalers
Teens were the most likely to make mistakes in inhaler technique and to skip use of a spacer, according to the study published April 17 in the Journal of Hospital Medicine. “We know that asthma can be well-managed in the majority of patients and using your inhaler correctly is key factor to managing asthma,” said lead author Dr. Waheeda Samady, a hospitalist at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. “Improper inhaler technique can contribute to children having uncontrolled asthma and needing to come to the hospital for their asthma,” Samady said in a hospital news release.
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U.S. News & World Report
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Whether to Preserve Fertility Is Tough Decision for Transgender Youth
“As a child psychologist, I’m usually talking to adolescent patients about contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancies, not, ‘Down the line, do you want to be a parent? And if so, how important to you is a genetic connection to your child?’,” said Diane Chen. She’s an assistant professor of psychiatry, behavioral sciences and pediatrics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. Chen is also first author of a revealing new study examining the considerations that go into that decision.
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Yahoo! News
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Should You Stop Taking That Medication?
During use of a decongestant nasal spray, a small amount of the drug may be released into your bloodstream, which can elevate your heart rate, says Robert Kern, M.D., professor and chair of the department of otolaryngology—head and neck surgery at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. This might be a problem if you have heart disease or an irregular heart rhythm.
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U.S. News & World Report
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Magnet ‘Zap’ to the Brain Might Jumpstart Aging Memory
A small group of older people experienced improved memory function after five daily sessions with the device, to the point that they were performing memory tasks as well as a “control” group of young adults. “After receiving stimulation, they were no longer worse than young individuals performing the same task,” said lead researcher Joel Voss. He is an associate professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
