Media Coverage

Palforzia “would open up the opportunity for all allergists to be able to offer some treatment to their patients that has been protocol-driven and gone through (clinical) trials,” said Dr. Ruchi Gupta, a professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine who studies food allergies. “It gives them a little more confidence to offer it.” Gupta, who also is a pediatrician at Lurie Children’s Hospital, noted that questions still remain about the drug.

Crain’s list of Chicago’s largest hospitals is joined this year by our newest list, Chicago’s hospital systems, and both show an industry that’s consolidating quickly. In 2018, Amita Health, itself the result of the 2015 merger of Adventist Midwest Health and Ascension’s Alexian Brothers Health System, added Presence Health to its fold, and Centegra joined Northwestern Medicine. Advocate Aurora Health also appears on both lists for the first time; its merger closed in April 2018, and this year’s Advocate Aurora hospitals are last year’s Advocate Health Care’s.

That isn’t to say there have been massive shifts in the rankings. On the hospitals list, Northwestern Memorial trades places with the University of Chicago Medical Center, moving up into the No. 1 spot, but that’s the only change for our top five this year. Even with the second-biggest revenue growth on our chart, Rush University Medical Center held steady at No. 3.

While the new study shows an association between anemia early in pregnancy, “an association is not the same as causation,” said Dr. Nevert Badreldin, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “It’s hard to assess, based on this information, whether the anemia is in fact creating the association or whether the higher rates of neurodevelopmental disorders are related to something else the women (with anemia early in pregnancy) have in common.” Women should be reassured that the current guidelines recommend screening for anemia at the first prenatal visit, Badreldin said. “So the great majority of women are getting screened early,” she added.

There’s no single definition of a low-carb, high-fat eating regimen, says Bethany M. Doerfler, a clinical research dietitian in the division of gastroenterology and hepatology at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. She works in her division’s Digestive Health Center. While there are some well-known eating plans that are low-carb and high-fat – like the keto diet – you need not follow one of those regimens to adhere to this style of eating. You can craft your own low-carb, high-fat eating plan with a registered dietitian. This sort of regimen deviates from the Institute of Medicine’s acceptable macronutrient distribution range, which recommends adults in the U.S. get 45% to 65% of their daily calories from carbs, 20% to 35% from dietary fat and 10% to 35% from protein.

Just to prove my point, I had younger (and dumber) me call George Chiampas, an emergency medicine physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “We’ll see various things from bicyclists riding at a slow pace that are struck by a vehicle or a car door that opens up and then they flip over the car door, to bicyclists who are riding at a fast speed along Lake Shore Drive and they either get distracted or try to avoid someone else and they get propelled off their bike,” Chiampas said. “It’s everything from mild injuries to intracranial bleeding, neck injuries and severe facial injuries.”

The study results were limited because participants didn’t use ambulatory monitors, Rader said. But their use soon could be on the rise. In July, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced it was expanding coverage for the ambulatory devices. Dr. Clyde Yancy, who was not involved in the research, said the study “helps parse out the nuances that matter the most in trying to diagnose high blood pressure. We’re now understanding how very important it is to incorporate the patient as partner. “An accurate home diagnosis gives us the chance to introduce early on lifestyle changes which can be so incredibly important in controlling blood pressure, and when needed, to add medical therapy to mitigate the harm that might be occurring for untreated or undertreated blood pressure,” said Yancy, professor and cardiology chief at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

Meanwhile, President Trump says his administration will propose banning thousands of flavors used in e-cigarettes. Of particular concern are those favored by children. New data shows more than a quarter of high schools students are current e-cigarette users.Talking about all this are Dr. Ravi Kalhan, director of the Asthma and COPD Program at Northwestern University;s Feinberg School of Medicine, Dr. Kiran Joshi, Senior Medical Officer with the Cook County Department of Public Health and Ruby Johnson, the mother of a college student who became sick.

Rather than ending up in a nursing home, though, Birt lives at home in Wheaton, Ill. with her husband, Maurice. She receives primary medical care there, covered by Medicare, from Dr. Thomas Cornwell and his team at Northwestern HomeCare Physicians. They perform exams, chest x-rays and blood draws — all in the comfort of Birt’s home. “We’re very fortunate,” says her husband. Cornwell is also CEO of the Home Centered Care Institute, dedicated to mentoring and training home-based providers. “When you are in someone’s home, you [as the doctor] are not the center, it is the person. It is on their territory. You have to be comfortable with a change in the dynamic.”

Dr. Maria Rahmandar, an assistant professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, says that might not be enough. “Certainly I am concerned about black-market components, but I am still concerned with the nicotine and even THC that is legal. There are things that have been ‘determined to be safe’ in one area but can’t be proven safe in vaping. We are learning some horrifying results.” Kahn acknowledges, “This is a wake-up call that we, as an industry, need more research.” The cannabis industry sees the alarm over possible health risks of vaping as an opportunity to make the case for federal legalization and regulation of marijuana.

Should an evaluation lead to tPA being administered on the spot and if the patient has a large vessel occlusion, a blockage in one of the major arteries of the brain, then the patient will bypass the ER and go straight to the interventional lab to have the clot extracted, explains Dr. Harish Shownkeen, medical director of neurointerventional surgery and of the Comprehensive Stroke Center at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital, and co-medical director of the hospital’s mobile stroke unit.