Media Coverage

Emergency rooms have been called the hospital’s front door, so that’s where reformers are starting. “The emergency department is not designed with older adults in mind,” said Dr. Scott Dresden, who heads the Geriatric Emergency Department Innovations program at Northwestern. “You’ve got really thin stretchers. You’ve got patients in the hallway. There’s mechanical noise all around.” Early research at Northwestern and other hospitals shows care from geriatrics-trained nurses in the ER can reduce the chances of a hospital stay after a patient’s emergency visit and for a month afterward.

The news sent shares of insurance companies and large pharmacies tumbling, but what exactly the three billionaires have in mind remains murky. Dr. Joel Shalowitz, a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Business and the University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, says he was unimpressed by the initial announcement. “There’s been a lot of interest in business to control their health care costs for a very long time,” he said. “The question is, what is special about this that hasn’t been done before?” Shalowitz believes that while Amazon’s technological and logistical expertise could bring benefits to the health care market, he’s unsure what the involvement of Chase Bank and Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway could add.

Contrary to popular belief, it’s the fathers whose stress levels rise when bringing premature NICU babies home from the hospital — while the mothers’ stress levels stay constant, according to a new study by researchers at Northwestern Medicine. They found that before being discharged from the NICU, both parents had high levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. But during the two weeks after being discharged, the mothers’ stress levels returned to normal, while the fathers’ continued to rise. When the babies are in the hospital, they’re cared for by a team of nurses and physicians, said Craig Garfield, lead author of the study, and associate professor of pediatrics and medical social sciences at Northwestern University.

“It is not known if similar results would be seen in patients with more complex cases or low probability for sleep apnea, women, elderly, or those with (other chronic health problems) which are quite prevalent in patients with sleep apnea,” St-Onge said by email. Still, the results do suggest that it may be possible to get an accurate diagnosis of sleep apnea in primary care, noted Kristen Knutson, a researcher at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago who wasn’t involved in the study. “If a patient is prescribed treatment for obstructive sleep apnea by a non-specialist and it seems to be working for them, then they probably don’t need to see a specialist,” Knutson said by email.

The emergency room was busy treating an array of cold-related frostbite injuries and other ailments during the recent December-into-January cold snap, said Dr. Matthew Pirotte, an emergency room doctor and assistant professor of emergency medicine at Northwestern Medicine. “That was as bad as anything I can remember,” said Pirotte, who has worked in Chicago for more than 10 years. “It’s been a crazy year.”

For the month-long study, researchers had 44 cancer survivors sit very close to a light box early every morning for 30 minutes. The patients were randomly assigned to therapy with either bright white light or dim red light. More than half of the participants suffered from what’s known as poor sleep efficiency, a measure of how much time in bed people spend asleep. After a month of treatment, however, 86 percent of the people exposed to bright white light had normal sleep efficiency, while 79 percent of the people exposed to dim bright light still had poor sleep efficiency. It’s possible that the bright white light helps cancer survivors reset their internal clocks, or circadian rhythms, so that their body can more easily rest at night and wake during the day, said study leader Lisa Wu of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.

So, how do you know whether that wrenching pain is just a garden variety stomach upset that will pass as soon as that pesky gas works its way through your system — or something much worse? The clues, experts say, are in the character of the pain — how long you’ve had it, its severity, where it’s located — and whether there are certain symptoms accompanying it. “Most people who have abdominal pain in the absence of what we call ‘red flag symptoms’ will not have a bad cause for the pain,” says Dr. Stephen Hanauer, a professor of medicine and medical director of the digestive health center at Northwestern University.

In the throes of your toddler’s rage, it’s perfectly healthy to wonder whether you’re observing normal childhood behavior, or the beginnings of a behavioral problem. Here’s how to know for sure. Fortunately, there’s a way to measure whether your child’s tantrums are abnormal. The temper tantrum scale, developed by Lauren Wakschlag of Northwestern University in Chicago, identifies normal tantrum behaviors and duration. Her study also highlights red flags parents can use to determine whether their children are acting out more aggressively than expected.

Dr Matthew Davis, a physician who’s the head of academic general pediatrics at Northwestern University, said CHIP’s vital role was in doubt. “What I have noticed with CHIP is that it puts parents’ and grandparents’ minds’ at ease and it lets us focus on the most important work — which is to let every child be healthy,” Davis said. “Parents who have kids with special or complete health needs are especially concerned that CHIP — that has already been allowed to expire — will never come back,” Davis said.

“The antiquated concept that the uterus is a disposable organ needs to be put to bed,” says Dr. Robert Vogelzang, professor of radiology at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “Women who undergo hysterectomies face a number of problems, from early menopause to pelvic floor disorders [which affect a person’s ability to control the muscles in their pelvic floor to have a bowel movement] and sexual dysfunction.” Research has shown that hysterectomy increases the long-term risk of cardiovascular and metabolic conditions, even when the ovaries are conserved, he says.