Media Coverage

Doctors are using the Apple Watch as part of how they diagnose and help their patients manage disease—whether or not it’s been specifically approved for such applications by the Food and Drug Administration or other regulatory bodies. There’s a large and growing body of research on how the Apple Watch is being used informally in medical care, despite other approved devices being available to track the same metrics. “Not a week goes by in my clinic in which someone doesn’t come by and say, ‘My Apple Watch says I have an abnormal heart rhythm,’ ” says Rod Passman, MD, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. Passman is currently conducting a six-year, National Institutes of Health-funded study, which includes 85 research centers across the country, as well as collaboration from Apple itself. The study is intended to determine whether data from the Apple Watch can be used in an app to significantly reduce the amount of time people with atrial fibrillation have to spend on blood-thinning medications. To conduct this research, Passman and his colleagues applied for and received an exception to FDA rules that allows them to use the watch to alert patients who have already been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation that they are having an irregular heartbeat.

If you’re taking a statin drug to prevent heart disease, it’s possible that, sometime in the next year or two, your doctor might tell you that it’s no longer necessary. More than 45 million Americans are considered eligible to take statin drugs to prevent heart disease, which can lead to heart attacks or strokes. One reason is that the data for the 2013 version comes from the 1960s through the 1990s, said Sadiya Khan, MD, a professor of cardiovascular epidemiology and associate professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “Things have changed quite a bit since that time,” including the use of statins and other primary preventive measures, said Khan, who was involved in constructing either risk calculator. The larger and more recent database on which the 2023 equations are based came mostly from a warehouse of electronic health record data, according to the new study.

A new study published in the journal Sleep Medicine analyzed existing data about sound levels of white noise machines and concluded that many devices can produce sounds louder than recommended for even adult workers – making them capable of being too loud for infants, who are more susceptible to negative effects of loud noises. “I don’t think people should be afraid of white noise machines, and for a lot of people that can be really helpful,” said Dr. Landon Duyka, an ear, nose, and throat doctor at Northwestern Medicine who was not associated with the study. However, if parents are seeking to wean their children off these machines, Duyka recommends incrementally decreasing the noise level on the white noise machine until the child no longer needs it. First start with nap time and then implement these changes at nighttime, he said.

Health care groups and advocates have long warned that the overturn of Roe v. Wade could pose wider threats to reproductive healthcare and that anti-abortion groups’ attacks on reproductive freedoms would not stop at abortion care. Fertility specialists suspended care in Alabama after the state Supreme Court issued a decision saying embryos are children, raising concerns that IVF specialists could face wrongful death lawsuits over handling of embryos. One facility said they even suspended the transfer of embryos to facilities in other states amid the confusion caused by the decision. “The legal question is: at what point should a citizen be protected? And where I take issue with the Alabama ruling, is that they utilize their religious beliefs that life begins at fertilization. And that crossed a line, which shouldn’t be crossed due to the alleged separation of church and state, that they now are saying that life gets protected,” Eve Feinberg, MD told ABC News. “It’s very dangerous for the provision of safe fertility care and I think it’s very dangerous from a litigation standpoint, in the numerous instances where pregnancies may end through no fault or embryos may stop growing through no fault,” Feinberg said.

John Nicolas was deep into kidney transplant surgery when he decided to ask his doctors if they’d started yet. “At one point during surgery, I recall asking, ‘Should I be expecting the spinal anesthesia to kick in?’” Nicolas, 28, recalled in a news release. “They had already been doing a lot of work and I had been completely oblivious to that fact. Truly, no sensation whatsoever.” Nicolas walked out of the hospital the day after his successful surgery, which occurred on May 24. Typically, kidney transplant patients spend two to three days in the hospital, doctors said. “Inside the operating room, it was an incredible experience being able to show a patient what their new kidney looked like before placing it inside the body,” Satish Nadig, MD, PhD, a transplant surgeon and director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Transplant Center, said in a news release. “Doing anesthesia for the awake kidney transplant was easier than a C-section,” Vicente Garcia Tomas, MD, chief of regional anesthesiology and acute pain medication at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, said in a news release. “For John’s case, we placed a single-spinal anesthesia shot in the operating room with a little bit of sedation for comfort. It was incredibly simple and uneventful, but allowed John to be awake for the procedure, improving the patient experience.”

Surgeons at Northwestern Medicine performed a kidney transplant on an awake patient, marking a first for the Chicago-based healthcare system. The patient, 28-year-old John Nicholas of Chicago, felt no pain during the May 24 procedure and was discharged the next day. Typically a patient is hospitalized for 2-3 days following a kidney transplant at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Instead of normal general anesthesia, doctors used a single-spinal anesthesia shot, which is similar to what’s used during cesarean sections. “Inside the operating room, it was an incredible experience being able to show a patient what their new kidney looked like before placing it inside the body,” Satish Nadig, MD, PhD, transplant surgeon and director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Transplant Center, said in the release. The other exciting element? “The patient was able to be discharged home in less than 24-hours, basically making this an outpatient procedure,” Nadig said. “Our hope is that awake kidney transplantation can decrease some of the risks of general anesthesia while also shortening a patient’s hospital stay.” Now Northwestern Medicine is looking to establish the AWAKE Program (Accelerated Surgery Without General Anesthesia in Kidney Transplantation) for other patients who want a similar operation.

The number of pregnant women with chronic high blood pressure doubled during the past decade and a half, but treatment remains low among them, a new study found. About 3.7% of pregnant women were diagnosed with high blood pressure in 2021, up from 1.8% in 2008, researchers said. However, prescriptions handed out to pregnant women for high blood pressure remained about the same, with only 60% getting drugs that could lower their blood pressure. Chronic high blood pressure during pregnancy can cause liver or kidney damage, and can double a woman’s risk of future heart failure and other heart disease, the researchers noted. “Since nearly 1 in 3 individuals with chronic hypertension may face a pregnancy complication, the prevention and control of hypertension should be among the highest priorities for improving maternal health,” said Dr. Sadiya Khan, a professor of cardiovascular epidemiology at Northwestern University who was not involved in the study.

An expanding volume of recent research has indicated that fathers, along with their female partners, can develop postpartum depression. Most experts estimate that around 10% of dads will experience the condition, while about 14% of moms will. Now, a new University of Illinois at Chicago pilot study suggests that men should be routinely screened for PPD. It’s part of a growing push to shift the dialogue surrounding men’s mental health, offering a more robust stream of support for the entire family unit. Until recent decades, PPD was only associated with women, who undergo more clear physical and hormonal changes during the postnatal period. Treatment for the months long depressive episode usually entails counseling or antidepressants. In August, the FDA also approved a first-of-its-kind oral medication to specifically treat PPD. “Many times, fathers are feeling overwhelmed by the new experience,” said Sheehan Fisher, PhD, a psychologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “They’re trying to figure out how to adjust, but they don’t have a blueprint on how to be a father.” Social workers also interviewed the dads, many of whom were young, first-time parents who feared that they lacked proper parenting skills. Most experienced significant lack of sleep and noted severe feelings of fatigue. Several said the demand of providing economic support conflicted with the desire to support the increased needs of the mom and the baby. “They’re really focused on making sure that she’s OK, and therefore they actually tend to neglect their own well-being and their mental health,” Fisher said.

Fathers make a big difference in whether infants are breastfed and are put to sleep safely, according to a study published in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The study of 250 fathers in Georgia found that among those who wanted their infant to be breastfed, 95% reported their child started breastfeeding and 78% reported breastfeeding at 8 weeks. That’s much higher than among fathers who had no opinion on breastfeeding. In that group, only 69% reported their child was breastfed and 33% reported breastfeeding at 8 weeks. “Our findings underscore that new fathers are a critical audience to promote breastfeeding and safe infant sleep,” lead author John James Parker, MD, an instructor of pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said in a Northwestern news release. “Many families do not gain the health benefits from breastfeeding because they are not provided the support to breastfeed successfully. Fathers need to be directly engaged in breastfeeding discussions, and providers need to describe the important role fathers play in breastfeeding success. Additionally, fathers need to receive counseling on all of the safe sleep practices for their infants.”

Experts say it is important to plan for the high temperatures coming to the Chicago area, which are coming right as people might be heading outside for Father’s Day. Doctors say that any time the weather spikes, they are sure to see an uptick in patients at area hospitals. That is why it is essential to plan and be strategic in handling the heat. Over the next few days, the area will see heat indices hit around 100, which means high heat coupled with muggy conditions- a recipe for heat-related health issues. “When you look at humidities that are above 60, that essentially envelops an individual, and it doesn’t allow heat to basically escape into the environment, allow you to cool down, so that humidity is in combination with higher temperatures are when we get concerned in the emergency department, and, quite frankly, across the city and public health officials,” said George Chiampas, DO, an emergency an sports medicine physician with Northwestern Medicine. One way to plan ahead is to make sure to go outside with another person and act immediately if there are signs of heat-related illness, such as confusion, dizziness, or lightheadedness.