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Showing posts with label Finland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Finland. Show all posts

Monday, December 30, 2013

Common Knee Surgery Does Very Little for Some, Study Suggests

A popular surgical procedure worked no better than fake operations in helping people with one type of common knee problem, suggesting that thousands of people may be undergoing unnecessary surgery, a new study in The New England Journal of Medicine reports.

The unusual study involved people with a torn meniscus, crescent-shaped cartilage that helps cushion and stabilize knees. Arthroscopic surgery on the meniscus is the most common orthopedic procedure in the United States, performed, the study said, about 700,000 times a year at an estimated cost of $4 billion.

The study, conducted in Finland, involved a small subset of meniscal tears. But experts, including some orthopedic surgeons, said the study added to other recent research suggesting that meniscal surgery should be aimed at a narrower group of patients; that for many, options like physical therapy may be as good.

The surgery, arthroscopic partial meniscectomy, involves small incisions. They are to accommodate the arthroscope, which allows doctors to see inside, and for tools to trim torn meniscus and to smooth ragged edges of what remains.

The Finnish study does not indicate that surgery never helps; there is consensus that it should be performed in some circumstances, especially for younger patients and for tears from acute sports injuries. But about 80 percent of tears develop from wear and aging, and some researchers believe surgery in those cases should be significantly limited.

“Those who do research have...
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Thursday, December 26, 2013

You may not be better off after knee surgery

Today's post is shared from cnn.com 

(CNN) -- Patients who underwent simulated knee surgery fared just as well as those who got the real deal, according to a new study that's raising eyebrows about the most common orthopedic procedure performed in the United States.

The findings, published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, add to a string of papers suggesting that arthroscopic partial meniscectomy fails to help many patients. The operation typically is performed to relieve knee pain, whether from wear or from an injury.

But other doctors say it's still too soon to draw sweeping conclusions.

The study, which was conducted in Finland, followed 146 patients between the ages of 35 and 65 with symptoms of degenerative wear and tear of the meniscus, a disk-shaped piece of cartilage that acts as a shock absorber between the shinbone and thighbone. They had no detectable arthritis, suggesting that any pain was due to a problem with the meniscus.

About half the patients underwent an arthroscopic meniscectomy, in which a surgeon inserts a blade through a tiny incision in the knee, and essentially shaves down the rough, frayed edges of the meniscus.

The other half underwent an elaborately staged "sham" surgery, in which the doctor made an incision and poked around without any actual manipulation, shaving or cutting.

A year later, there was no significant difference in the knee pain reported by patients in each group. Nearly two-thirds on each side said they were happy with the results, and most said...


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Friday, December 13, 2013

International Conference on Monitoring and Surveillance of Asbestos-Related Diseases

Today's post was shared by Linda Reinstein and comes from www.ttl.fi

We are pleased to invite you to the International Helsinki Asbestos 2014 Conference held 11–13 February 2014, at Hanasaari Cultural Center in Finland. The goal of this Conference is to highlight problem areas in the management of surveillance of asbestos-exposed individuals, as well as to discuss sources of new exposures to asbestos.
The Twitter hashtag for the event is #asbestos2014 (for latest tweets related to the event scroll to the bottom of this page)

The asbestos epidemic is far from over. Asbestos-related diseases (ARDs) are still globally among the most serious and widespread occupational health hazards. The number of annual deaths due to past asbestos exposure exceeds 100 000. Although the use of asbestos has been banned in several countries, some workers continue to be exposed in asbestos removal work. Even more importantly, asbestos is still widely used in many countries around the world. The European Parliament, UN-organizations such as WHO, and many professional non-governmental organizations have emphasized the importance of elimination of asbestos exposure and related hazards.
The Conference will deal with the most recent research results and the current views of leading experts on asbestos exposure monitoring, diagnostics and early detection of ARDs. It will provide an excellent opportunity to obtain an overview of the current state of this major occupational health hazard.
We would like to invite all occupational health and safety experts and...
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Monday, November 25, 2013

Accelerated aging found in long-term unemployed men

Today's post was shared by RWJF PublicHealth and comes from www.medicalnewstoday.com

Men who are unemployed for more than two years show signs of faster ageing in their DNA, a new study has found.
Researchers at Imperial College London and the University of Oulu, Finland studied DNA samples from 5,620 men and women born in Finland in 1966.
They measured structures called telomeres, which lie at the ends of chromosomes and protect the genetic code from being degraded. Telomeres become shorter over a person's lifetime, and their length is considered a marker for biological ageing. Short telomeres are linked to higher risk of age-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
The researchers looked at telomere length in blood cells from samples collected in 1997, when the participants were all 31 years old. The study, funded by the Wellcome Trust, found that men who had been unemployed for more than two of the preceding three years were more than twice as likely to have short telomeres compared to men who were continuously employed,.
The analysis accounted for other social, biological and behavioural factors that could have affected the result, helping to rule out the possibility that short telomeres were linked to medical conditions that prevented participants from working.
This trend was not seen in women, which may be because fewer women than men in the study were unemployed for long periods in their 30s. Whether long-term unemployment is more harmful for men than women later in life needs to be addressed in future studies.
The Imperial team...
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