News Releases - January 2014 Archives

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Jan. 30, 2014 — Here are highlights from the January issue of Mayo Clinic Health Letter. You may cite this publication as often as you wish. Reprinting is allowed for a fee. Mayo Clinic Health Letter attribution is required. Include the following subscription information as your editorial policies permit: Visit http://healthletter.mayoclinic.com/ or call toll-free for subscription information, 1-800-333-9037, extension 9771. Full newsletter text: Mayo Clinic Health Letter January 2014 (for journalists only). Pacemakers ― Getting Better for 50 Years For more than 50 years, pacemakers have been used to maintain a steady heart rhythm in hearts that beat too slowly. The January issue of Mayo Clinic Health Letter provides an overview of these implanted high-technology devices that have become a routine part of medical care, both prolonging life and improving quality of life. Over the years, pacemakers have gotten smaller, more durable and have been loaded with more helpful features. When a heart is beating too slowly or in an uncoordinated way, the pacemaker starts sending electrical impulses to

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, the state’s leading nonprofit health plan and Mayo Clinic Health System, a family of clinics, hospitals and health care facilities owned by Mayo Clinic, announced today a new, three-year agreement that is designed to promote quality care while lowering overall costs. “Blue Cross and the Mayo Clinic Health System recognize that health care costs in Minnesota cannot continue on an unsustainable trajectory, especially when we still have material gaps in the quality of care,” Lee said. “Our respective organizations won’t be competitive in the marketplace unless we can demonstrate and be accountable for measured quality and overall cost of care for the people we serve.  It's not just a payer issue or a provider issue. This agreement brings together the distinctive capabilities of each organization so that we can solve the problem together.”“This new type of contract works because it embodies shared priorities and purpose,” said Dr. Larry Lee, executive medical director for provider relations and quality at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwVjAKAjo7w ROCHESTER, Minn. ― Jan. 27, 2014 ― Mayo Clinic has opened the Mayo Clinic Department of Defense (DOD) Medical Research Office. The office, in Rochester, MN., is designed to be an easy to use single point of contact, linking the research needs of the DOD with Mayo Clinic investigators capable of addressing those needs, and to improve access to funding to serve DOD research and development priorities. The office oversees Mayo Clinic's portfolio of DOD-funded research, which has evolved over Mayo’s long and successful partnership with the U.S. government. Today, dozens of Mayo Clinic researchers receive funding for special projects that use new technologies and innovative solutions to support military readiness, functional restoration and rehabilitation after complex injuries, restore health and improve wellness of military populations. “This is a continuation of Mayo Clinic’s 150-year legacy with the DOD,” says Peter Amadio, M.D., director of the office, and an orthopedic surgeon at Mayo Clinic. “The office and website are designed to strengthen this long-standing relationship and to not only match DOD research needs with the expertise of Mayo Clinic, but also accelerate the entire process from proposal development to funding to delivery of a completed project.

Research helps identify stroke patients most at risk for mortality, treatments to reduce death rate MANKATO, Minn. — Jan. 27, 2014 — For patients who have experienced a large stroke that cuts off blood supply to a large part of the brain, the use of standardized medical management protocol and surgery to decompress swelling can improve life expectancy, Mayo Clinic researchers found in a recent study. The medical protocol provided each patient with consistent procedures for airway management, ventilator settings, blood pressure control, fluid and electrolyte management, gastrointestinal and nutritional management, hematologic monitoring and management, intracranial pressure monitoring, sedation, use of medication, anticonvulsants, prevention against deep-vein thrombosis and rehabilitation. Journalists: Sound bites with Dr. Chyatte (shy-ott) are available in the downloads. Surgery involved removing a large portion of the skull over the area of the stroke to provide extra room for the brain swelling. This reduced pressure in the head and risk of death. For surviving patients, the piece of skull was replaced via a second surgery after the brain swelling had resolved. “We discovered who – out of this patient group – was most at risk for mortality. We also determined that by using a standardized medical protocol – in other words, treating every patient in the exact same way and preparing for each issue we may encounter – we were able to reduce patient mortality by about 50 percent,” says Douglas Chyatte, M.D., a study author and neurosurgeon at Mayo Clinic Health System. “In addition, when we examined surgery, there was a positive trend in reducing mortality in this group of patients.

Pioneering Mayo doctors created global medical icon and model for future of health care http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh0bU5dJmec ROCHESTER, Minn. — Jan. 24, 2014 — On Jan. 27, 1864, English-born Dr. William Worrall Mayo first notified the public about his medical practice in Rochester, Minn., planting the seeds of what would eventually become an international medical organization with more than 59,000 expert physicians, scientists and health care professionals, attracting millions of patients from across the globe. This year marks 150 years of continuous service to patients, and Mayo Clinic is launching a yearlong recognition that will honor a legacy of medical accomplishments and a model for the future of health care. Dr. Mayo’s sons, Drs. William and Charles Mayo, joined the practice in the late 1880’s and, with their father, created Mayo Clinic’s medical hallmark: The integrated care model that focuses a team of experts on one patient at a time and puts patients’ needs first. “Mayo Clinic started with humble visionaries who wanted to help their patients by providing the best possible knowledge available, without regard to their own personal interests or success,” says John Noseworthy, M.D., president and CEO of Mayo Clinic. “Those values of respect, compassion, integrity, excellence and innovation continue to drive Mayo Clinic forward today as we seek to advance health care through education, research and clinical practice.”

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Jan. 24, 2014 — Mayo Clinic has launched the next evolution of its presence on the Web, by integrating its three existing external websites — mayoclinic.com, mayo.edu and mayoclinic.org — into a single platform. This is the single largest project undertaken in the history of Mayo Clinic’s Web assets and involves an estimated 60,000 Web pages. Mayo Clinic draws about 50 million unique visitors per month collectively to its three main Web domains. “Web integration is part of Mayo Clinic’s effort to deliver actionable knowledge and intelligence to improve care and reduce costs,” says Roger Harms, M.D., chair of Mayo Clinic’s Web Steering Committee. “We maintain a market-leading Web presence in the consumer health and health care markets that provides people around the world with a window into Mayo Clinic’s knowledge, expertise and services.”

ROCHESTER, Minn. —Jan. 23 — Mayo Clinic Radio, part of the Mayo Clinic News Network, has begun delivering patient-centered audio programming from Mayo Clinic experts via iHeartRadio, which is a Clear Channel Broadcasting, Inc., free, all-in-one digital radio service featuring the best in talk radio. The daily Mayo Clinic Radio Health Minute series and the one-hour program, Mayo Clinic Radio, will be available 24/7 on the digital platform’s newest feature iHeartRadio Talk. “The standard for innovation in health care was set by William Worrall Mayo, M.D., 150 years ago as he began building a medical practice into what is now Mayo Clinic,” says John T. Wald, M.D., medical director, Mayo Clinic Public Affairs and Marketing. “About the same time, pioneers like Guglielmo Marconi were discovering radio signals. Today, as we look to the future of health care (#FutureOfHealthCare), iHeartRadio, with this new technology, is a natural next step for Mayo Clinic to reach patients where they are.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pz8sYK1410

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Jan. 23, 2014 — The Minnesota Department of Health released its 10th annual Adverse Health Events report today and Mayo Clinic Hospital – Rochester reported only 29 events in 2013 — down from 38 in 2012. This decrease is primarily due to reductions in advanced-stage pressure ulcers and surgery-related events. Mayo's emphasis on pressure ulcer identification and prevention led to fewer pressure ulcer reports in 2013.The reporting system requires Minnesota hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers to report whenever one of 29 serious adverse events occurs and conduct a thorough analysis of causes. In 2013, the number of events reported statewide was 258. Data was collected from Oct. 6, 2012 through Oct. 7, 2013. Journalists: Rochester campus b-roll is available in the downloads. “The data reflect the high dedication of our nursing and medical teams, as well as our strong detection and reporting efforts,” says Timothy Morgenthaler, M.D., Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, and Patient Safety Officer in Rochester. “We are encouraged by these results and hope to see even further reductions in the coming year.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syLYiHJjnT0&feature=youtu.be&hd=1 ROCHESTER, Minn. — Jan. 21, 2014 — More people die and emergency hospital treatment takes longer for heart attack victims who arrive at the hospital during off-hours (nights and weekends), compared with patients who arrive during regular daily hours, according to a Mayo Clinic study published online in the British Medical Journal on Jan. 21. Journalists: Sound bites with Dr. Sorita are available in the downloads. Mayo Clinic researchers analyzed results of 48 studies published between 2001 and 2013 involving 1.8 million patients in the United States, Europe and Canada to assess the effect of off-hour hospital arrival for heart attack patients.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwATErIogm0 ROCHESTER, Minn. ― Jan. 21, 2014 ― Researchers at Mayo Clinic have found amplification of HER2, a known driver of some breast cancers, in a type of bladder cancer called micropapillary urothelial carcinoma (MPUC) and have shown that the presence of HER2 amplification is associated with particularly aggressive tumors. These findings suggest that administering trastuzumab to MPUC patients with HER2 amplification could improve outcomes, just as it has for breast cancer. The study is published in this month’s Modern Pathology. Journalists: B-roll of images and sound bites with Dr. Cheville are available in the downloads. As with breast cancer, HER2 amplification in MPUC results in a faster growing form of cancer that spreads quickly and has a higher chance of recurrence. The hope is that combating this amplification with trastuzumab,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOT5BIXyruk&feature=youtu.be&hd=1 ROCHESTER, Minn. — Jan. 21 — A comparative long-range study by Mayo Clinic ophthalmology researchers shows that the probability of blindness from glaucoma 20 years after diagnosis has dropped by half in the last generation. The findings appear online in the “in press” section of the journal Ophthalmology. Journalists: Sound bites with Dr. Sit are available in the downloads. The researchers examined the medical records of all residents of Olmsted County, Minnesota, age 40 or above, diagnosed with glaucoma between 1981 and 2000. They compared this with similar data from a previous study of patients diagnosed between 1965 and 1980, using the same resource, the repositories of the Rochester Epidemiology Project.

PHOENIX — Jan. 16, 2014 — Researchers have found that using telemedicine to deliver stroke care, also known as telestroke, appears to be cost-effective for society. The research was recently published in the American Journal of Managed Care. In telestroke care, the use of a telestroke robot allows a patient with stroke to be examined in real time by a neurology specialist elsewhere who consults via computer with an emergency room physician at another site which may not have neurology specialists (typical rural hospitals). Mayo Clinic provides telestroke care by acting as a single source of specialized care – a hub – to connect a network of multiple hospitals – spokes. "This study shows that a hub-and-spoke telestroke network is not only cost-effective from the societal perspective, but it's cost-saving,” says neurologist Bart Demaerschalk, M.D., director of the Mayo Clinic Telestroke Program, and the lead investigator of the telestroke cost effectiveness study. “We can assess medical services, like telemedicine, in terms of the net costs to society for each year of life gained."