A round-up of today's health news stories in brief
Spoonful of sugar helps with vaccine
INFANTS WHO receive sweet solutions before being immunised experience less pain and are more comfortable, according to new research.
Healthcare professionals should consider giving infants aged one to 12 months a sweet solution of sucrose or glucose before immunising them, the international team of researchers recommended, because of the child's improved reaction to injections. The research will shortly be published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.
Slips, trips and falls in Irish hospitals reach 117,000
THERE WERE 117,000 slips, trips or falls in Irish public hospitals in the six years to December 2009, according to statistics released by the State Claims Agency yesterday.
Falls account for almost four out of 10 of the incidents reported under the national reporting system.
Most of the reported events happened when a patient was moving without supervision. About 1,800 of the incidents reported related to falls in hospital showers. Most of the shower falls resulted in no apparent injury, but in a small number of cases – about 1 per cent – patients sustained multiple injuries, whereas about one-quarter of patients who fell experienced bruising, lacerations or fractures.
In the case of one hospital detailed in the report, the shower facilities were permanently flooded due to poor drainage, leading to a high risk of falls.
Responding to the statistics, chairman of the Irish Patients’ Association, Stephen McMahon, said: “It is the tip of the iceberg, as fall events in nursing homes are not included.” He urged families and patients “to make sure that fall prevention programmes are in place in all healthcare settings including toilets and showers”.
In a small number of incidents, patients were said to be suffering from dizziness, light-headedness and/or fainting. The report was commissioned in response to an incident in which a woman had a serious fall from a shower seat in a hospital. After this, all the shower seats had to have screws re-fitted as they were found to be inappropriate. The HSE is expecting to implement its national strategy to prevent falls shortly.
Massive study unclear on mobiles and tumours link
EXPERTS WHO studied almost 13,000 cell phone users over 10 years, hoping to find out whether the mobile devices cause brain tumours, have said their research gave no clear answer.
A study by the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the largest to look at possible links between mobile phones and brain cancer, threw up inconclusive results, but researchers said suggestions of a possible link demanded deeper examination.
“The results really don’t allow us to conclude that there is any risk associated with mobile phone use, but . . . it is also premature to say that there is no risk associated with it,” the IARC’s director, Christopher Wild, said.
The results of the study have been keenly awaited by mobile phone companies and by campaign groups who have raised concerns about whether mobile phones cause brain tumours.
Mr Wild said part of the problem with this study, which was launched in 2000, was that rates of mobile phone usage in the period it covered were relatively low compared with today. It was also based on people estimating how much time they spent on their cell phones, a method that can throw up inaccuracies.
European scientists last month launched what will now become the biggest study into the effects of mobile phone use on long-term health. It aims to track at least a quarter of a million people in five European countries for up to 30 years.
This kind of study, called a prospective study, is considered more accurate because it does not require people to remember their cell phone use later but tracks it in real time.