Driver error is cited more frequently in fatal crashes involving passenger vehicles than commercial trucks, according to statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System. The newest statistics, culled from driver-related factors in police accident reports during 2010, show about one-third of truck drivers involved in fatal crashes were cited, compared…
DetailsParents and guardians are being cautioned of the risks of giving prescribed codeine to children after surgeries. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says three children died and another suffered a non-fatal but life-threatening case of respiratory depression, all after being given codeine as a pain reliever after surgeries to remove tonsils and/or adenoids. The…
DetailsFor five of the past six seasons, attendance at NCAA football games has broken records. Nearly 49.7 million attended college football games last year, according to the NCAA, which doesn’t include the 127 million who watched TV games. What the audience and, most importantly, the players themselves aren’t aware of is the potentially devastating long-term…
DetailsOlder adults use more medicines than younger people and also tend to experience more serious side effects, including death. Yet drug makers often exclude older adults from clinical trials, according to the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen. In particular, a new analysis of four popular medications often taken by older adults – rosuvastatin (Crestor) for…
DetailsA new analysis concluded that many of the reports that are conducted on new drugs and medical devices come from studies conducted on a small number of patients in clinical trials with less-than-reliable methods and, often, missing data! Dr. Robert Califf of the Duke Translational Medicine Institute in Durham, N.C., told Reuters Health that these…
DetailsThe U.S. Food and Drug Administration isn’t doing a very good job of tracking drugs once they’re on the market to see if they’re safe, according to the Institute of Medicine, a government watchdog group. Some drugs are put on the market despite evidence that they might have bad side effects, the IOM said, and…
DetailsThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned about the risk of infection when clinics re-use injections intended for single-use only. According to MSNBC.msn.com, 10 patients in Arizona and Delaware got serious infections requiring hospitalization after they were injected with diluted drugs intended to be administered to one patient only. A nationwide shortage of…
DetailsU.S. Food and Drug Administration staff have sent word to agency advisers meeting this week that there should be more and consistent tests to study the effect of metal in hip implants on surrounding body tissue. The staff said these tests might help lower high failure rates on implants made by Johnson & Johnson and…
DetailsAs the U.S. Food and Drug Administration prepares to examine how safe metal-on-metal hip implants are, the agency released a report saying it received more than 16,800 reports of adverse events associated with the devices from 2000-2011. Complaints increased after Johnson & Johnson began recalling its ASR hip implants in 2010, according to Bloomberg News. More…
DetailsA British manufacturer of a metal-on-metal component for an artificial hip has voluntarily withdrawn the metal liner (or cup) from the market, as some patients were forced to have the liner removed after complaining of infections, fractures and dislocations. The liner was part of Smith & Nephew’s R3 Acetabular System. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, about…
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