A medication commonly used to treat Type 2 diabetes and obesity was associated with a slight increase in risk for a rare condition involving reduced blood flow to the optic nerve that can cause sudden vision loss, according to Rutgers researchers.

Their study, published in Annals of Internal Medicine, examined data from a large database of United States adults ages 18 to 65 with Type 2 diabetes who started taking medication to treat the condition, including glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists, or GLP-1s.

Advocating for greater transparency and accountability, the American College of Chest Physicians submitted comments to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on proposed revisions to federal policies governing research grants, cooperative agreements, and other forms of federal financial assistance. 

WASHINGTON—Healthcare professionals performing minimally invasive procedures in fluoroscopy laboratories, often called “cath labs,” should no longer have to accept preventable radiation exposure and orthopedic injuries as part of their jobs, according to an expert consensus statement released today that is endorsed by six leading medical societies. 

Published today in JSCAI, the Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology (JVIR), and JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions, “SCAI/ASE/HRS/SIR/SVS Expert Consensus Statement on Enhanced Radiation Protection: Time for Mandatory and Urgent Action” calls for hospitals, manufacturers, regulators, and professional societies to immediately adopt enhanced radiation protection technologies, modernize radiation safety standards, and strengthen monitoring and reporting practices to better protect the healthcare teams working in fluoroscopy laboratories. 

Given the availability of safer technologies, the authors say broader implementation of enhanced radiation protection devices (ERPDs) is both an ethical responsibility and a necessary evolution of ALARA (“As Low As Reasonably Achievable”), the longstanding radiation safety standard that exposures should be kept “as low as reasonably achievable.” 

When Ann O’Neill suffered a stillbirth in 2018, she was bewildered. She was already a mother to three healthy children and therefore had received no information on stillbirth prevention from her doctors. But when she brought the placental pathology results from the son she lost to Harvey Kliman, a physician-scientist specializing in pregnancy complications at the Yale School of Medicine, he found one critical abnormality that had been overlooked: a very small placenta. 

Each year, about 21,000 stillbirths occur in the United States. Previous research has found that abnormalities in the placenta, the organ that a fetus depends on for oxygen, fluids, and nutrients, are associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes, including stillbirth. Measuring placental volume is an important step toward identifying pregnancies with one such abnormality — a placenta that is disproportionately small relative to the size of its fetus. 

But placental monitoring is rare, in part because the organ’s irregular geometry — often compared to a beanie cap — makes the placenta difficult to measure. Virtual Organ Computer-aided Analysis (VOCAL), the current method for measuring volume by ultrasound, requires advanced equipment, trained operators, and time to perform a three-dimensional (3D) ultrasound.

Now, however, a new study, published in The Journal of Perinatal Medicine, points to a promising, accessible alternative to VOCAL: Estimated Placental Volume (EPV), an inexpensive, rapid method that can be performed with two-dimensional (2D) ultrasound equipment. This method, the study shows, provides placental volume estimates that are almost identical to those produced by VOCAL.