The prevalence of medical malpractice suits has long been the bane of physicians and providers of health care. Fear of lawsuits discourages the sharing of information about mistakes which could help prevent them in the future, and prompts doctors to practice “defensive” medicine in which they subject patients to every possible test—regardless of expense or need—to shield themselves from lawsuits. 

Now, the Obama administration has awarded $23.2 million in grants for projects intended to improve patient safety and curb medical malpractice suits, officials announced Friday.

The demonstration projects will test innovations in obstetrics, compensation plans that avoid costly and lengthy lawsuits and limits in liabilities for physicians who can prove they followed state-endorsed, evidence-based guidelines for care.

(READ the full story in the Washington Post)

The Mayo Clinic has conducted the first clinical studies of green tea extract in cancer patients and the results are good news for leukemia sufferers.

An extract of green tea, which offers very low toxicity, appears to merit clinical application after chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients used it in a phase II clinical trial.

The findings, presented last Monday during the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, are the latest in a series of Mayo studies to show promise for use of the chemical epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) — the major component of green tea — in reducing the number of leukemia cells in patients with CLL. Mayo first tested EGCG in a variety of laboratory assays about eight years ago, and it was found to reduce the survival of CLL leukemic cells. This laboratory finding was followed by a successful phase I clinical trial — the first time green tea extract had been studied in CLL patients.

Preventive measures to help people lower their risk of heart disease have been so effective that a new study documented a drop of 24% in the number of serious heart attacks over ten years.

Among the 46,000 patients studied between 1999 and 2008, the most damaging heart attacks fell even more, 62 percent, according to the study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine,

Preventive measures include lowering blood pressure and cholesterol levels, decreasing or eliminating smoking and the use of beta-blockers and/or aspirin.

(READ more in the San Francisco Chronicle)

A rare revolutionary operation at a Birmingham hospital is allowing patients to “regrow a knee” from scratch in a lab.

Although shock absorbent cartilage tissue is unable to regenerate in the body, medics at Good Hope Hospital, in Sutton Coldfield, are using advanced treatments to give sports enthusiasts, arthritics and young patients a second chance with their damaged knees.

(READ more at the Birmingham Mail)