There are thousands of unnecessary surgeries being done on the knees and backs of Canadians, particularly patients with osteoarthritis, a new report concludes.

There were 3,600 therapeutic knee arthroscopies and 1,050 vertebroplasties carried out in Canadian hospitals in the fiscal year 2008-09, according to new data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

In both cases, there is mounting evidence that the procedures are largely ineffective to combat certain ailments, and those are but two examples cited in the report that more needs to be done to align care with evidence that it actually helps patients, said John Wright, the president and CEO of CIHI. “Evidence and appropriateness of care are a significant issue in Canada’s health-care debate,” he said.

Mr. Wright said improving efficiency is one of the keys to getting health spending under control.

Knee arthroscopy, a minimally invasive surgery, was once used to diagnosis and treat a host of minor knee problems. But it has fallen out of favour as studies showed it did little to reduce pain and that a large number of patients went on to have knee replacements within one year.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/common-back-and-knee-surgeries-fail-to-ease-pain-study/article1841459/

Here’s a great page on tips to keep your body and nerve system working at it’s best during the holiday season: http://www.acatoday.org/12Days/

Have a great and healthy holiday season!

In an effort to guard against heart disease, you may consider adding a multivitamin supplement to your menu of fatty fish, nuts and oat bran.

According to new a study published online in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, women who took a one-a-day supplement were 40 per cent less likely to suffer a heart attack than their peers who didn’t use multivitamins.

Ask us which multi vitamin we recommend.

The entire article…

In a world were people are trying to avoid germs and bugs, more and more research is showing that it’s actually healthier to actually be exposed to those germs.

The key is: you have to have an optimally functioning nerve system and immune system. Then being exposed to ‘bugs’ strengthens your immune system, ultimately making you stronger.

Daycare kids get sick less often during school years

Kids who start going to large child-care facilities before age two and a half tend to develop more colds and ear infections at that age, but they then catch fewer illnesses once they get to elementary school, new Canadian research finds.

Parents of kids at daycare centres know all too well that their children seem to get more colds and infections than kids who stay at home or who go to home-based daycares.

That’s led some to worry about the effects of exposing kids to a wide range of pathogens at such a young age. But few studies have looked at how group child care affects sickness rates beyond the preschool years.

So Sylvana M. Côté, of Ste-Justine Hospital and the University of Montreal led a team who studied more than 1,200 Quebec families of newborns born in 1998.

They asked the mothers whether their children went to a large child-care facility (defined as a centre that cares for up to 10 groups of eight to 12 children; a small child-care facility (home-based centres where a caretaker watches three to eight children); or were cared for at home.

For eight years, the researchers regularly collected information about how often the children had colds and respiratory tract infections, ear infections or stomach infections.

They found that compared with kids cared for at home until elementary school, those who began going to a large group child care before age 2 ½ had higher rates of respiratory infections and ear infections during early preschool. But those children then had lower risks of respiratory tract or ear infections during early elementary school.

The children who started in small group child care in early preschool and never went to a large care setting did not have any differences in infections.

Those who were first cared for at home but then went to any size child care facility during late preschool had a higher risk of ear infections at that time, but no other differences in infection risk.

Interestingly, group child care was not associated with gastrointestinal infections at any period in the children’s development, the authors report in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

The findings suggest that early exposure to large groups of children early in life gives kids some protection against infections they might encounter again in grade school.

The authors say their findings mean that parents can be assured that although their young children may contract a lot of infections after starting at a large group child care centre, the increase in infections is temporary, and is likely to provide the children with greater immunity during the elementary school years.

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Health/20101206/kids-daycare-colds-infections-101206/

Removing cough and cold medicines for very young children from store shelves led to a big decline in emergency room visits for bad reactions to the drugs, government research found.

But the results released online Monday are a mixed bag: Some parents were still giving their infants and toddlers these medicines, and many ER cases still involved youngsters who apparently got hold of the medications themselves.

Full article.

Did you catch that last sentence? What are you showing your kids? That health is in a bottle? A huge bonus to kids who get adjusted is that they learn and trust that their body will take care of themselves, they don’t need medicine. Do your kids a favor, lead by example and be the best healthy role model they know.

More than 13 percent of Medicare patients in the U.S. experience an adverse event each month in American hospitals, and some 15,000 of them die as a result.

The events are often the result of medical errors, like surgical mistakes or infections that have originated in and spread through the hospital. The data comes from a new report from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General.

Full report

Always seek safer options first, why risk your health and life?

Giving children antibiotics for ear infections does little to speed their recovery while raising the risk of some side effects, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study found that 80 out of 100 otherwise healthy children would recover from an acute ear infection within a few days if given medication only to relieve pain or fevers. If all 100 were given antibiotics instead, 92 would be better in the same period, said Dr. Tumaini Coker, the study’s lead author.

“But we would also expect three to 10 kids to develop rash and five to 10 to develop diarrhea,” said Coker, a pediatrician at Mattel Children’s Hospital at the University of California-Los Angeles.

Coker noted that the increased number of children in the study who benefited from treatment with antibiotics was similar to the number that could be expected to get side effects from the antibiotic treatment.

“Clinicians and parents need to know the benefits and side effects on how to manage their child’s ear infection,” Coker said.

CNN

Source insurancenewsnet.com

A new study finds that low back pain care initiated with a doctor of chiropractic (DC) saves 40% on health care costs when compared with care initiated through a medical doctor (MD), the American Chiropractic Association(ACA) announced today. The study, featuring data from 85,000 Blue Cross Blue Shield beneficiaries, concludes that insurance companies that restrict access to chiropractors for low back pain treatment may inadvertently pay more for care than they would if they removed such restrictions.

Low back pain is a significant public health problem. Up to 85 percent of Americans have back pain at some point in their lives. In addition to its negative effects on employee productivity, back pain treatment accounts for about $50 billion annually in health care costs—making it one of the top 10 most costly conditions treated in the United States.

The study, “Cost of Care for Common Back Pain Conditions Initiated With Chiropractic Doctor vs. Medical Doctor/Doctor of Osteopathy as First Physician: Experience of One Tennessee-Based General Health Insurer,” which is available online and will also be published in the December 2010 issue of the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, looked at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee’s intermediate and large group fully insured population over a two-year span. The insured study population had open access to MDs and DCs through self-referral, and there were no limits applied to the number of MD/DC visits allowed and no differences in co-pays.

Results show that paid costs for episodes of care initiated by a DC were almost 40 percent less than care initiated through an MD. After risk-adjusting each patient’s costs, researchers still found significant savings in the chiropractic group. They estimated that allowing DC-initiated episodes of care would have led to an annual cost savings of $2.3 million for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee.

Here’s part 1 of a great series of interviews between Dr Mercola and Barbara Loe Fisher:

Click here to view the rest.