UW’s Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering has been granted $16 million dollars to carry out research that hopefully will one day allow paralyzed people to move their limbs.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to hold health care providers accountable for negligent care. Lawsuits tend to only occur with catastrophic care. And state boards generally do a poor job of disciplining the worst offenders.
A recent study found that doctors who order more tests for their patients were faced with fewer lawsuits. Whether that is because they were practicing "defensive medicine" or giving more thorough and comprehensive care is still an open question.
A recent study found that patients who had no history of opiate drug use who were prescribed painkillers upon discharge from a hospital were five times more likely to become chronic opioid users.
Although modern medicine is not quite there yet, we are getting closer to putting little robots into patients to do all sorts of great things.
Mobile Stroke Treatment Units are currently being tested in the USA and Germany. Hopefully they will allow stroke victims to be treated quicker, leading to better outcomes
Medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States, but often times the victims of these errors never learn the full story.
Sometimes a risk of a procedure occurs and it is not because the surgeon was negligent. But sometimes a risk occurs because of negligence. The informed consent form should not be used to shield surgeons from liability in both situations.
According to a 2013 study, about one-fourth of operating room errors are caused by technology and equipment problems.
A recent study found that a cheap and simple blood test can indicate whether a patient has sustained a concussion.
