Nearly 1 in 4 U.S. physicians with an active license is over age 65. This has spurred a small minority of hospitals to enact policies to assess these caregivers’ cognitive and physical health, with the aim of reducing lapses that harm patients.  Doctors whose assessments show deficits could be asked to change their clinical schedule or to shift to administrative or teaching duties. 

An analysis of late-career practitioner programs, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that most lack basic fairness protections for doctors. This shortcoming might tend to limit their engagement with these programs.  

The authors identified several considerations they think are crucial to creating policies that protect patients while fairly treating physicians, who long have been able to make career choices autonomously. 

A major UK clinical trial has shown that adding the corticosteroid dexamethasone to standard antiviral treatment for encephalitis (brain inflammation), caused by herpes simplex virus (HSV) does not improve long-term outcomes overall, although early use may lead to better recovery, and the treatment is safe for patients in whom encephalitis is suspected.

Gaps in the nation’s stroke transfer system are drastically reducing survivors’ chances of receiving endovascular thrombectomy and increasing the likelihood that they will leave the hospital with a disability, according to a study led by University of Michigan and University of Chicago.

A multi-institutional study led by the University of California, Davis, finds that living in urban areas with a higher percentage of visible trees is associated with a 4% decrease in cardiovascular disease. By comparison, living in urban areas with a higher percentage of grass was associated with a 6% increase in cardiovascular disease. Likewise, a higher rate of other types of green space, like bushes or shrubs, was associated with a 3% increase in cardiovascular disease. The new research was published in Environmental Epidemiology.