SNMMI is celebrating a landmark victory for patients and care providers as CMS announced a significant adjustment to the Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System (HOPPS) — removing financial barriers that have long hindered patient access to essential nuclear medicine diagnostic procedures.

A concerning increase in global rates of severe invasive infections becoming resistant to key antibiotics has a team of infectious disease researchers at the Houston Methodist Research Institute studying a recently emerged strain of bacteria called Streptococcus dysgalactiae subspecies equisimilis. These infections range in severity from strep throat to flesh-eating disease. The findings of this study are described in the Oct. 17 issue of the journal mBio. 

Windblown dust from the shrinking Salton Sea harms the respiratory health of children living nearby, triggering asthma, coughing, wheezing and disrupted sleep, USC research shows. The problem is likely to intensify in a hotter climate, with evaporation exposing more and more of the lake bed, or playa, leading to more dust events.