A registry which includes every patient in Sweden having percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for the treatment of acute and stable coronary artery disease- has found that PCI implantations using a new generation of drug-eluting stents is associated with lower rates of relapse (restenosis), stent thrombosis and subsequent mortality than older generation drug-eluting stents and bare-metal stents.

Official assessments of a doctor's professionalism should be considered carefully before being accepted due to the tendency for some doctors to receive lower scores than others, and the tendency of some groups of patient or colleague assessors to provide lower scores, claims new research published online in the British Medical Journal.

An international team of scientists led by Monash University researchers has uncovered how a common hospital bacterium becomes a deadly superbug that kills increasing numbers of hospital patients worldwide and accounts for an estimated $3.2 billion each year in health care costs in the US alone. Their findings appear October 13th in the Open Access journal PLoS Pathogens.

Interactive video games, already known to improve motor function in recovering stroke patients, appear to safely enhance physical therapy for patients in intensive care units (ICU), new research from Johns Hopkins suggests.

In a report published online in the Journal of Critical Care, researchers studied the safety and feasibility of using video games to complement regular physical therapy in the ICU.

Patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are at a higher risk of death if they are underweight.

A new study, which will be presented September 26, 2011 at the European Respiratory Society's Annual Congress in Amsterdam, assessed the link between death rates and the weight of COPD patients. The research also assessed the link with other co-existing diseases, such as heart disease.