Month: December 2014

The proportion of children under age 5 getting flu vaccine each year increased sharply after the vaccine was recommended for all children, a study shows. But more than half of the children still were not getting the vaccine. The study focused on children ages 6 months to 59 months in a Tennessee county. In the flu season that started in 2000, about 6% of this group got the vaccine. In 2010, that increased to 38%. Hospital stays and emergency room visits varied greatly from year to year. Overall, the number of hospital stays for flu per 10,000 children declined. But when researchers excluded the peak year of 2003-2004, this trend was small enough that it could have been caused by chance. The number of emergency room visits tended to go up. The authors said neither of these trends was clearly related to increases in vaccination. The journal Pediatrics published the study December 8.

Many older women get up often at night to use the bathroom, a study suggests. That could be just because they drank too many liquids in the evening, the authors say. But it also could be a sign of a medical problem. Researchers surveyed about 2,000 women. All were 40 or older. One-third said they usually went to the bathroom at least twice a night. This is called nocturia. It can be a symptom of a urinary tract disorder. But about 40% of the women reported no other symptoms, such as urine leakage or an overactive bladder during the day. The chance of having nocturia rose 21% for every 5-year increase in age. Night bathroom trips also were more common among women who had had a hysterectomy, had hot flashes or used vaginal estrogen to treat menopause symptoms. Only one-quarter of the women were even “moderately” bothered by their nocturia.

Adding ultrasound to mammograms for all women with dense breasts will lead to more tests, cost a lot and ultimately save very few lives, a new study says. Dense breasts have more non-fatty than fatty tissue. Women with dense breasts have a higher risk of breast cancer. It’s also harder to detect tumors in dense breasts on a mammogram. Some doctors have started adding ultrasound as part of routine screening for these women. Researchers used data from breast cancer databases. They compared computer simulations based on 3 scenarios. All of them focused on screening every 2 years for women ages 50 to 74. In the first scenario, women got mammograms only. The other scenarios also included ultrasound for women with very dense breasts or for women with very dense and moderately dense breasts. The study found that adding ultrasound did not save many lives.