Harvard Health Content API

For my final news review of 2012, here are my “game-changers” of the year. I call them game-changers because the health news impacted how I treat my patients.

Doctors are urging overweight or obese women to gain less weight during pregnancy. The new guidelines come from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. These are the doctors who take care of most pregnant women. The guidelines say that overweight women should gain 15 to 25 pounds during the last 2 trimesters of pregnancy. Obese women should gain no more than 11 to 20 pounds. For women of normal weight, the doctors recommend a gain of 25 to 35 pounds. This should increase to 28 to 40 pounds for underweight women. The advice on weight gain is intended to lower risk to both the woman and the baby. Gaining too much weight during pregnancy can lead to gestational diabetes. This form of the disease disappears after childbirth. However, it increases the woman’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes later. Excess weight also can increase the risk of cesarean section.

That lingering cough may be annoying, but taking an antibiotic won’t help in most cases, a new study shows. The study included more than 2,000 adults with coughs that had lasted at least 4 weeks. Their symptoms did not suggest they had pneumonia or another infection caused by bacteria. People were randomly divided into 2 groups. One group took the antibiotic amoxicillin for a week. The other group took placebo (fake) pills. People who got the real drugs didn’t get better any faster than the placebo group. Their symptoms lasted just as long and were not any milder. But the group that got the antibiotic did have more side effects. These included nausea, rash and diarrhea. Results were similar for both younger and older adults. The journal Lancet Infectious Disease published the study online December 18.

Getting patients out of the hospital quickly doesn’t have to hurt care, a new study suggests. The study looked at 129 Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals. It covered a 14-year period ending in 2010. In that time, the average length of stay in the hospital dropped 27%. Researchers had thought that the rate of readmission — returning to the hospital within 30 days — might increase. But readmissions also dropped. This suggests that most people were not discharged too early. Deaths within 30 and 90 days after leaving the hospital also dropped. Researchers said some aspects of the VA system may help explain the results. Medical care in VA hospitals is provided by hospitalists. These are doctors who care only for people in the hospital. They don’t see patients in an office. The use of hospitalists has been linked with higher quality of care.