Death Rates

Researchers have some reassuring news for the legions of coffee drinkers who can't get through the day without a latte, cappuccino, iced mocha, double-shot of espresso or a plain old cuppa joe: That coffee habit may help you live longer. A new study that tracked the health and coffee consumption of more than 400,000 older adults for nearly 14 years found that java drinkers were less likely to die during the study than their counterparts who eschewed the brew. In fact, men and women who averaged four or five cups of coffee per day had the lowest risk of death, according to a report in Thursday's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Hepatitis C mortality rates surpassed HIV mortality rates in the United States in 2007, researchers said Monday. In a study in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine ( abstract here ), U.S. Centers for Disease Control researchers analyzed causes of death on more than 21.8 million U.S. death certificates filed between 1999 and 2007. Rates of death related to hepatitis C, a viral infection that causes chronic liver disease, rose at an average rate of .18 deaths per 100,000 persons per year.

Some hospitals are better than others. But for many years all patients had to go on was reputation, doctors' advice, word of mouth and advertising. Today, California follows some other states, the federal government and a few private groups in offering a window on hospital quality. The study by state officials of hospital death rates shows that for eight common conditions and procedures -- including stroke, hip fracture and brain surgery -- the rates vary widely. The study looked at mortality rates for 2007 and 2006.

Cancer cases and cancer deaths are dropping in many corners of the United States, according to statistics released Wednesday by the American Cancer Society. Since 1999, cancer death rates have declined in both men and women and among all racial and ethnic groups with the exception of American Indians and Alaskan Natives. But cancer rates have stabilized in those two groups. The biggest drops in death rates were seen among African American and Latino men, with declines of 2.4% and 2.3% per year, respectively.

A standard blood test for kidney functioning may indicate a heightened risk of dying within eight years among people with high blood pressure, a study suggests. The study, of 10,768 people with high blood pressure, found that those with high levels of creatinine, a waste product produced by muscle tissue, in their blood showed higher death rates from heart attack and stroke as well as kidney disease, the researchers said. Death rates rose with rising creatinine levels. Kidneys normally remove creatinine from blood, so high levels can signal kidney trouble.

Anesthesia is not an area of medicine most folks profess to understand. As one anesthesiologist put it: "The lay public has the notion that we knock people on the head and they go to sleep, and then we knock them on the head again and they wake up." But today, even doctors are realizing how little they know about the effects of heavy sedation.

A controversial surgical treatment for emphysema results in a high death rate for some patients, according to early results from a nationwide study of treatments for the illness. The study tracked 1,033 patients who were divided into two groups: one receiving the surgery and the other receiving nonsurgical treatments. Of those patients, 140 fell into the high-risk group--those who already have severe lung damage from the disease.

The number of people who died on downtown L.A.'s skid row has declined by 36% in the last four years, according to city records, the latest sign of major changes on what for decades has been the city's epicenter of homelessness and drug-dealing. Excluding murders and suicides, 60 people died in the skid row area in 2008, according to Los Angeles Police Department statistics. In 2005, there were 94 such deaths.

Using an annual chest X-ray to screen for a deadly disease such as lung cancer might seem to make some sense. But the tactic simply does not save lives. The findings allow researchers to move to the next big question regarding early lung-cancer detection: whether annual CT screening (computed tomography) can lower death rates. In a new study, researchers led by the University of Minnesota examined data from more than 154,000 people. Half of the participants, ages 55 to 74, were assigned to have annual chest X-rays while the other participants received their usual care.

Hepatitis C mortality rates surpassed HIV mortality rates in the United States in 2007, researchers said Monday. In a study in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine ( abstract here ), U.S. Centers for Disease Control researchers analyzed causes of death on more than 21.8 million U.S. death certificates filed between 1999 and 2007. Rates of death related to hepatitis C, a viral infection that causes chronic liver disease, rose at an average rate of .18 deaths per 100,000 persons per year.

Most of us know about the factors that raise our risk for heart attack: high blood pressure, bad blood lipids, diabetes, smoking, family history of heart attacks. Either that, or we've been living in a cave.  Though a study of more than 500,000 patients just reported in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. doesn't change any of that, it did find something odd:  Among a large group of people admitted to the hospital for their first heart attack, those who had those traditional risk factors were less likely to die of the heart attack than those who arrived at the hospital without any of them.

The anti-clotting drug rivaroxaban helps lower the risk of heart attack, stroke and death in patients who are hospitalized for a heart attack or chest pain, according to a study released Sunday. Rivaroxaban, or Xarelto, is one of a number of blood-thinner medications, also known as anticoagulants, that have come on the market in recent years as an alternative to warfarin, the traditional medication of choice for preventing blood clots. The Food and Drug Administration this month approved rivaroxaban for stroke prevention in patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation.

Overdose deaths from abuse of prescription painkillers in the U.S. now outnumber deaths involving heroin and cocaine combined, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Tuesday. In 2008, drug overdoses caused 36,450 deaths in the U.S. One or more prescription drugs were involved in 20,044 of these deaths, CDC researchers wrote in the journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Opioid pain relievers, including oxycodone, methadone and hydrocodone, were involved in 14,800.

Yet another study suggests that happiness is good for your health.   Epidemiologists at University College, London, reported their results Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Science. Andrew Steptoe and Jane Wardle examined data collected in a single day by the English Longitudinal Study of Aging, a large survey in England. A subset of 3,853 people, ages 52 to 79, were asked to record the extent to which they felt happy, excited, content, worried, anxious and fearful on a 1 to 4 scale at four times during the day: upon waking, 30 minutes after waking, at 7 p.m. and again upon going to bed.   Their measurements of happiness, excitement and contentment combined to create a score for positive affect, or good mood.  Worry, anxiety and fear ratings were combined to measure negative affect, or bad mood.

Using an annual chest X-ray to screen for a deadly disease such as lung cancer might seem to make some sense. But the tactic simply does not save lives. The findings allow researchers to move to the next big question regarding early lung-cancer detection: whether annual CT screening (computed tomography) can lower death rates. In a new study, researchers led by the University of Minnesota examined data from more than 154,000 people. Half of the participants, ages 55 to 74, were assigned to have annual chest X-rays while the other participants received their usual care.

People undergoing kidney dialysis often have three treatments a week -- which means they have a two-day-off break each week. But a new study suggests this regimen may be too risky for people with end-stage kidney disease. Researchers at the U.S. Renal Data System and the University of Minnesota examined death rates among 32,065 people receiving dialysis three times a week during the years of 2005 though 2008. They found that death rates from any cause -- including deaths linked to renal failure -- were highest on the day following the two-day-off interval compared to any other day of the week.

Death rates surveyed recently at two Somali locations, Baidoa and Afgoi, are among the highest ever documented in a famine-affected area, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. The overall death rate in Baidoa from April to December was 16.9 deaths daily per 10,000 people and 30.1 deaths daily for children 5 and under, according to the Dec. 11 issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The survey also found: * Between Aug. 9 and Nov.

Re "Transplant Inequality: Death by Geography," June 11 The Times' presentation of the geographic imbalances that persist in transplantation illustrates nicely the challenges in seeking a balance of equity, geography and medicine. One geographic factor that merits consideration is that death rates, which are a crude but correlated predictor of potential donors, vary significantly across the country, with California's being 6.7 per thousand while Florida's is 10. Pulsatile perfusion can extend kidney storage time to 48 hours or longer following organ recovery and allow national allocation of perfect-match kidneys.

The rotavirus vaccine introduced in Mexico in 2007 still appears to be preventing diarrhea-related deaths in children, despite speculation that years later the vaccine may not be as effective. In a letter released Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers report that the vaccine still seems to be successful in reducing mortality rates among children. They compared diarrhea-related deaths during the three years after the vaccine was introduced with death rates during rotavirus seasons from 2003 to 2006.

For decades now, we've heard that too much sodium can cause hypertension and raise the risk of cardiovascular disease. People have paid far less attention to potassium, a mineral that has opposite effects on health: Get enough of it, and it can actually lower your blood pressure and protect your heart. Now a study of more than 12,000 adults has underscored something that doctors and nutritionists have been saying for years: If you watch your sodium but ignore potassium, you're missing an important part of the picture.