Category: Health

A survey of Hispanic Americans finds older men are at especially high risk of losing their hearing.

Story of a man whose partial bridge got painfully lodged in his lower gum. He went to UW Hospital emergency room for relief. As he waited to be seen, the hardware dislodged and he left. He later received a $143 bill, and contacted the newspaper to express his dismay. UW Hospital spokesperson Lisa Brunette quickly responded that “under the circumstances,” the man’s co-pay of $75 would be written off “as a goodwill gesture.”

This year, 11 nurses at UW Hospital were recipients of the Nursing Excellence Award, but for one of them the prestige might have been in her blood.

The Watertown Regional Medical Center has been affiliated with UW Health and “intends to continue to collaborate with UW Health on local specialty care services where it makes sense,” but would be sold to a for-profit hospital chain in Tennessee under an agreement announced Thursday that requires states approval.

A Wausau woman is the last link in a 68-person kidney transplant chain of donations that started in Minnesota, spread across the country and ended at the University of Wisconsin in late March.

ProHealth Care will contract with UW Health to oversee the medical care at its new cancer center scheduled to open this year in Pewaukee. The agreement announced Thursday could lead to more services being available in Waukesha County. It also will enable ProHealth to draw on the expertise of the doctors at the Carbone Cancer Center in Madison and the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Dr. Richard Page, George R. and Elaine Love Professor and chair of the department of medicine in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, has been elected as a member of the Association of American Physicians (AAP). AAP is one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious professional organizations of physicians. It is devoted to the advancement of scientific and practical medicine.

52-year old Kathy Schultz underwent the up close and personal screening on film to encourage all mother’s to have the skin cancer screening done this Mother’s Day. A full body-mapping at UW Health involves a check of the head down to the toes.

Noted: The Waisman Center, based at the University of Wisconsin Madison, is known nationwide for its research on human development. Dr. Leanne Smith studies teenagers with autism. She says that job training programs are important, because gaining employment and having a sense of purpose leads to better outcomes for autistic adults.

Noted: Until five years ago, Wisconsin did not have a registry that could be used for consent or authorization, according to Trey Schwab, outreach coordinator with University of Wisconsin Organ and Tissue Donation.

Noted: Currently in Wisconsin, 34 percent of adolescent girls, and 11 percent of adolescent boys have received the vaccine. UW Health OBGYN Dr. Sarah Bradley [clinical assistant professor] said she wants vaccination rates to reach 80 percent. “I think it’s a travesty really that we’re not doing better,” Bradley said.

Pet owners beware: dog flu exists and it’s spreading. At least 1,000 dogs in Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana were infected in the last month, according to research from the University of Wisconsin and Cornell University.

A new DARPA-sponsored company would like replace needles and make blood testing way more convenient in one fell swoop. Tasso Inc., an affiliate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has just received a $US3 million federal grant to continue developing a pingpong ball-sized disposable device that allows users to painlessly administer their own blood tests in just two minutes.

At 77, Mitzi Neyens had become an expert in waiting. For most of her 53-year marriage to her husband Bill, her kidney disease was manageable, until suddenly, it wasn’t.

“It wasn’t that serious then but gradually over time it became more and more serious,” Bill Neyens said. “About seven or eight years ago we went to Europe, went to the Hills of Italy. So she was doing really fine up until about a year ago. Then it started to go downhill.”

Mitzi was in otherwise good health, but because of her age, she wasn’t considered for the deceased donor list to get a new kidney. Her only option was to find a living donor.

So the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison enrolled her in the National Kidney Registry’s paired exchange program, which was her only chance for a match.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine says the virus has sickened at least 1,000 dogs in Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana. Recent tests from the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory have identified the strain as H3N2. Clinical assistant professor Keith Poulsen says it’s not yet known how effective current vaccines are against this strain, which is believed to have come from Asia.

In addition to the speech at Messe, Walker joined in signing a collaboration agreement Monday between University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers and representatives of DZNE, the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, who together will research diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

At 77, Mitzi Neyens had become an expert in waiting. For most of her 53-year marriage to her husband Bill, her kidney disease was manageable, until suddenly, it wasn’t.

This Saturday when the University of Kentucky basketball team faces off with the University of Wisconsin in the NCAA tournament semi-finals, die-hard Kentucky fan Scott Logdon may think twice about rooting against the Wisconsin Badgers.