Tagged: death

Our healthcare records outlive us. It’s time to decide what happens to the data once we’re gone. - Guest Work

Guest Work • Aug 07, 2017 •

• Big Data,
• death,
• health data,
• health records,
• healthcare records,
• social licence

By Jon Cornwall, Victoria University of Wellington Death is inevitable. The creation of healthcare records about every complaint and ailment we seek treatment for is also a near-certainty. Data about patients is a vital cog in the provision of efficient health services. Our study explores what happens to those healthcare records after you die. We focus on … Read More

Doctors and nurses can’t always tell if someone’s drunk or on drugs, and misdiagnosis can be dangerous - Guest Work

Guest Work • Jul 05, 2017 •

• alcohol,
• death,
• Diagnosis,
• Drugs,
• illness,
• intoxication,
• Medicine

Lauren Monds, Research Fellow in Addiction Medicine, Research Officer in Forensic Psychology, University of Sydney and Celine van Golde, Associate Lecturer in Forensic Psychology, University of Sydney Bob has arrived at the emergency department at 10am on a Tuesday after breaking several fingers slamming his hand in a car door. Bob is quite anxious; he … Read More

Death and resurrection - Ariadne

Robert Hickson • Apr 17, 2017 •

• death,
• longevity,
• Society,
• transhumanist,
• trends

The oldest person in the world has died, aged 117. Life expectancy in Italy in 1899 when she was born was 44 years. She wasn’t the oldest; the current record is 122. NZ’s oldest living person is 109, although the oldest so far reached 113 years. Life expectancy in New Zealand has, as elsewhere, risen … Read More

No, fluoridation is not associated with leading causes of death - Open Parachute

Ken Perrott • Apr 16, 2017 •

• death,
• fluoride,
• Health and Medicine,
• Mortality,
• Science,
• Science and Society

We are all going to die but fluoridation isn’t killing us. Oh, dear – the local anti-fluoridation people are at it again. More cases of fiddling statistics  – and yet again the guilty party is the US anti-fluoridation activist Karen Favazza Spencer. She should really take some advice about statistics. Although I suspect she doesn’t care – she is just … Read More

The marked decline of sudden mass fatality events in NZ (1900 to 2015) - Public Health Expert

Public Health Expert • Mar 01, 2017 •

• crashes,
• death,
• mass fatality,
• Mortality

By Professor Nick Wilson and Associate Professor George Thomson Our recently published study on sudden mass fatality events in NZ (10+ deaths per event) found that the occurrence and mortality burden of these events has declined over time. In this blog we consider possible reasons for this trend and make suggestions for improving the knowledge base around these events.  … Read More

Is someone reanimated from cryogenic freezing legally dead or alive? And other problems - Guest Work

Guest Work • Dec 02, 2016 •

• Cryobiology,
• cryogenics,
• death,
• ethics,
• freezing,
• terminal illness

By Heather Conway, Queen’s University Belfast The idea that your dying or recently deceased body could be frozen in the hope that some future technology could revive you is no longer science fiction. It is now something people will pay handsomely for – as the recent court ruling that allowed a 14-year-old British girl with terminal cancer to … Read More

Alcohol and mortality, yet again - The Dismal Science

Eric Crampton • Sep 02, 2016 •

• alcohol,
• cancer,
• death,
• heart disease,
• Mortality,
• public health

In a recent Dominion Post editorial Doug Sellman’s right about one thing: alcohol consumption does increase your risk of cancer. But unless your family history of cancer gives you a lot more to worry about than your family history of heart disease, you should be looking at the stats on all-source mortality rather than the stats for any particular disorder. The … Read More

Send them home - Kidney Punch

John Pickering • Jun 19, 2015 •

• $100Dialysis,
• ANZDTR,
• death,
• Dialysis,
• Home haemodialysis,
• Peritoneal dialysis,
• survival

New Zealand is the home of Home Haemodialysis and Christchurch the hub. Sending people home to dialyse is not only more convenient for them and more cost effective, but also has been shown to reduce mortality.  However, is this reduction in mortality sustained across changes in dialysis medicine over time?  This is an important question […] … Read More

Living longer - Ariadne

Robert Hickson • Mar 29, 2015 •

• ageing,
• death,
• longevity

Imagine, in 20 or 30 years, going to your health preservation service provider to receive your annual injections to remove senescent cells and down regulate selected gene expression in the hypothalamus, alongside a transfusion of synthetic “young” blood to promote tissue repair and healthier ageing. Later on you may take a pill … Read More

Hot oil baths and other things to do on World Kidney Day 2015 - Kidney Punch

John Pickering • Mar 11, 2015 •

• $100Dialysis,
• Acute Kidney Injury,
• Acute Renal Failure,
• AKI,
• Avicenna,
• Chronic Kidney Disease,
• CKD,
• death,
• Diabetes,
• Hot oil bath,
• Ibn Sina,
• World Kidney Day

“In ancient times the Persian philosopher Avicenna [Ibn Sina] noted that urine may be retained in crisis of fever (s393) and prescribed hot oil baths (s413)(1). Unfortunately, apart from the supportive therapy of dialysis, there has been little progress since in the treatment of acute kidney injury (AKI).”(2) Given that getting AKI at least doubles […] … Read More