Depression is one of the most common forms of psychiatric disorder. It can occur at any time of life and it may affect children and adolescents as well as the elderly. However, depression can usually be suitably managed with the help of cognitive behavioral therapy. Researchers based at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz have been able to demonstrate both the efficacy and the extent of the beneficial effect of routine psychotherapeutic treatment for depression...

 Nursing home residents who used videoconferencing to keep in touch with family members felt it enriched their lives, according to a study in the June issue of the Journal of Clinical Nursing. Thirty-four residents from ten nursing homes took part in the study. The 18 women and 16 men had an average age of 75. All of them said the experience enriched their lives, just under two-thirds said it was the second-best option to family visiting and a third said it gave them a true picture of family life...

 When children report about an event they can be highly accurate. But if they talk to other witnesses, children's testimony may become tainted. A doctoral thesis from the University of Gothenburg examines children's vulnerability to co-witness influence, and presents a new method that can help child witnesses to provide more detailed witness reports. Emma Roos af Hjelmsater's thesis is based on a series of studies where children aged 7-13 were interviewed regarding an event they had experienced two weeks earlier...

 The Indiana Network for Patient Care (INPC), one of the highest volume health information exchanges in the United States, is expanding to include post-acute care facilities, bringing the benefits of secure health information exchange to a growing number of individuals who often have significant health care needs...

 Elsevier, the leading global publisher of scientific, technical, and medical information products and services, announced recently the acquisition of assets from Collexis Holdings, Inc., a leading developer of semantic technology and knowledge discovery software. The combination of Elsevier's content and Collexis' semantic technology will provide institutions and researchers new ways to collaborate, showcase accomplishments and improve grant related workflow efficiencies...

 A new study presented at the 64th Vascular Annual Meeting presented by the Society for Vascular Surgery® informs that select patients with blunt aortic injury (BAI) can be safely managed non-operatively with beta-blockade to lower the heart rate and blood pressure. Researchers reported that during the 10-year study period from Jan. 1, 1999 to Dec. 31, 2008, a total of 141 patients with BAI were treated at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. Fifty-five had open repair and 49 had endovascular repair...

 A regional quality improvement effort aimed at increasing the use of preoperative beta-blocker (BB) usage to help prevent postoperative myocardial infarction (POMI) was revealed today at the 64th Vascular Annual Meeting® presented by the Society for Vascular Surgery®. This quality improvement effort was implemented at 11 centers participating in participating in the Vascular Study Group of New England (VSGNE) from 2003 through 2008. Prospective data were collected from BB usage of less than one month preoperative (P) vs...

 Vascular surgery may be accompanied by cardiovascular complications, like ventricular tachyarrhythmia (VT). Though, these arrhythmias initially might be asymptomatic, they can lead to increased risk for late sudden cardiac death after surgery. Researchers from the Netherlands believe that cardiac high-risk patients with new-onset perioperative VT might benefit from preemptive cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) implantation in addition to optimal focused medical therapy...

 Experts from Johns Hopkins Medicine hosted a press conference following a continuing medical education program on the epidemiology of head injury in professional football. The program was an evidence-based review of traumatic brain injury in the sport. The objectives of the conference on Traumatic Brain Injury in Professional Football: An Evidence-Base Perspective was to assess the current scientific knowledge on this subject and to make recommendations for the future research needed to answer the remaining questions regarding the diagnosis and treatment of traumatic brain injury (TBI)...