Daily Rounds: Telemedicine Success; ET Defunding; Jump In Mentally Ill Seniors; Love & Cancer

UMass Memorial study finds telemedicine improved ICU care - White Coat Notes - Boston.com "Seriously ill patients at UMass Memorial Medical Center suffered fewer complications and were less likely to die when they were monitored by doctors working in a remote "eICU," some of the first evidence that telemedicine can improve on care provided at the bedside. Intensive care specialists who oversaw the hospital's intensive care units from a low-rise office building three miles away improved care by essentially acting as a second set of eyes for the on-site doctors and nurses, found a study published online today by the Journal of the American Medical Association." (boston.com)

If E.T. Phones, Will We Hear? SETI Loses Key Funding : NPR For more than 50 years, scientists at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute — SETI — have been listening for communications from far-off planets. Now, funds are proving just as elusive as alien signals. (npr.org)

State study finds wide variation in C-section rates at hospitals - The Boston Globe "About 1 in 3 pregnant women in the state delivered by caesarean section that year, compared with 1 in 5 in 1997. Yet there has been no corresponding decline in infant mortality rates, causing many to question the rationale behind the increase. Standard caesareans cost about $3,500 more, on average, than a vaginal delivery, according to the March of Dimes, an advocacy and research group that helped organize the conference." (boston.com)

Preparing for a groundswell of mental illness in the elderly - latimes.com" In a study at Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu, researchers found a significant increase in the number of elderly patients with mental illness coming to the emergency room in recent years, including a 30% jump from 2008 to 2009. Many of these patients were brought in by exasperated family members of other caregivers who were overwhelmed or exhausted or by nursing-home caregivers who were unable to deal with violence or other severe symptoms, said Dr. Brett Y. Lu, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Hawaii."  (Los Angeles Times)

Arc of Life and Love, Unbent by Treatment - NYTimes.com (nytimes.com) "They spent the next two years going to medical appointments together. For two years every scan was clear. Mr. Snow was “N.E.D.” — no evidence of disease.Until December 2008, when a routine PET scan found lesions in his right lung, meaning that the melanoma had spread and was now Stage 4 — usually a terminal diagnosis. In January 2011 his oncologist told the couple that they had exhausted all options....The rest is a story of love that includes wedding plans, drug trials, budding careers, unexpected tragedy and hope in the face of insurmountable odds."