Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Prevention Leading to Fewer Heart Deaths, Inaccuracy of Translated Prescriptions Named Best/Worst Prevention Ideas of the Week
Posted by Partnership for Prevention at 9:03 AMThe positive impact improved treatment and more effective preventive measures are having on the death rate from coronary heart disease was named the “Best Prevention Idea of the Week,” while prescription labels inaccurately translated into Spanish was named the “Worst Prevention Idea of the Week."
The “Best/Worst” awards are announced each week in “Prevention Matters,” the blog of Partnership for Prevention. Nominees are submitted by Partnership staff as well as the general public, and are voted on by the staff. Partnership for Prevention is a nonpartisan organization of business, nonprofit and government leaders who are working to make evidence-based disease prevention and health promotion a national priority. More information is available at http://www.prevent.org/.
BEST
Prevention Gets Credit for Fewer Heart Deaths
In Canada, according to a study in the May 12 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the death rate from coronary heart disease in the province of Ontario fell by 35 percent from 1994 to 2005.
"The overall good news is that coronary heart mortality continued to go down despite people growing older," said study author Dr. Harindra C. Wijeysundera, a cardiologist at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre Schulich Heart Centre in Toronto.
WORST
Translated prescriptions often wrong
Pharmacies that print prescription labels translated into Spanish often issue inaccurate or confusing instructions that could be potentially hazardous to a patient's health, according to a report in the May issue of Pediatrics journal. Researchers looked at 76 medicine labels generated by 13 different computer programs that many pharmacies use to make translations and found an overall error rate of 50 percent.
"It's not surprising, and it's something I experience in practice every day," said Dr. Alejandro Clavier, who works at Esperanza Health Center in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood on the Southwest Side.