Top news stories from AMA Morning Rounds®: Week of Oct. 7, 2024

Read AMA Morning Rounds®’ most popular stories in medicine and public health from the week of Oct. 7, 2024–Oct. 11, 2024.

The AP (10/4, Murphy) reported, “The fallout from storm damage to a North Carolina factory that makes critical hospital supplies will be felt broadly and could linger, experts say.” Flooding caused “by Hurricane Helene hit a Baxter International plant in North Cove, North Carolina, that makes much of the country’s supply of sterile intravenous, or IV, fluids.” The plant “also makes fluids used by some patients on home kidney dialysis.” Baxter International “had to close the factory” and “started limiting how much supply customers can order, a restriction designed to prevent stockpiling and keep access equal.”

NPR (10/4, Lupkin) reported, “Baxter says it will spare no expense to get the factory back online, but the company doesn’t ‘have a timeline for when operations will be back up and running.’” Work has already started “to get the factory back up and running with about 500 people on site, the company says.”

CNN (10/7, Howard) reports that research has “found that having” the “arm in the wrong position during blood pressure checks—either at home or the doctor’s office—can result in readings ‘markedly higher’ than when” the “arm is in the recommended position: appropriately supported on a table with the middle of the cuff positioned at heart level.” Investigators “found that having” the “arm resting in the lap during a blood pressure reading can lead to an overestimated systolic blood pressure measurement by 3.9 mm Hg and overestimated diastolic reading by 4 mm Hg.” Meanwhile, having the “arm hang by your side can lead to an overestimated systolic reading by 6.5 mm Hg and overestimated diastolic reading by 4.4 mm Hg.” The findings were published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

You may also be interested in: At least 27 errors can take place when measuring blood pressure. How to avoid mistakes and improve BP control.

The Washington Post (10/8, A1, Ajasa, Foster-Frau) reports, “The Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule Tuesday requiring water utilities to replace all lead pipes within a decade, a move aimed at eliminating a toxic threat that continues to affect tens of thousands of American children each year.” The move “also tightens the amount of lead allowed in the nation’s drinking water.” However, “replacing the lead pipes that deliver water to millions of U.S. homes will cost tens of billions of dollars.”

The New York Times (10/8, Montague, Tabuchi) reports the new rule “will protect millions of Americans from exposure to lead, the EPA said.” The regulation “will also protect up to 900,000 infants from having low birth weight, and will prevent up to 200,000 I.Q. points lost among children, among other health benefits, the EPA estimated.”

The AP (10/8, Daly, Phillis) reports, “The new regulation is stricter than one proposed last fall and requires water systems to ensure that lead concentrations do not exceed an ‘action level’ of 10 parts per billion, down from 15 parts per billion under the current standard.” Under the rule, “if high lead levels are found, water systems must inform the public about ways to protect their health, including the use of water filters, and take action to reduce lead exposure while concurrently working to replace all lead pipes.”

CNN (10/9, Goodman) reports COVID-19 “could be a powerful risk factor for heart attacks and strokes for as long as three years after an infection, a large new study suggests.” Researchers found that “people who caught COVID in 2020, before there were vaccines to blunt the infection, had twice the risk of a major cardiac event like a heart attack or stroke or death for almost three years after their illness, compared with the people who didn’t test positive.” If an individual “had been hospitalized for their infection, pointing to a more severe case, the risk of a major heart event...was even greater—more than three times higher—than for people without COVID in their medical records.” The findings were published in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology.

Reuters (10/10, Singh) reports, “Roughly 15.5 million U.S. adults have attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and most of them struggle with gaining access to treatment for the condition, according to data from a U.S. study released on Thursday.” Approximately “one-third of those reporting a diagnosis of ADHD said they had received a prescription for a stimulant drug used to treat it in the previous year, researchers reported in the” CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The study also found that “nearly three quarters of those with a prescription for a stimulant drug reported difficulty getting it filled because the medication was unavailable.”

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