All the News That’s Fit: Smartwatch saves, bacterial weight and hospital ownership correlations

For The Union-Tribune

Apple of my I

Over the last decade, Apple has regularly increased the number of health-related features on its popular smartwatch. Aside from the now-pedestrian ability to count steps, the watches purportedly can spot possible atrial fibrillation (an irregular heart rhythm) and sleep apnea.

The latest featured flags hypertension or high blood pressure, a condition that affects approximately half of all American adults and, if untreated, can lead to more serious ailments such as cardiovascular disease, dementia and kidney problems.

So does the watch do what Apple claims? A recent clinical study of 2,200 without a hypertension diagnosis found that the watch catches less than half of the users who actually have hypertension.

According to reporting from STAT, that’s an acceptable rate that minimizes false positives yet encourages people to pay closer attention to their health.

“If there are reliable devices that the FDA will approve and we can continue to follow with real world data, that may increase the catchment of individuals willing to find out if blood pressure is an issue for them,” Ami Bhatt, chief innovation officer for the American College of Cardiology, told STAT. “It is a step in the right direction for population health.”

Body of knowledge

The total weight of bacteria in the human body is approximately half a pound or roughly 3 percent of a 155-pound person. That’s total wet mass. If you remove bacterial water weight, the total is between 50 and 100 grams, the equivalent of a medium-size tomato, small bar of soap, four AA batteries or a small hamster.

Get me that. Stat!

After hospitals are acquired by private equity firms, patient deaths in the emergency room rise by roughly 13 percent, according to a new study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. At the same time, full-time staff and salary expenditures are reduced by nearly 12 percent and 17 percent, respectively.

The findings track with an earlier study that found complications spiked 25 percent in hospitals bought by private equity.

Counts

99 — Percentage of people who suffered a heart attack, heart failure or stroke who had at least one of four risk factors for cardiovascular disease: hypertension, high cholesterol or high blood sugar levels or current or former smokers.

Source: Journal of the American College of Cardiology

Doc talk

Polypharmacy — A term that describes taking multiple medications. Roughly 40 percent of Americans take more than one prescription drug daily; 24 percent take four or more. One-third of adults in their 60s and 70s take five or more.

Mania of the week

Ecdemomania — an abnormal compulsion to wander. (Readers of this column have an abnormal compulsion to wonder.)

Best medicine

Doctor to patient: “I have some good news and some bad news. I’ll start with the bad news.”

Patient: “Why?”

Doctor: “I can give the good news to your widow.”

Observation

“I’m killing time while I wait for life to shower me with meaning and happiness.”

— American cartoonist Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes) (1958-)

Medical history

This week in 1935, the first modern surgery on the frontal lobes for treatment of mental disorders was performed by Egas Moniz at Santa Marta Hospital in Lisbon, Portugal. Moniz injected absolute alcohol into the frontal lobes of a mental patient through two holes drilled in the skull. Moniz later used a technique that severed neurons and led to the prefrontal lobotomy techniques of the1940s. Moniz was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1949 for his work, but the radical surgery fell out of favor when psychoactive medications became available.

Self-exam

True or false: Veins look blue because the unoxygenated blood in them is blue.

False. Red portions of the visible light spectrum easily penetrate skin and become absorbed by hemoglobin in the blood. Blue light scatters when it hits skin and gets reflected back to your eye, causing veins to appear blue.

Last words

“I’d rather die watching football than in bed with my boots off.”

— Bert Bell (1895-1959), founding owner of the Philadelphia Eagles football team and commissioner of the National Football League. Bell was true to his word, dying of a heart attack while watching an Eagles game that day.

LaFee is vice president of communications for the Sanford Burnham Prebys research institute.