Press Room

Boston - A study published today in JAMA Internal Medicine reveals the best assessment tools available to establish the severity of diagnosed delirium in hospitalized patients. Delirium is a common, serious, and often preventable complication among older adult patients.

Boston—A paper titled “Assessment of the genetic and clinical determinants of fracture risk: genome wide association and mendelian randomization study” appeared today in the British Medical Journal. The paper reports findings from a large international collaboration that identified 15 variations in the genome that are related to the risk of suffering bone fractures, which are a major healthcare problem affecting more than 9 million persons worldwide every year.

BOSTON — Researchers from Hebrew SeniorLife’s Hinda and Arthur Marcus Institute for Aging Research and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have discovered that nursing home residents with advanced dementia are more likely to have advance directives that indicate they did should not get feeding tubes after their proxies viewed a 12-minute video on advance care planning. In addition, when proxies stated comfort was the goal of care, residents were more likely to have advance directives aligned with that goal.

BOSTON — Researchers from Hebrew SeniorLife’s Hinda and Arthur Marcus Institute for Aging Research have discovered that to begin with, proxies are a fairly accurate judge of the length of life left for their loved one with advanced dementia. Secondly, when proxies have judged that their loved one has less than 6 months to live they are more likely to have discussed goals of care with the health care team, and less likely to agree to burdensome interventions.