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The problem of antibiotic resistance tends to reach public consciousness in a scattershot manner — when ground turkey is recalled because it’s tainted with salmonella that can’t be treated by common drugs, for example. But it’s hard to get a comprehensive picture of the extent to which certain infections have become impervious to treatment.

More heart-attack patients now than five years ago are getting a potentially life-saving procedure to open blocked arteries within the recommended time  frame, a new study shows.

The so-called “door-to-balloon” time refers to how long it takes for heart attack patients who need an angioplasty  — an opening of the blocked artery using a catheter — to receive one once they’ve gotten to the hospital. The recommendation is to get the procedure within 90 minutes.

Viagra Protection: A federal judge ruled yesterday that a Pfizer patent on the erectile-dysfunction treatment Viagra is valid and enforceable, protecting the blockbuster drug against generic competition until 2019, the WSJ reports. Teva Pharmaceutical had proposed a generic version of the drug, arguing that certain claims of that 2019 Pfizer patent were invalid, the paper says.

Ask anyone who’s spent time in the hospital — patients get a lot of blood taken over the course of their stay.

Hospital emergency departments are turning to a number of strategies to reduce wait times, amid growing concern about  patients who leave without being seen, today’s Informed Patient column reports.

Leaving without treatment can lead to lost revenue for hospitals and health risks for patients. Long wait times are the main factor cited by patients for leaving without getting care.

Neonatal intensive care units around the country are participating in quality programs to improve care for the most vulnerable babies, today’s Informed Patient column reports.

Too many people are getting blood transfusions they don’t need.

That’s the word from an HHS advisory committee meeting earlier this month, the Associated Press reports. While transfusions are certainly called for in some circumstances — trauma, to name one — there are alternatives to routine transfusions for certain conditions and operations.

The Institute of Medicine’s new report on preventing obesity in children from birth to age 5 makes a number of reasonable but hardly surprising recommendations: parents should regularly monitor children’s growth, boost their physical activity and encourage healthful diets.

One recommendation that caught the Health Blog’s eye was the committee’s emphatic endorsement of breastfeeding –  exclusively for the first six months and then with complementary food until the child is at least 1 year old.