Orshe

Here’s what’s making health news this morning:

J&J Study May Support Wider Use of Cancer Drug (WSJ): A clinical trial of Johnson & Johnson’s new drug Zytiga, already approved for late-stage prostate-cancer patients who have previously used chemotherapy, finds the drug also improved survival in men who hadn’t undergone chemo.

If you developed a seriously painful toothache, would you head to the emergency room to get it taken care of?

In an ideal world, probably not. But lacking access to regular care from a dentist, an estimated 830,590 Americans sought help for their dental ailments in the E.R. in 2009, according to a report released yesterday from the Pew Center on the States.

According to the Charter on Medical Professionalism, physicians are supposed to be honest with their patients. So does that always happen?

In a word: no. A survey of 1,891 doctors published in the journal Health Affairs finds a significant percentage have been less than completely forthright with patients in the past year, including avoiding disclosure of medical errors and giving a too-rosy prognosis.

Doctors who need to drop pounds themselves may be less likely to bring up the topic of weight loss with their obese patients, a new study suggests.

The study, published in the journal Obesity, covered 498 primary-care physicians. Of them, 47% were normal-weight, 38% were overweight and 15% were obese, based on their body mass index.

Heart patients may be nervous or anxious about having sex, but most of them can do so safely — and they shouldn’t be afraid to bring up the topic with their doctor.

So says the American Heart Association in its first scientific statement on sexual activity and cardiovascular disease, published online by Circulation.

Even a small gap in Medicaid coverage can have consequences for diabetics, new research suggests.

The study looked at 3,384 diabetes patients who received medical care at 50 clinics in Oregon from 2005-2007. The care was mostly free, but some recommended diagnostic tests and other services — including cholesterol screening, HbA1c testing to determine blood-sugar control and the flu shot — required a small co-pay.

New programs are underway to help nurses cope with compassion fatigue, an occupational hazard for caregivers that also puts patients at risk of substandard care, today’s Informed Patient column reports.

Though the intense emotional demands on nurses are as old as the profession itself, researchers have only in recent years begun to study the effects of compassion fatigue, a form of burnout compounded by secondary traumatic stress.

Double Duty?: Research published in the journal Cancer finds that among a group of middle-aged men, statin use was associated with a lower risk of dying from prostate cancer, Reuters Health reports. The study, which covered 760 men, most of them white, can’t prove that statin use caused the lower risk of death, Reuters says.