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Quality-of-life questions are becoming increasingly important in medical care, especially when it comes to helping patients make decisions about treatments, today’s Informed Patient column reports.

Since the 1970s, researchers have been using quality-of-life measurement tools for a wide variety of medical conditions, primarily in population studies and clinical trials. Outside the U.S. they are often used by national medical systems to help determine payment policies for more costly drugs or treatments.

For patients diagnosed with cancer and other serious diseases, a second opinion can make the difference between getting the right and the wrong care, today’s Informed Patient column reports.

One of the saddest times in someone’s life also appears be a period of increased vulnerability to a heart attack, new research shows.

A study of 1,985 adult heart attack survivors finds that heart-attack risk rises to 21 times higher than normal within the very first day after a loved one has died.

Recent reports of serious injuries and even death tied to hazing rituals has us asking ourselves: How do otherwise sane people participate in this kind of activity?

Plan B became the week’s big health story when, as the WSJ reported, the head of HHS overruled the FDA and blocked the emergency contraceptive pill from being made available to teens under 17 without a prescription.

President Obama joined the fray yesterday, when he said he didn’t influence HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s decision, but agreed with it. (We heard from plenty of you when we asked whether Sebelius was right.)

Here are answers to some basic questions about Plan B.

As anyone who’s had a bedbug problem can tell you, the little critters are awfully good at infesting homes and even entire apartment buildings.

New research suggests that their success springs from an ability to establish new infestations through just one or two insects. Their secret weapon: inbreeding. Unlike most other species, a few original invaders, breeding with their offspring and siblings, can create generations of healthy bedbugs.

(Are you scratching your ankles yet?)

Hospital chaplains are bringing more scientific research to the practice of spiritual care, while physicians are learning to bring spirituality to the practice of medicine, today’s Informed Patient column reports.

Our personal handwashing rules: use hot water and soap, do it after potentially touching something yucky and sing “Happy Birthday” to be sure you’re scrubbing long enough.

Physicians, though, need to know a lot more. And a small study of third-year medical students in Germany finds that they aren’t entirely clear on when handwashing is indicated.

Drug Hospitalizations: New research published in the New England Journal of Medicine finds that blood thinners and diabetes drugs were among the medications most commonly linked to hospitalizations of adults aged 65 and up for adverse drug reactions and accidental overdoses, the WSJ reports. A study author tells the WSJ that dosages for drugs such as the blood thinner warfarin can vary and that patients must be carefully monitored.

At its climax, a woman’s orgasm cascades into 80 different parts of the brain, according to researchers who compiled a unique set of brain scans documenting the female sexual response.