Artificial Intelligence May Not Be Living Up To Initial Hype But It Is Becoming Crucial Part Of Health Care

Stat: Artificial Intelligence May Not Be Curing Cancer, But It's Changing Medicine
As recently as a year ago, artificial intelligence was still an amorphous concept in medicine. Almost every major hospital was tinkering with it, but hype about algorithms replacing doctors — or curing cancer — was outrunning reality. Now many hospitals are moving swiftly to incorporate the technology into daily practice, promising to harness patient data to improve certain aspects of care and make medical services cheaper and more efficient. (Ross, 5/11)

Stat: New Cancer Drugs Quickly Prescribed, But More Real-World Data Needed
Cancer drugs that unleash a patient’s immune system to attack tumors have rapidly won accelerated approval from the Food and Drug Administration. These checkpoint inhibitors have also quickly gained acceptance from oncologists. That’s the goal of fast-track approval granted by the Food and Drug Administration to Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Opdivo and Merck’s Keytruda — to speed drugs to people who have not found success with other cancer therapies. (Cooney, 5/10)

The Washington Post: Why Kids And Teens May Face Far More Anxiety These Days
When it comes to treating anxiety in children and teens, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook are the bane of therapists' work. “With (social media), it's all about the self-image — who's 'liking' them, who's watching them, who clicked on their picture,” said Marco Grados, associate professor of psychiatry and clinical director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital. “Everything can turn into something negative ... [K]ids are exposed to that day after day, and it's not good for them.” (Nutt, 5/10)

The Washington Post: Juuling: If You Don’t Know What It Is, Ask Your Kids
At a high school in Maryland’s capital city of Annapolis, the principal ordered doors removed from bathrooms to keep students from sneaking hits in the stalls. A school system in New Jersey installed detectors in its high schools to digitally alert administrators to students looking for their next “rip.” And recently in Fairfax County, students broke into Virginia vape shops looking to score some nicotine. (Bui, 5/10)

Los Angeles Times: Fatal Falls Are On The Rise For America’s Senior Citizens
Fatal falls are on the rise in the United States, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2016, a total of 29,668 Americans ages 65 and older died as a result of a fall. In other words, falls ended the lives of 61.6 out of every 100,000 senior citizens that year. Back in 2007, there were 47 fall-related deaths for every 100,000 senior citizens. (Kaplan, 5/11)

The New York Times: Antibiotics May Raise The Risk For Kidney Stones
The prevalence of kidney stones in the United States has increased 70 percent since the 1970s, and a new report suggests that the use of oral antibiotics may be part of reason. The study, in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, used health records of 13.8 million patients of general practitioners in Britain. The researchers had 25,981 people with kidney stones matched for sex and age with 259,797 controls. They tracked antibiotic exposure three to 12 months before the diagnosis. (Bakalar, 5/10)

The Washington Post: David Goodall: For Assisted Suicide, 104-Year-Old Went From Australia To Switzerland
On his final day, before he went to a Swiss clinic to die, David Goodall spoke about his 104 years of life — and his scheduled death. The Australian scientist, who had traveled to Switzerland to end his life because euthanasia isn't legal in his homeland, answered questions about his well-publicized plans for an assisted suicide: Did he want to eat anything in particular for his last meal? He didn't know. Did he want any special song played at his bedside? He wasn't sure — but if he had to choose one, it would be the final movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. (Bever, 5/10)

Cincinnati Enquirer: Motherhood: How Changing C-Section Rates Are Changing Mothers And Children
In 2016, about 32 percent of babies were born via C-section, according to the most recent data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's practically one in three births, up slightly from 2005. (Motsinger and Sparling, 5/10)

Kaiser Health News: Living Apart Together: A New Option For Older Adults
Three years ago, William Mamel climbed a ladder in Margaret Sheroff’s apartment and fixed a malfunctioning ceiling fan. “I love that you did this,” Sheroff exclaimed as he clambered back down. Spontaneously, Mamel drew Sheroff to him and gave her a kiss.“I kind of surprised her.  But she was open to it,” he remembered. (Graham, 5/11)