3 New (And Quirky!) Medical Studies

Good news breakthroughs and quirky studies in medicine make for interesting conversation starters. Here, three things to know now.

  • Doctors are starting to use implanted chips in the brain to allow paralyzed people to use mechanical limbs, metal skeletons surrounding their limbs or even their actual limbs.
  • Personalized medicine is also on the way: new drugs and treatments are being tailored to individual patients based on their genes and unique biological makeup. This will be used for such diseases as heart disease, cancer and depression. The future of medical care is targeting individual diseases and delivering the treatment directly to the diseased area and doing so as fast as possible.
  • A recent study from St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto showed that living higher up in a building is associated with lower rates of survival from cardiac arrest. And it is known that a majority of cardiac arrests occur at home. It turns out time is the reason for lower survival rates if you live on a higher floor. Simply put, it takes help longer to arrive.

Dr. Zachary Levine is an assistant professor in the faculty of medicine at McGill University Health Centre and medical correspondent for AM740 (a ZoomerMedia property).

A version of this article appeared in our May 2016 issue with the headline, “Just The Facts,” p. 22.