News Briefs: Week of Feb. 8-12

This roundup includes the following news briefs:

The FDA has widened its approval of the statin rosuvastatin, which is marketed as Crestor, to include patients who have not been diagnosed with heart disease but are considered to be at risk.

The agency said those considered at risk are men ages 50 and older and women 60 and older who have an elevated amount of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein in their blood and at least one other risk factor, such as smoking, high blood pressure, a family history of heart disease or low levels of HDL cholesterol.

The new indication is based on the results of a two-year study of nearly 18,000 patients. Rosuvastatin manufacturer AstraZeneca said in a news release that study participants who received the drug had significantly reduced risks of heart attack (54 percent) and stroke (48 percent) compared with patients who received a placebo.

Rosuvastatin already had been approved for use in combination with diet and exercise to lower LDL cholesterol and triglycerides. The medication also is approved to slow the progression of atherosclerosis.

A mnemonic device, called CURVES, has been developed by resident physicians and bioethicists at Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics to help medical students assess a patient's ability to make a decision in an emergency.

The acronym stands for Choose and Communicate, Understand, Reason, Value, Emergency and Surrogate. A report on it is published in the February issue of Chest.

Co-author Joseph Carrese, M.D., director of the Program on Ethics in Clinical Practice at the Berman Institute, said in a press release that the memory aid is designed to uphold the bioethical principles of patient autonomy and assurance of benefit.

In life-or-death situations, determining whether a patient has the ability to engage in decision-making can be difficult, he said in the release. The CURVES acronym is easy to learn and can help physicians make a clinical judgment about decision-making capacity during a critical event.

It helps clinicians ask these questions:

HHS has announced plans to create a panel of experts who will identify and fix any potentially harmful unintended consequences of the federal government's push to have the nation's hospitals and physicians implement electronic health records, or EHRs,

In a notice posted Jan. 22 on the Federal Business Opportunities Web site, HHS noted that the intent of Office of the National Coordinator is to implement programs that improve the quality and efficiency of health care. "But good intentions are often not enough. This contract honors the ancient injunction to physicians, 'First, do no harm.'"

HHS has undertaken a myriad of projects involving EHRs, including the announcement of activities related to "meaningful use" of EHRs, the establishment of a nationwide health information infrastructure, creation of state health exchanges, and development of enhanced privacy and security measures.