Shorts: Drones, FIT test, COVID

August 1, 2024

A.    FIT testing associated with lower death rate

Researchers identified 1,103 patients of Kaiser Permanente (California) who died of colorectal cancer and matched these with 9,608 who did not die of colorectal cancer. (Patients with incomplete information were excluded) They found that death from colorectal cancer was 33% less frequent among those who got at least one fecal immunochemical test (FIT) in the previous five years. One worrisome note: over 20% of those with a positive FIT test did not have a follow-up colonoscopy within one year. This is further evidence that FIT tests save lives.

Here’s a link to a full note on employer considerations on colorectal cancer screening.

B.    COVID and Type 1 Diabetes

Children in Germany who had been identified as having presymptomatic Type 1 Diabetes (persistent positive autoantibodies) were followed both before and after the COVID pandemic. The rate of conversion to diabetes was 6.4 per 100 person years before the pandemic, and increased to 12.1 per 100 person years during the pandemic. Those who tested positive for COVID were more likely to convert to diabetes (14.0 per 100 person years) compared to those during the pandemic who did not test positive for COVID (8.6 conversions per 100 person years). This provides further evidence of the value of COVID-19 vaccinations for children. This research was published in JAMA.

 C.    Pandemic stringency and eating disorders

COVID pandemic restrictions have been widely associated with children falling behind educationally. Researchers in JAMA Pediatrics showed that more restrictive pandemic restrictions were also associated with an increase in hospitalization for eating disorders of adolescent girls in Canada. They evaluated pandemic restriction stringency by 4-week period by province, using a metric created by the Bank of Canada. Eating disorder hospitalizations over the 2 ½ year study period were between 5-11% higher with 10% greater pandemic restrictions; the increase in eating disorder hospitalizations was the worst around January, 2021. Social isolation can reduce transmission of a respiratory infectious disease, but has many adverse effects, especially on children.

D.    Drones can improve emergency response time

KFF reports that Forsyth, NC emergency services will dispatch a drone with an automated external defibrillator (AED) when notified of an unresponsive person. These defibrillators allow even an untrained bystander to shock someone back to life if they were unresponsive due to certain kinds of heart rhythms which are generally associated with a heart attack or heart disease. Emergency services in Tampa will send a drone with an AED as well as naloxone (Narcan) in case the person is unresponsive due to an opioid overdose. Access to defibrillators and naloxone can save lives.

Employers can save lives by making both AEDs and naloxone available in the workplace. Here are past posts on AEDs and naloxone in the workplace.

Thanks for reading.  You can find previous posts in the Employer Coverage archive

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Illustration by Dall-E

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