New York – Night time hemodialysis lasting for 8 hours thrice a week, significantly reduce the risk of mortality compared to conventional 4-hour, thrice-weekly hemodialysis, according to results of a prospective study.

“Longer life with less morbidity and with higher quality is possible with longer dialysis sessions performed at night in hemodialysis patients,” study leader and presenter Dr. Ercan Ok said.
In the study, 224 dialysis patients, average aged 45 were switched to overnight 8-hour dialysis for 1 year. “After an adaptation period of a month, all patients slept during the night without any complaint,” Dr. Ok noted.

When these 224 dialysis patients compared with conventional 4-hour thrice-weekly dialysis patients, results shows that the longer dialysis sessions produced far better results, with a 78% reduction in the mortality rate during the study.

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MUNICH, Germany – Women naturally become heart patient much later than men, but not if they smoke, researchers said Tuesday. In fact, smoking, in women can cause heart attack fourteen years earlier than women who don’t smoke.

For men, the gap is not as big as in women. Male smokers have risk of heart attacks about six years earlier than non-smoker men.

“This is not a minor difference,” said Dr. Silvia Priori. “Women need to realize they are losing much more than men when they smoke,” she said.

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