Your Health

By Janice M. Horowitz

GOOD NEWS

SOMETHING FISHY Many still turn up their noses at eating seafood, but the catch on the end of the line is indeed good for you. One of the first major studies to look at fish-eating women reports that those who consume seafood five times a week have a 50% lower risk of stroke. Reason: fatty acids in fish decrease the "stickiness" of blood, reducing the odds that a clot will form. Herring, salmon and bluefish have the most fatty acids; sole and haddock the least.

BLACK POWER With so much data showing that African Americans have higher death rates from heart disease and other illnesses, it's heartening when research indicates the opposite. A report on 35,000 patients admitted to Veterans Affairs hospitals for common ailments such as diabetes and angina finds that blacks are 25% less likely than whites to die from complications within 30 days. Scientists can't explain the gap, but VA hospitals are one of the few places where blacks and whites have equal access to quality care.

TIME WARP You may think a doctor's visit lasts about as long as it takes to say "co-payment," but a new study finds that the length of visits has actually gone up two minutes since 1989, to 18.3 min. today. Why? Patients know more these days, so they're more likely to chew up time asking questions. Moreover, with managed care, there's pressure on docs to compete for business--and spending time with patients is one way to win them over.

BAD NEWS

DON'T CALL HOME If the electrical interference from cell phones is powerful enough to mess up navigation systems on jets, what does it do to those gizmos in a hospital room? Generally not much, finds a study that tested cell phones against a host of monitors, pumps and other devices. But when a phone was held 2 in. from a mechanical ventilator, the machine shut down and restarted on its own. That's enough, say researchers, to strongly consider banning cell phones in hospital suites.

--By Janice M. Horowitz

Sources: Good News--1 & 2 JAMA (1/17/01); New England Journal of Medicine (1/18/01). Bad News--Mayo Clinic (1/01)