Participating in a home telerehabilitation program improves lower-body physical functioning after a stroke, as well as increasing the likelihood of maintaining a regular fitness routine, enhancing money-management skills and improving the capability to prepare meals and take care of personal needs such as bathing, according to a recent study.¹

CHICAGO — A government report shows that delays in integrating VA and DoD IT systems at the James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center (FHCC) in Chicago have proven costly for the jointly-run facility. VA officials responded, however, that lessons learned during this process may prove helpful in the attempt to integrate systems on a national level.

ROCKVILLE, MD — Morphine has met its match — and then some. After 200 years as the gold standard in battlefield analgesia, morphine is increasingly giving way to ketamine, a phencyclidine (PCP) derivative initially used in veterinary medicine.

BETHESDA, MD — For patients with intractable complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), treatment with high doses of ketamine may offer a cure or dramatically reduce pain and improve functioning. Better still, this innovative treatment soon might be available on an outpatient basis.

LOS ANGELES — The approval last year of the first new drugs for treatment of hepatitis C (HCV) in 20 years substantially increased the rate of virologic cure for patients with the most common form of the disease. At the same time, the complex regime of medications has made adherence more difficult, increased the likelihood of development of treatment-resistant strains of HCV and made the role of the pharmacist in HCV management more important than ever.