According to information from a recent study, the newer CHA₂DS₂-VASc score might be better at assessing the stroke risks in AF patients than the older CHADS_2. This is particularly true in patients who have a lower stroke risk than others.

The lead author of the study, Dr. Jonas Bjerring Oleson of the Copenhagen University Hospital Gentofte, Hellerup, Denmark, has said that while AF patients who are at high risk of having a stroke need anticoagulation (through medications like Multaq), the conflict arises when trying to define the low risk patients who don’t need anticoagulation because the guidelines are different for each country.

In the United States, the guidelines see the low risk group as those patients who have a score of zero on the CHADS₂ scale. In Europe, however, the newer CHA₂DS₂-VASc score is being used to define low-risk patients. This causes more subdivides than the CHADS₂ zero score when it comes to the many risk categories. Oleson has also stated that “a CHADS₂ score of zero included CHA₂DS₂-VASc scores of zero to 3 and that a CHADS₂ score of 1 included CHA₂DS₂-VASc scores of 1 to 4.”

What this information shows is that the newer CHA₂DS₂-VASc score is more in-depth than the older CHADS score, which may make it more reliable in terms of stroke risks for AF patients. This is significant because medications like Multaq, Warfarin and Rivaroxaban are used as an anticoagulant medication to ward off strokes. Multaq has long been linked to various side effects including liver failure and a worsening of the heart condition. Multaq is made by Sanofi-Aventis. Some deaths even occurred during one PALLAS study that forced a PALLAS clinical trial to be halted. The PALLAS study was meant to see if Multaq could be used as a treatment for permanent AF.

If you or a loved one has suffered from liver failure or a worsening heart condition after being treated with Multaq, contact the attorney’s at Greg Jones today for a free consultation. I am experienced at fighting Multaq lawsuits and may be able to help you recover money for your injuries.

It was announced recently that on April 15, 2012, Sanofi-Aventis’s heart drug Multaq has lost reimbursement in France due to the serious side effects linked to the drug. The Financial Times has even reported that the drug will now face new restrictions in other countries, as well.

Multaq (dronedarone) is an anticoagulant medication that often is given to patients suffering from atrial fibrillation (AF), which causes a fluttering heartbeat and irregular heartbeats. The drug was approved by the FDA in 2009, but by 2011, the FDA added stricter warnings against Multaq after it was discovered that the drug was causing liver failure. By December of 2011, the FDA had Multaq’s labels revised to include the warning that “health care professionals should not prescribe Multaq to patients with permanent atrial fibrillation because of increased risk of death or serious cardiovascular events.”

Those stricter warnings were included after patients participating in the PALLAS study of Multaq started dying and experiencing a worsening of their heart conditions. The PALLAS study was originally intended to see if Multaq could be used to treat patients suffering from permanent AF, since the drug was already approved to treat patients suffering from temporary AF. Since then, doctors rarely prescribe Multaq unless patients are not responding to treatments with other medications.

These days, patients are being advised to take Rivaroxaban and Warfarin in treating their AF and to help them prevent having strokes, which is a common occurrence among AF patients. Some patients are even opting to have catheter ablations instead of taking prescription medications.

If you or a loved one has suffered from liver failure or a worsening heart condition after being treated with Multaq, contact the attorney’s at Greg Jones today for a free consultation. I am experienced at fighting Multaq lawsuits and may be able to help you recover money for your injuries.

Epilepsy research and funding just got an interesting supporter, and it is from the most unexpected of sources… professional baseball teams. Starting on June 1, 2012 to June 18, 2012, baseball Hall of Famers, general managers, coaches and active All-Stars will offer their time and talents to help patients who have epilepsy.

Baseball stars will be allowing their fans to bid on various experiences that will be offered in a joint effort to help raise funds to help “strike out seizures.” This effort is all a part of the S4 Epilepsy Walk that is a popular event that is set to occur on June 9 in Southbury, Conn. It all started with one young woman named Sarah, whose father used his MLB connections to get the teams and players to participate.

“This is the most I’ve ever asked of these guys,” says Sarah’s dad, David Fradkin, who runs a baseball apparel company named Ropes. “For my business it was, ‘Let’s go drink beer.’ For this it was a little more involved. This is for my daughter, and these guys know that they’re helping other people, too.”

The auction is going to help the S4 (Sarah & Southbury Strikeout Seizures) event itself as well as helping CURE (Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy) by providing bidders some rarely seen access to the players’ world in general. The fans are going to be able to bid on things like lunch with Jim Thome, 18 holes of golf with Paul Molitor and Bert Blyleven and a meeting at Fenway Park with Adrian Gonzalez. One of the luckiest bidders will get to assist the manager of the Giants, Bruce Bochy, in filling out his lineup card. Game tips are also being offered by Felix Hernandez and Tom Candiotti in private lessons.

Some of the other baseball big leaguers who will be participating in the event include Chris Carpenter, Tim Wakefield, Cito Gaston, Pat Hentgen, Brian Giles, Bud Black, Eric Wedge, Sandy Alomar Jr., Charles Nagy and Robin Ventura. You can view some of the auction samples up for bidding at (www.s4epilepsywalk.com), but the auction itself will be held at charitybuzz.com.

Epilepsy is a condition that affects people of all ages all across the country. Most are treated with anti-seizure medications like Topamax. Some of the side effects linked to Topamax include birth defects in babies exposed to the drug in-utero. Some of those birth defects linked to Topamax include PPHN, oral clefts, neural tube defects and heart, lung and brain defects.

If your baby was born with any of these birth defects after being exposed to Topamax during gestation, contact Greg Jones today for a free consultation. I am experienced at fighting Topamax lawsuits and may be able to help you recover money for your baby’s injuries.

Patients who have epilepsy are more likely to suffer from schizophrenia as well, according to several studies. And now new studies show that families with a history of epilepsy are also at risk of psychosis. While the results of these latter studies have not been confirmed yet by the scientific community, many researchers are looking into different methods to see if it was possible.

The various studies using different investigative techniques have been able to show that schizophrenic patients who have epilepsy are displaying some similar structural abnormalities in the brain. This suggests that the patients may also share a common etymology, too. As a means of proving this potential, some researchers decided to conduct a population-based study of kids and parents who reside in Helsinki, Finland. The information was taken from two national databases in Finland and included 9,653 families and their 23,404 children.

The people with epilepsy were shown to be 5.5-fold more likely to also have a psychotic disorder of some sort. There was a 6.3-fold increase in patients that had bipolar disorder in particular, and an 8.5-fold increase in patients suffering from schizophrenia. The researchers also found that epilepsy and psychosis were linked in families genetically. While many theories have come up that link epilepsy and psychosis to one another, those studies have generally begun with researchers already believing that epilepsy was toxic to the brain. Now, however, previous genetic and neurodevelopmental evidence is showing that these disorders are linked in a far more complex manner than previously believed.

“Our evidence that epilepsy and psychotic illness may cluster within some families indicates that these disorders may be more closely linked than previously thought. We hope that this epidemiological evidence may contribute to the on-going efforts to disentangle the complex pathways that lead to these serious illnesses,” said Dr. Mary Clarke, first author of the study and lecturer at Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.

Epilepsy is a difficult condition to live with and many drugs are used to try to prevent the seizures which characterize the condition. One of those drugs is Topamax. Topamax can cause birth defects in babies exposed to the drug in-utero. Some of those birth defects linked to Topamax include PPHN, oral clefts, neural tube defects and heat, lung and brain defects.

If your baby was born with any of these birth defects after being exposed to Topamax during gestation, contact Greg Jones today for a free consultation. I am experienced at fighting Topamax lawsuits and may be able to help you recover money for your baby’s injuries

According to researchers from MIT and a team from two Boston hospitals, there is early evidence that shows that a wrist sensor may be promising as a means of measuring the severity of epileptic seizures. This information was posted in this week’s issue of Neurology.

This new study shows that the wrist sensor can measure the severity of epileptic seizures in a manner that is just as good as electroencephalograms (EEGs). This method has the added bonus of doing this without the use of electrodes on the scalp or electrical leads. So far, it is being said that the wrist sensor could collect useful information from patients while they go about their day, all without having to go to the hospital. If these results are confirmed, this device could help patients get medical help a good deal faster when they need it.

Epilepsy is an often debilitating condition that can cause patients serious brain injuries if seizures are not treated quickly. There are many drugs are used to try to prevent the seizures which characterize the condition. One of those drugs is Topamax. Topamax can cause birth defects in babies exposed to the drug in-utero. Some of those birth defects linked to Topamax include PPHN, oral clefts, neural tube defects and heart, lung and brain defects. The drug is also used to treat migraines; most recently it has been included as an active ingredient in the weight loss drug Qnexa. It is not recommended for pregnant women and women thinking of becoming pregnant to use Topamax.

If your baby was born with any of these birth defects after being exposed to Topamax during gestation, contact Greg Jones today for a free consultation. I am experienced at fighting Topamax lawsuits and may be able to help you recover money for your baby’s injuries.

According to information found in a new study published on April 3 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, metabolic syndrome has been linked to a higher risk of patients suffering from a recurrence of atrial fibrillation (AF) after they have a catheter ablation.

This research was conducted by Dr. Sanghamitra Mohanty from University of Texas at Austin and her colleagues, who collected data from 1,496 AF patients who’d had a catheter ablation, 485 of whom also had metabolic syndrome.

After the catheter ablation treatment, both of the groups in the study had persistent AF. Of those patients, 14.4 percent of them had metabolic syndrome to the 12.1 percent of the patients without it. These patients had a cardioversion done as a means of achieving sinus rhythm. However, after 21 months passed the AF came back in 39 percent of the group that had metabolic syndrome. When the researchers looked deeper, they realized that there was a higher failure rate that only occurred in the patients that have nonparoxysmal AF.

“It is reasonable to state with prudence that the mechanism linking metabolic syndrome to a higher recurrence rate in nonparoxysmal AF is mediated via inflammation,” the researchers note. “Why inflammatory markers failed to predict outcomes in patients with paroxysmal AF is not known. But it can be speculated that differential expression of biomarkers due to a lower frequency of associated comorbidities could have resulted in such failure.”

AF is treated with various medications in addition to or in lieu of catheter ablation. One of those medications is Multaq. These days, it seems that Multaq may eventually get recalled once other drugs start to show themselves as safer and more effective. This opinion stems from the fact that Multaq has been linked to liver failure and worsening of the heart condition.

If you or a loved one has suffered from liver failure or a worsening heart condition after being treated with Multaq, contact the attorney’s at Greg Jones today for a free consultation. I am experienced at fighting Multaq lawsuits and may be able to help you recover money for your injuries.

Recent reports from a new meta-analysis about patients who have statins administered to them before having cardiac surgery show they had a significant reduction in their chances of suffering from postoperative atrial fibrillation (AF). This treatment also wound up with patients having much shorter hospital stays in the intensive care unit. When the statins were given preoperative statin therapy there was no change in how short patients’ general hospital stays were, nor did it affect their stroke rates.

This news was published online April 18, 2012 in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. Right now, the investigative team is being cautious about how they choose to interpret the results of this analysis since the patients in the research were mostly treated with atorvastin and had CABG surgery. This made extrapolations to other statins and different types of cardiac surgery hard.

“Nonetheless, it appears reasonable and in compliance with existing guidelines to advocate an intensified preoperative statin treatment, followed by a rigorous postoperative reinitiation regimen, in all hyperlipidemic patients with multiple cardiac risks and coronary heart disease scheduled for cardiac surgery,” wrote Dr. Oliver Liakopoulos of the University of Cologne in Germany.

AF is treated with various medications including Multaq. Multaq is made by Sanofi-Aventis and has been linked to serious side effects like liver failure and a worsening of the heart condition. Those risks are the reason why previous trials of the drug have been halted. These risks are also why the FDA is recommending that Multaq not be used unless all other medications have failed.

If you or a loved one has suffered from liver failure or a worsening heart condition after being treated with Multaq, contact the attorney’s at Greg Jones today for a free consultation. I am experienced at fighting Multaq lawsuits and may be able to help you recover money for your injuries.

According to a new study that was recently published in the journal Neurology, nearly 40 percent of patients who suffer from migraines could see their migraine occurrences cut in half by taking a daily dose of medications including Topamax.

For the time being, most people take over-the-counter painkillers like acetaminophen or ibuprofen as a means of treatment of migraines; however, those pills do little against the actual pain and nausea of migraines after the fact. That is why the American Academy of Neurology and the American Headache Society have published new guidelines that recommend migraine sufferers explore different treatments in preventing the migraines altogether.

“If your migraines are severe, there’s hope for you, and the medicines work,” says Dr. Stephen D. Silberstein of the Jefferson Headache Center at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, who believes that the results from hundreds of different studies show that many of these therapies can lower the number of migraines by at least half.

Topamax is approved for use as an anti-seizure medication, but one of its off-label uses is treating migraines. While this study seems to show that Topamax can help prevent migraines, the study isn’t showing how dangerous the drug can be. Some of the side effects linked to Topamax include birth defects in babies exposed to the drug in-utero like PPHN, oral clefts, neural tube defects and heat, lung and brain defects.

If your baby was born with any of these birth defects after being exposed to Topamax during gestation, contact Greg Jones today for a free consultation. I am experienced at fighting Topamax lawsuits and may be able to help you recover money for your baby’s injuries.

Migraines are a debilitating condition that can be most difficult to live with. That is why people will try almost anything to combat the condition. While Botox has been viewed by some as a means of preventing migraines, a new study states that it might only help if a person has chronic migraines — and, even in that case, the positive effect is only “mild to moderate.” The study also showed that Botox was useless in treating patients’ episodic migraines and chronic tension-type headaches.

“Our analyses suggest that botulinum toxin A may be associated with improvement in the frequency of chronic migraine and chronic daily headaches, but not with improvement in the frequency of episodic migraine, chronic tension-type headaches or episodic tension-type headaches,” wrote the authors of the review.

However, lead author Dr. Jeffrey Jackson, professor of medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, said, “If I was having more than 15 migraines a month, I’d give Botox a try. It has few side effects. And, if it helps, you can go 90 days without as many headaches and without daily side effects.”

The results of the review are published in the April 25 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Other medications have been used to treat migraines that are proving to be a moderate success. One of those medications is the anti-seizure drug Topamax. While the drug has been proven to help in treating migraines, the drug is also linked to serious side effects. Some of the side effects linked to Topamax include birth defects in babies exposed to the drug in-utero like PPHN, oral clefts, neural tube defects and heat, lung and brain defects. Due to these birth defects risks, Topamax is not recommended for women who are pregnant or thinking of becoming pregnant.

If your baby was born with any of these birth defects after being exposed to Topamax during gestation, contact Greg Jones today for a free consultation. I am experienced at fighting Topamax lawsuits and may be able to help you recover money for your baby’s injuries.

According to the findings of a new study, patients suffering from atrial fibrillation (AF) who are admitted to the hospital on weekends have a tendency to stay in the hospital longer. The study also found that AF patients are also less likely to have a cardioversion, and they are more likely to die while in the hospital than similar patients who have been admitted during the week.

“When they get admitted (with AF), we need to nip it in the bud quickly so that it doesn’t become a chronic problem,” Dr. Abhishek Deshmukh, University of Arkansas-Little Rock, told heartwire .

“This is a big problem in atrial fibrillation. We showed a small difference, but a significant difference, in outcomes between weekend and weekday,” he said. “This is just a step toward us optimizing the care of atrial fibrillation better (as has been done with) the care of other acute critical conditions such as MI and stroke.”

Results of the study were published online April 5, 2012 in the American Journal of Cardiology.

For their study, Deshmukh and colleagues analyzed the discharge records of 86,497 patients who had been diagnosed with AF in the 2008 database of the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) and made an outcome comparison of the patients who were brought in on the weekend against those who were admitted during the week. What they found was that patients that were admitted over the weekend had cardioversion procedures half as often as those patients that were admitted during the week. Another interesting finding from this study is that the AF patients in the urban hospitals didn’t die as much as those patients in the other hospitals. However, it should be noted that the hospital’s size was not a factor on the in-hospital mortality rates.

AF patients just can’t seem to catch a break these days. With medications like Multaq causing more harm than good and weekend hospital visits causing deaths, things are looking bleak indeed. Medications like Multaq have been under fire lately after the drug was proven to cause liver failure and a worsening of the heart condition. The drug is so dangerous that most doctors won’t prescribe the drug unless all other drugs don’t work.

If you or a loved on has developed liver failure or a worsening of the heart condition after taking Multaq, contact attorney Greg Jones today for a free consultation. I am experienced at fighting Multaq lawsuits and may be able to help you recover money for your injuries.