While many might prefer to not think about dying, healthcare professionals throughout the United States are encouraging patients and their families to do just that during a national awareness campaign April 16-22 that promotes the importance of completing an advance directive for healthcare.

Alpha-gal allergy has commonly been referred to as “the red meat” allergy, but doctors at the Vanderbilt Asthma, Sinus and Allergy Program (ASAP) helped uncover that not only red meat, but some medications, can contain alpha-gal.

Treatment of anemia caused by chronic kidney disease or other diseases often requires repeated — and costly — injections or infusions of an artificial form of the hormone erythropoietin (EPO), which stimulates production of red blood cells.

Officials with Vanderbilt University Medical Center announced the creation of a wholly owned subsidiary, Nashville Biosciences, to harness the power of its extensive genomic and bioinformatics resources to advance drug and diagnostics discovery and development.

A Vanderbilt study of more than 1,000 intensive care unit patients around the country, nearly three-fourths of whom experienced delirium, showed that many drugs given to sedate patients in the ICU are actually increasing their chances of — and duration of — delirium instead of helping them recover.

The cognitive impairment that affects patients who survive a stay in the ICU does not appear to have a similar mechanism to Alzheimer’s disease, Vanderbilt researchers have discovered.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2011 in the United States there were almost half a million Clostridium difficile infections, and one in 11 patients 65 or older with a healthcare-associated C. diff infection died within 30 days of diagnosis.