The rising telemedicine market has led to some physicians worrying that the practice will be steered in a wrong direction. Physicians should be actively involved in defining practice guidelines for telemedicine and communicating them to the public.

For patients beginning treatment with continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD), it's not clear whether changing the dialysis fluid three or four times per day leads to better outcomes. In this issue of the American Journal of Kidney Diseases, Fang and colleagues describe a prospective, randomized, controlled, open-label study to examine how the number of exchanges affects residual kidney function and survival. The authors found no meaningful differences between the groups, suggesting that while incremental peritoneal dialysis appears safe for incident patients, it is unlikely to better preserve residual kidney function.

Black-white health disparities in the rate of unintended pregnancies among sexually active teens can be reduced by providing education, reducing access barriers, and providing contraception at no cost.

The Heads Up Football (HUF) program was developed to make concussion education available to coaches of youth football players. This study examined the association between community socioeconomic status (SES) and HUF adoption and found implementation of the HUF program was patterned by community-level socioeconomic characteristics. Leagues located in communities with a higher percentage of families living below the poverty line and a smaller percentage of non-Hispanic white residents tended to have leagues with smaller percentages of HUF-certified coaches. These results suggest that relying on voluntary adoption of coach education may result in inequitable implementation.

A joint consensus statement from the American Diabetes Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and others called upon health care providers and investigators to collaborate with patients and their communities to build networks that will allow comprehensive evaluation of youth-onset type 2 diabetes and enable optimal, comprehensive care for adolescents diagnosed with this disease.

Icatibant is a subcutaneously administered bradykinin-B2-receptor antagonist used for on-demand therapy for treating hereditary angioedema attacks. This prospective, multicenter study compared icatibant home self-administration to health care professional supervised administration at medical facilities. Home administration was allowed following two treatments in medical facilities and after training. Nineteen participants received 79 treatments. Time to treatment and attack duration were shorter in the home treatments, with no serious adverse events. The authors concluded that these findings support icatibant as an effective on-demand option for home-based treatment.

Older people living in institutions are more likely to consume greater nonmilk extrinsic sugar content and lower protein and micronutrient levels than their home-dwelling counterparts. The institutionalized consumed lower energy intake as well, which is known to indicate inadequate nutrient intake. This Finnish study points to a need for healthier, nutritiously dense foods for the elderly.

A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found a 211% increase in thyroid cancer diagnoses in the US from 1974 to 2013, translating to an average annual increase of 3.6%. Previous studies have suggested higher rates of cancer detection are driving rising incidence, but the researchers believe their study demonstrates a true increase, and they say rising obesity rates and smoking may be driving the trend.

Researchers followed over 130,000 health professionals in the US for up to 32 years and found that regular aspirin users were less likely to die from colon, breast and prostate cancers, and lung cancer among men, compared with nonusers. The findings, presented at the American Association for Cancer Research's annual meeting, showed the biggest mortality risk difference was a nearly 30% reduction for colon cancer.

A Canadian population-based case-control study in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology found patients with asthma had an increased risk of Crohn's disease diagnosis at any age and an ulcerative colitis diagnosis at age 16 or younger or age 40 or older. The findings were based on data for 408,264 patients from 1994 to 2010.

Patients who underwent a weekend appendectomy, acute hernia repair or cholecystectomy at hospitals with electronic operating room scheduling had a 33% lower likelihood of experiencing temporal disparity of care, or the weekend effect, compared with those at hospitals with paper-based scheduling, according to a study in JAMA Surgery. Researchers also found a 35% reduced likelihood of experiencing the weekend effect among hospitals with electronic bed-management systems.

Data from Definitive Healthcare showed that just 1 in 4 physician sites that engage in public health or quality reporting participate in accountable care organizations run by private payers, while only 12% of entities have connected to a statewide or regional health information exchange. ACO and HIE affiliation is most likely among physicians who have adopted technology modules focused on chronic care management and coordination, findings showed.

Researchers found a 73% overall satisfaction rate for hospital stays across children's hospitals in the US, with scores for room quietness varying the most. The findings in Pediatrics, based on Child Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Survey data involving 17,727 parents of hospitalized youths younger than 18, also showed higher overall satisfaction rates in freestanding children's hospitals and children's hospitals within hospitals, compared with pediatric wards within hospitals.