INDIANAPOLIS – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Eli Lilly’s Cymbalta (duloxetine HCl) for treatment of generalized anxiety disorder.

“Since generalized anxiety disorder can be a chronic illness, it is important that doctors and their patients find a treatment option that is effective in both the acute and maintenance phase of treatment,” said James M. Martinez, MD, U.S. Medical Director for Cymbalta, in a press release to PR Newswire. “With this additional approval, Cymbalta offers a new option for the maintenance treatment of this often-debilitating condition.” Cymbalta is made by Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) of Indianapolis.

Other headlines in the field of health safety and recall include:

• Is there a history lesson from the swine flu of ’76? As more and more people receive the H1N1 shot, The Washington Post‘s David Brown looks at an earlier vaccine that is casting a public shadow over the attempt to immunize 200 million people in the next few months.
• Top iPhone apps for healthcare pros and their patients listed. Apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch can help healthcare pros provide better treatment, and help individuals lose weight, exercise and manage diabetes, Information Week reports. Apps include Epocrates, which keeps health data; SoundAMP, which turns an iPhone into a hearing aid; and Islet, a diabetic resource.

DALLAS – A new campaign is teaching teens to step in during cardiac arrest using tunes like Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” and Madonna’s “Who’s that Girl” and a MySpace page. The campaign, sponsored by a $1 million grant from the Medtronic Foundation, was developed by the American Heart Association.

Be the Beat teaches 12- to 15-year-olds fun ways to learn the basics of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, better known as CPR, and the basics of using an automated external defibrillator, or AED. Video games, interactive quizzes and 100-beat-per-minute songs can help teach teens and tweens what to do if someone collapses in sudden cardiac arrest. The campaign is quite cheeky; it makes it for “teens” only and even uses the U-2 song “Sunday Bloody Sunday.”

See more at www.americanheart.org, www.medtronic.com or bethebeat.heart.org

RICHMOND – It seems backwards, testing a drug for safety after it has been approved. But some researchers now are beginning to see the benefits.

“Everyone is looking at how can we study drugs post-marketing,” says Jürgen Venitz, MD, Ph.D. and Associate Professor, Department of Pharmaceutics, School of Pharmacy at Virginia Commonwealth University / Medical College of Virginia. (more…)

PRINCETON, N.J. – A new survey sponsored by Novo Nordisk reports that the diabetes population in the United States will almost double over the next 25 years and annual medical spending could hit $336 billion, up from $113 billion today.

The study was published in the December issue of Diabetes Care, sponsored by The National Changing Diabetes Program and commissioned by a team from the University of Chicago. (more…)

WASHINGTON – A massive crib recall will have millions of Americans checking their cribs over the holidays.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in cooperation with Stork Craft Manufacturing Inc., of British Columbia, Canada, announced the voluntary recall of more than 2.1 million Stork Craft drop-side cribs, including about 147,000 Stork Craft cribs with the Fisher-Price logo. The recall involves approximately 1,213,000 beds sold in the U.S. and 968,000 units sold in Canada.

According to Bill Kleinof Noblis Health Innovation’s RASMAS, the problem in general with most cribs today is that there are so many movable parts. Although there are standards for those parts as well as their operation, those parts are subject to improper installation as well as wear. (more…)

LIVONIA, Mich. - TRW Automotive Holdings Corp. announced that it will start production on a next generation Airbag Control Unit. The airbag is designed to allow for the integration of pre-crash occupant safety considerations. It also includes sensors for stability control. TRW will start production with two major vehicle manufacturers in 2012. (more…)

FALLS CHURCH – A leading official in the field of medicine and health information technology will speak at Noblis Dec. 15 at a free breakfast meeting sponsored by the Northern Virginia Technology Council‘s Health Techonology Committee.

Dr. John Loonsk, chief medical officer for CGI Federal, will speak on “Prerequisites for Meaningful Health IT.” Loonsk was the Director for Interoperability and Standards within the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at the Department of Health and Human Services. The talk will address electronic medical records as they relate to federal stimulus legislation and proposed healthcare reform. Questions include: (more…)

ROCHESTER, Minn. – In a major study by the Mayo Clinic, nearly one out of 10 surgeons had reportedly made a major medical error related to burnout in the last three months.

The findings appear today in the online edition of Annals of Surgery. The Mayo Clinic-led study included collaborators from Johns Hopkins and the American College of Surgeons.

In the confidential study, 9 percent percent of U.S. surgeons responding said they made a major error in the three months prior to being surveyed. Over 70 percent attributed the error to themselves rather than a systemic or organizational cause. Results showed that emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and perception personal accomplishments were related to errors was was a surgeon’s “mental quality of life” including depression.

“These results suggest that a surgeon’s personal mental health including burnout may have an effect on quality of care,” says lead author Tait Shanafelt, M.D., in a press release. “Our aim is to encourage more research to find ways to reduce distress among surgeons and to provide better support when errors occur.”

The survey had 7,905 surgeons participating. 700 of them reported making major errors. All participating surgeons also completed standardized survey tools to measure burnout, quality of life and symptoms of depression.

Researchers say they found no relation between errors and the work setting, method of compensation, number of nights on call per week, or hours worked. According to researchers, that finding suggests that reducing work hours for practicing surgeons may have little impact on limiting errors unless burnout is also addressed. The study has limitations, as it relies on self-perception of errors and did not show a causal relationship.

Study authors included Charles Balch, M.D., and Julie Freischlag, M.D., from Johns Hopkins; Gerald Bechamps, M.D., Winchester Surgical Clinic; Tom Russell, M.D., and Paul Collicott, M.D., American College of Surgeons; and Lotte Dyrbye, M.D., Daniel Satele, Paul Novotny, and Jeff Sloan, Ph.D., all from Mayo Clinic. The study was commissioned and supported by the American College of Surgeons. Dr. Bechamps was chairman of the ACS Committee on Physician Competency and Health at the time of the survey. Drs. Freischlag, Balch, and Collicott are all Fellows of the ACS.

PHILADELPHIA – Pediatric immunologist Jordan S. Orange, M.D., Ph.D. of The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has received The Judson Daland Prize for Clinical Investigation. The Daland Prize recognizes outstanding achievements in patient-oriented research, and is awarded by the American Philosophical Society, an organization founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin.

Orange won the award for his contributions to research and treatment of inherited immune deficiency diseases, which include Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome.

Dr. Orange’s work involves the innate immune system, the body’s first defense against life-threatening infections and diseases. His particular research focus is natural killer cells, a major component of the innate immune system, which have an inherent ability to destroy cancer or virus-infected cells.

NATICK, Mass. – Boston Scientific Corporation said that it has received 510(k) clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to market its WallFlex Fully Covered Esophageal Stent for the treatment of malignant esophageal obstructions caused by tumors.

The stent is part of the WallFlex Stent family of self-expanding metal stents which will be available for hands-on demonstration at the GASTRO 2009 conference, to be held November 21-25 in London.

Other news includes:

• Cardinal Health and Patient Safety Technologies today announced that they have entered into a five-year distribution agreement to co-market the SurgiCount Safety-Sponge. The sponge has a counting system to help insure that sponges are not left in patients during surgery.
• New York-based Medco Health Solutions, Inc has a new method patient-centric model that includes training pharmacists to counsel patients and coordinate care.
• Teen singer and actress Demi Lovato is the lastest to be featured in the “Got Milk” campaign by the Milk Processor Education Program. The  “Got Milk” campaign is best known for adults, but the addition of Disney actress (and former Barney star) Lovato signals the program is concerned about milk usage in the teen and pre-teen markets.