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During and immediately after the recent recession, national health expenditures grew exceptionally slowly. During 2009-11 per capita national health spending grew about 3 percent annually, compared to an average of 5.9 percent annually during the previous ten years. Policy experts disagree about whether the slower health spending growth was temporary or represented a long-term shift. This study examined two factors that might account for the slowdown: job loss and benefit changes that shifted more costs to insured people. Based on an examination of data covering more than ten million enrollees with health care coverage from large firms in 2007-11, we found that these enrollees' out-of-pocket costs increased as the benefit design of their employer-provided coverage became less generous in this period. We conclude that such benefit design changes accounted for about one-fifth of the observed decrease in the rate of growth. However, we also observed a slowdown in spending growth even when we held benefit generosity constant, which suggests that other factors, such as a reduction in the rate of introduction of new technology, were also at work. Our findings suggest cautious optimism that the slowdown in the growth of health spending may persist-a change that, if borne out, could have a major impact on US health spending projections and fiscal challenges facing the country.

We recently demonstrated the presence of caveolae in human airway smooth muscle (ASM) and the contribution of caveolin-1 to intracellular calcium ([Ca 2ϩ ]i) regulation. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that caveolin-1 regulates ASM contractility. We examined the role of caveolins in force regulation of porcine ASM under control conditions as well as TNF-␣-induced airway inflammation. In porcine ASM strips, exposure to 10 mM methyl-␤-cyclodextrin (CD) or 5 M of the caveolin-1 specific scaffolding domain inhibitor peptide (CSD) resulted in time-dependent decrease in force responses to 1 M ACh. Overnight exposure to the cytokine TNF-␣ (50 ng/ml) accelerated and increased caveolin-1 expression and enhanced force responses to ACh. Suppression of caveolin-1 with small interfering RNA mimicked the effects of CD or CSD. Regarding mechanisms by which caveolae contribute to contractile changes, inhibition of MAP kinase with 10 M PD98059 did not alter control or TNF-␣-induced increases in force responses to ACh. However, inhibiting RhoA with 100 M fasudil or 10 M Y27632 resulted in significant decreases in force responses, with lesser effects in TNF-␣ exposed samples. Furthermore, Ca 2ϩ sensitivity for force generation was substantially reduced by fasudil or Y27632, an effect even more enhanced in the absence of caveolin-1 signaling. Overall, these results indicate that caveolin-1 is a critical player in enhanced ASM contractility with airway inflammation. caveolae; lung; inflammation; cytokine; MAP kinase; RhoA; small interfering RNA CAVEOLAE, FLASK-SHAPED PLASMA membrane invaginations rich in cholesterol and sphingolipids, express any of three caveolin proteins (caveolin-1, caveolin-2, and/or caveolin-3). By virtue of caveolar expression of agonist receptors, ion channels, and other membrane proteins, as well as the association of caveolins with intracellular proteins, the role of caveolins as organizers and facilitators of signal transduction is now well recognized (12,23,38,62,67,81,82).Multiple studies including our own (16,28,33,61,68,73), have now demonstrated the presence of caveolae and caveolins in airway smooth muscle (ASM

Objective: To characterize the clinical and transthoracic echocardiographic features and 30-day outcomes of hospitalized patients with coronavirus disease 2019 . Methods: Retrospective cohort study that included consecutive inpatients with COVID-19 infection who underwent clinically indicated transthoracic echocardiography at 10 sites in the Mayo Clinic Health System between March 10 and August 5, 2020. Echocardiography was performed at bedside by cardiac sonographers according to an abbreviated protocol. Echocardiographic results, demographic characteristics, laboratory findings, and clinical outcomes were analyzed. Results: There were 179 patients, aged 59.8AE16.9 years and 111 (62%) men; events within 30 days occurred in 70 (39%) patients, including prolonged hospitalization in 43 (24%) and death in 27 (15%). Echocardiographic abnormalities included left ventricular ejection fraction less than 50% in 29 (16%), regional wall motion abnormalities in 26 (15%), and right ventricular systolic pressure (RVSP) of 35 or greater mm Hg in 44 (44%) of 101 in whom it was measured. Myocardial injury, defined as the presence of significant troponin level elevation accompanied by new ventricular dysfunction or electrocardiographic abnormalities, was present in 13 (7%). Prior echocardiography was available in 36 (20%) patients and pre-existing abnormalities were seen in 28 (78%) of these. In a multivariable age-adjusted model, area under the curve of 0.81, prior cardiovascular disease, troponin level, D-dimer level, and RVSP were related to events at 30 days. Conclusion: Bedside Doppler assessment of RVSP appears promising for short-term risk stratification in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 infection undergoing clinically indicated echocardiography. Pre-existing echocardiographic abnormalities were common; caution should be exercised in attributing such abnormalities to the COVID-19 infection in this comorbid patient population.

Bundled payment entails paying a single price for all services delivered as part of an episode of care for a specific condition. It is seen as a promising way to slow the growth of health care spending while maintaining or improving the quality of care. To implement bundled payment, policy makers must set base payment rates for episodes of care and update the rates over time to reflect changes in the costs of delivering care and the components of care. Adopting the fee-for-service paradigm of adjusting payments with uniform update rates would be fair and accurate if costs increased at a uniform rate across episodes. But our analysis of 2003 and 2007 US commercial claims data showed spending growth to be highly skewed across episodes: 10 percent of episodes accounted for 82.5 percent of spending growth, and within-episode spending growth ranged from a decline of 75 percent to an increase of 323 percent. Given that spending growth was much faster for some episodes than for others, a situation known as skewness, policy makers should not update episode payments using uniform update rates. Rather, they should explore ways to address variations in spending growth, such as updating episode payments one by one, at least at the outset.

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Production of bowel sounds, established in the 1900s, has limited application in existing patient-care regimes and diagnostic modalities. We review the physiology of bowel sound production, the developments in recording technologies and the clinical application in various scenarios, to understand the potential of a bowel sound recording and analysis device—the phonoenterogram in future gastroenterological practice. Bowel sound production depends on but is not entirely limited to the type of food consumed, amount of air ingested and the type of intestinal contractions. Recording technologies for extraction and analysis of these include the wavelet-based filtering, autoregressive moving average model, multivariate empirical mode decompression, radial basis function network, two-dimensional positional mapping, neural network model and acoustic biosensor technique. Prior studies evaluate the application of bowel sounds in conditions such as intestinal obstruction, acute appendicitis, large bowel disorders such as inflammatory bowel disease and bowel polyps, ascites, post-operative ileus, sepsis, irritable bowel syndrome, diabetes mellitus, neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and neonatal conditions such as hypertrophic pyloric stenosis. Recording and analysis of bowel sounds using artificial intelligence is crucial for creating an accessible, inexpensive and safe device with a broad range of clinical applications. Microwave-based digital phonoenterography has huge potential for impacting GI practice and patient care.

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