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MONDAY, Feb. 24, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Americans don't seem to care about the race or sex of emergency room doctors, a new study shows. Participants were asked to rate their satisfaction with a simulated ER visit and the scores were the same whether their doctor was white or black, or a man or a woman. "We were really surprised that even after looking at these data in many different ways, we did not see evidence of racial or gender bias affecting patient satisfaction or confidence. This is not to say that people are bias-free, but it did not appear to enter into their ratings of care in surveys," said lead author Dr. Rachel Solnick, a fellow in the clinical scholars program at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. "This is good news, with a grain of salt," she added in a...

MONDAY, Feb. 24, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Americans may want to rethink the stereotype of the pot-loving teen: More U.S. seniors are using the drug now than ever before. The proportion of folks 65 and older who use pot stands at 4.2%, up from 2.4% in 2015, according to figures from the U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health. "The change from 2.4 up to 4.2, that's a 75% increase," said senior researcher Joseph Palamar, an associate professor of population health at New York University Langone Medical Center. "It didn't double, but 75% is a pretty big increase, I think." Emily Feinstein, executive vice president and chief operating officer at the Center on Addiction, reviewed the study and commented that the trend is "not surprising." "First, older people are more likely to...

MONDAY, Feb. 24, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Nearly 1 in 5 American adults has mistaken beliefs about vaccines, and misinformation is more common among those who rely on social media than on traditional media, a new study finds. Researchers surveyed nearly 2,500 adults nationwide in the spring and fall of 2019, when the United States was dealing with its largest measles outbreak in decades, and found that up to 20% of respondents were at least somewhat misinformed about vaccines. Eighteen percent mistakenly said it's very or somewhat accurate to say vaccines cause autism; 15% wrongly said it's very or somewhat accurate to say vaccines are full of toxins; 20% incorrectly said it's very or somewhat accurate to state that it makes no difference to delay or spread out vaccines instead of...

MONDAY, Feb. 24, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Want to avoid a stroke? Reach for fruits and veggies, new research suggests. The new European study of more than 418,000 people found that what you eat can influence your risk for different types of stroke. "The most important finding is that higher consumption of both dietary fiber and fruit and vegetables was strongly associated with lower risks of ischemic stroke," said study lead author Tammy Tong. She's a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of Oxford, in England. This study involved patients from nine European countries, and it investigated how diet affects both ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke. Ischemic strokes -- about 85% of cases -- occur due to blockages in a vessel, while hemorrhagic strokes involve bleeds from blood...