Insulin pump controller recalled due to hacking risk
An urgent recall has been issued by Medtronic for its MiniMed remote controller (model number MMT-503) with a Medtronic MiniMed 508 insulin pump or the MiniMed Paradigm family of insulin pumps.
The company says the remote controllers may be susceptible to a cybersecurity risk in which someone nearby could potentially copy the wireless RF signals from the pump user’s remote controller and play them back later to deliver an additional bolus of insulin to the pump user.
Users are advised to immediately stop using the remote controller, disable the remote feature, and return it to Medtronic.
The risk was originally notified to users with a controller under warranty in August 2018, with instructions on how to disable the remote bolus feature, when not in use.
Medtronic said it is now expanding the notification to all users who Medtronic believes may still be using the MiniMe 508 insulin pump or Paradigm family of insulin pumps and have purchased a remote controller.
Irregular menstrual cycles linked to diabetes and CHD
Irregular menstrual cycles could be an early indicator for diabetes and heart disease, an Australian study suggests.
The study of 13,714 45 to 50-year old women found those with irregular menstrual cycles were more likely to develop diabetes, particularly (though not significantly after adjusting for all covariates) if they didn’t use hormone replacement therapy (hazard ratio: 1.17 and 1.30, respectively).
They also had a 20% higher risk of developing heart disease than those with regular cycles.
“These women may benefit from screening and prevention strategies as recommended by related guidelines such as the international evidence‐based guideline for the assessment and management of PCOS,” the authors concluded.
The full study is available in Clinical Endocrinology.
Discharge summary abbreviations cause confusion
Medical abbreviations used by specialists in hospital discharge summaries are often confusing to the GPs who receive them and also ambiguous for hospital colleagues and junior doctors, an Australian study has found.
A retrospective audit of 802 discharge summaries at a Queensland regional health service found that they contained an average of 17 abbreviations, and almost one in five GPs were unable to interpret at least one of them.
Almost all (94%) of GPs said that ambiguous abbreviations had a negative impact on patient care and 60% said they spent too much time of clarifying them. Abbreviations could also have multiple possible meanings in different contexts and led to confusion for 15% of junior doctors working in other departments of the same hospital, the study found.
While most had no problems with abbreviations such as Hb and IHD, the abbreviations that had widest range of misinterpretations or ‘don’t know’ responses included NAD, DEM, PE, LC, TGA, TCH and BAE.
The study authors said hospitals should adopt a standardised list of acceptable abbreviations for medical documentation, which is made available to both hospital medical staff and GPs.
They also noted that abbreviations were very location specific, with marked differences between those used by Melbourne and Sydney hospitals.
The findings are published in the Internal Medicine Journal.