Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:
Surgeons Say They're Ready to Do Face Transplants
Doctors from Kentucky and the Netherlands say they're ready to perform a face transplant as soon as they find an eligible candidate.
In Friday's American Journal of Bioethics, the physicians say an ideal candidate would be someone with a severely disfigured face, such as the victim of a burn or accident. The procedure would involve removing the patient's face and attaching one of a deceased donor, according to the Associated Press.
"There arrives a point in time when the procedure should simply be done. We submit that the time is now," the researchers said.
While their proposal might leave some medical ethicists squirming, the physicians say they won't attempt it without prior approval from an independent board in the United States, the AP reported. The doctors insist they aren't actively looking for candidates.
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Tired of Work? Skip It, Swedes Say
Forty percent of the population in Sweden thinks it's OK to skip work if you're feeling tired or having trouble getting along with your colleagues, a new survey finds.
In a country already plagued by skyrocketing sick leave costs, 65 percent of the 1,002 people interviewed also said that a stressful work situation is a valid reason for calling in sick, the Associated Press reported.
The survey, presented Friday by the National Social Insurance Board, showed that Swedes manifestly take advantage of the country's liberal sick leave system, officials said. It also showed "a deep lack of knowledge about what the health insurance is meant to cover," according to board director Anna Hedborg.
Sweden's extensive cradle-to-grave welfare system includes generous social insurance programs covering sick leave, parental leave and unemployment benefits for its 9 million residents. But paying for workers on long-term sick leave and disability has become one of the government's biggest expenditures: Sick leave compensation tripled from $2 billion in 1997 to $6 billion in 2002.
The survey, conducted June 17-24, did not have a margin of error.
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British Docs Suggest Tax Breaks for People Who Exercise
Give 'em a break, say British doctors, who have proposed an offbeat solution to the growing problem of inactivity and obesity -- a tax break.
The Royal College of GPs says tax relief would be a great incentive for couch potatoes to get moving, noting that the government already allows doctors to refer some patients to gyms for subsidized memberships, according to BBC News Online.
More than 20 percent of Britain's population is obese and the number of obese youngsters has tripled in the past 20 years, the network reported.
The BBC account doesn't mention how much of a break the physicians' group is proposing, or what sedentary tax filers would have to do to qualify for one.
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FDA Agrees With Experts on Antidepressant Risks
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it agrees with expert recommendations made earlier this week that certain antidepressant medications pose an increased suicide risk to children and teens, according to HealthDay.
In a statement posted on its Web site, the agency said it "generally supports" the advisory panel's findings, adding that it has begun work "expeditiously" to adopt tough new warning labels for the medications.
Affected drugs, including brand names such as Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor, Luvox, Prozac, Remeron, Wellbutrin, Serzone, and Celexa, are mostly among a class of medications known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Only one of these drugs, Prozac, is approved for pediatric use, though doctors are legally able to prescribe similar medications to children and teens.
Critics of the agency say the FDA became aware of studies that indicated a possible link to suicidal thinking among pediatric users of these antidepressants as early as May 2003, but was slow to react.
On Tuesday, an advisory panel voted 15-8 to recommend a so-called "black-box" warning on all antidepressant drugs of an increased risk for suicidal thinking among young users.
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Private Medicare Plans Costing More: Report
Private Medicare plans that were supposed to encourage competition and lower expenses are actually costing Medicare more money than the traditional program, an independent federal panel concluded.
A report by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission cited in Friday's New York Times found that Medicare is paying private plans an average of 107 percent of what it would cost to cover the same patients under the traditional fee-for-service program. In some cases, payments to private insurers were as high as 123 percent of the traditional Medicare cost, the newspaper reported.
Private plans were introduced into the mix last year when President Bush signed the groundbreaking Medicare bill that included a first-ever prescription drug plan for retirees and the disabled.
About 4.7 million of the 41 million Medicare enrollees now participate in the private plans, known as Medicare Advantage plans, the Times said.
Medicare administrator Dr. Mark McClellan defended the private plans, noting that they offered lower out-of-pocket costs and more benefits than traditional Medicare, the Times reported.
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Medicare Will Start Covering Alzheimer's Scan
Medicare will soon begin paying for sophisticated brain scans in qualifying patients that could detect Alzheimer's disease, the Washington Post reported Friday.
Makers of the technology, known as PET (positron emission tomography) scans, have been pressing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for four years to approve the process as a possible way to detect Alzheimer's, the newspaper said.
But there was a catch, the Post notes -- a lack of "convincing evidence" that PET scans, by themselves, can actually define whether a person has the memory-robbing disease. So Medicare has approved the scan's use only for people who have atypical symptoms of dementia and behavioral changes.
PET involves injecting radioactive materials into the bloodstream "to identify areas where metabolic processes are out of balance," the newspaper said. The scans typically cost $2,000 and are covered by Medicare as a way to detect about a dozen types of cancer, the Post added.