A study in the Clinical Journals of the American Society of Nephrology linked pediatric acute kidney injury to a nearly 40% and a 60% to 80% higher adjusted odds of hospitalizations one year and five years after discharge from a pediatric intensive care unit, respectively. The findings, based on data involving 2,041 youths, also associated AKI with increased frequency of five-year outpatient physician visits, but not with emergency department use.

A study in JAMA Pediatrics showed that inhaled nitric oxide treatment wasn't significantly associated with reduced in-hospital mortality among extremely preterm infants with pulmonary hypoplasia. Researchers also found no significant link between inhaled nitric oxide use and mortality among those with pulmonary hypoplasia with and without pulmonary hypertension of the newborn.

A study in The New England Journal of Medicine discovered the percentage of organ donors who died from a drug overdose rose from 1.2% in 2000 to 13.7% in 2016. The study also showed that such transplants were as safe and successful as organs taken from trauma victims or those that died of natural causes, although an earlier study found there was a higher risk that organs from overdose donors had hepatitis C or were labeled as an "increased infection risk."

The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted to advance 32 bills intended to combat the opioid abuse crisis, sending them to the full House for consideration. Bills advanced Thursday would give the FDA more power to stop trafficking of illegal drugs through the mail, facilitate faster development of nonaddictive pain medications, expand treatment coverage to prison inmates with opioid addiction problems and more.

New MRI technology was used to assess brain damage and estimate the onset of ischemic stroke in patients who were asleep at the time of the attack, allowing some of them to benefit from thrombolysis treatment, researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine and at the European Stroke Organization Conference. Researcher Gotz Thomalla said the study results will have a big effect on clinical practice as at least one-third of patients with an undetermined time of stroke onset will now qualify for treatment.

An NIH Funding Opportunity Announcement said improving broadband for telehealth and the use of other innovative health IT infrastructure tools would improve health care quality and expand care options for cancer patients in rural areas. The announcement notes that cancer care delivery may be improved with team-based, IT-enabled models of care delivery, while IT limitations could restrict access to telehealth, patient portals and innovations in patient-provider communications.