When former President Jimmy Carter recently entered home hospice care after many years of cancer treatment, it was an invitation for families across America to consider how they would like to spend their final days.

For experts in end-of-life care, the 98-year-old's

Patients spending the end of their lives in for-profit hospices receive substantially worse care than those who are in nonprofit hospices, a new study claims.

To come to that conclusion, RAND Corp. researchers analyzed surveys completed by people whose loved ones had spent time in more than 3,100 hospices throughout the country.

The research included reviewing more than 650,000 sur...

Following the deaths of 15 infants, families are advised to immediately stop using all models of Kids2 Rocking Sleepers, according to a second recall notice.

Four of those 15 babies died after the first recall notice, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) reported.

The company is recalling 694,000 Rocking Sleepers. Parents can contact the Kids2 company for a refund.

U.S. stroke deaths have dramatically declined in the past several decades. But, researchers caution, their new study also found the potential for a resurgence.

“After nearly four decades of declining stroke-related mortality, the risk appears to be increasing in the United States. Our research underscores the need for novel strategies to combat this alarming trend,” said lead study au...

One low-cost intervention could make a difference in America's epidemic of opioid overdoses, a new study suggests.

When health care providers were notified that one of their patients had died from an overdose, they wrote fewer opioid prescriptions for up to a year later.

The University of Southern California (USC) study built upon earlier findings that letters like these could reduc...

The average American's expected life span at birth took another big hit in 2021, according to final data on death rates for that pandemic year.

Whereas in 2019 the average American could have expected to live an average of 78.8 years, life expectancy declined to 77 years in 2020, and then to 76.4 years in 2021, according to data released Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control ...

Homicide has become a leading killer of children, with guns being the most common weapon used in their deaths, a new study shows.

The overall rate of homicides in children has grown about 4.3% each year for a decade, with a steep rise seen between 2019 and 2020, when the number of kids who died by homicide rose 27.7%.

Firearm-related homicides rose 47.7% between 2019 and 2020, acc...

More than two years after the pandemic began, there is a bit of good news on death rates in the United States: They should be lower this year than during the past two years once final numbers are tallied.

Still, they have not dropped to levels seen before COVID swept across the country, preliminary data shows.

Deaths are expected to remain about 13% higher than 2019 numbers for 2022...

Almost 15 million people likely died as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, nearly three times more than previously reported, a new World Health Organization study estimates.

The researchers said the COVID-19 pandemic caused about 4.5 million more deaths than would have been expected in 2020, and 10.4 million more in 2021, according to the report published online Dec. 14 i...

People have long talked about having near-death experiences in which they felt they were looking down on themselves while others tried to save them.

Now researchers have documented some of those experiences. In a new study, investigators found that about 20% of patients recalled lucid experiences of death that occurred while they were seemingly unconscious and dying.

“These lucid...

Faulty readings by pulse oximeters may have resulted in more COVID deaths among minorities, doctors warned in testimony before a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel this week.

Pulse oximeters are small devices that read a person's blood oxygen levels via a fingertip. During the pandemic, health workers used the readings to help determine who should receive scarce medications...

More than four out of five pregnancy-related deaths in the United States could have been prevented, according to a new federal government report.

The researchers examined data from

A second person in the United States infected with monkeypox has died in California.

As in the earlier case in Texas, public health officials are investigating what role the virus may have played in the death of this second patient.

"We will be doing an autopsy. S...

Fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that's driving a surge in drug overdose deaths, kills by stopping breathing even before someone loses consciousness, a new study reveals.

To come to that conclusion, researchers ran

A Texas patient who was infected with monkeypox has died, though state health officials said Tuesday it's too early to say what role the virus may have played in the death.

The adult, who died in a hospital in Harris County, was "severely immunocompromised" and had "various severe illnesses," health officials...

Lori McClintock, the wife of Northern California congressman Tom McClintock, died late last year after taking white mulberry leaf, a herb used to treat diabetes, obesity and high cholesterol, a recently released report shows.

The cause of death listed in the report was dehydration due to