Karen Zabel

Karen Zabel has been writing about medicine and health for more than 20 years. After working as a full-time writer and editor for two major daily newspapers, she began her freelance career as a contributing editor and writer for national and international medical publications, physician organizations and private practices. Currently, she works as a freelancer based in southern New Jersey.

Articles by Karen Zabel

• Study: When EDs close, mortality risks climb at nearby hospitals

  Thursday, October 02, 2014

  Researchers at University of California San Francisco recently released data demonstrating that when an emergency department closes, the effects can be far-reaching. The study examined 16 million emergency admissions in California between 1999 and 2010.

• Study: Age, medications play role in post-transplant cancer rate

  Tuesday, September 16, 2014

  ​Organ transplant recipients regularly receive immunosuppressive drugs to help minimize the risk of rejection, but those drugs come with significant risks of their own, including leaving patients open to predatory infections and even certain types of cancer. Now, a new study suggests the type of immunosuppressant drug used as well as other factors may help predict those risks and possibly reduce them.

• Study: Liver transplants from living donors lead to better survival

  Tuesday, August 05, 2014

  ​For years, research data gathered from nationwide studies provided evidence that liver transplant recipients had an improved chance of survival when they received a liver from a deceased donor compared to a live donor liver. But a new study from Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania suggests that's just not so. In fact, the researchers report that living donor transplants can actually offer superior outcomes compared to livers from deceased donors.

• New blood test could replace biopsies in predicting heart transplant rejection

  Tuesday, July 01, 2014

  For years, tissue biopsy has been regarded as the gold standard for predicting the potential for heart transplant rejection, but now researchers from Stanford say they've developed a blood test that is able to predict rejection weeks or even months earlier than that technique.