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Medication errors are more common among seriously ill patients than with those with minor conditions.
As many as 28% of hospitalized patients requiring mechanical ventilators to help them breathe (for more than 48 hours) will develop ventilator-associated pneumonia. Current therapy involves intravenous antibiotics, but new antibiotics that can be inhaled (and more directly treat the infection) are being developed.
Not getting enough sleep can greatly weaken the immune system. Lack of sleep makes you more likely to catch a cold, or more difficult to fight off an infection.
Cancer has been around as long as humankind, but only in the second half of the twentieth century did the number of cancer cases explode.
In most cases, kidneys can recover from almost complete loss of function, such as in acute kidney (renal) failure.