Protect yourself to ensure a speedy recovery and avoid infections and readmission.

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Whether you go in for surgery, testing, or an outpatient procedure, your hospital stay can pose further health risks if you are not careful.

"Your potential risks depend in part on why you have to go into the hospital and the facility itself, but there are steps you can take to minimize your risk, especially when it comes to developing hospital-acquired infections that can lead to a longer hospital stay or readmission," says Dr. Erica Shenoy, an infectious diseases specialist and associate chief of infection control at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital.

A discussion with your doctor may minimize your chance of becoming dependent on or addicted to these powerful painkillers.

Opioid misuse is now one of most important health problems in the United States, rivaling smoking as a cause of death. Although news reports tend to focus on an opioid crisis among the young, the opioid epidemic is increasingly affecting older people as well. In fact, the rates of hospitalization for opioid overdoses among Medicare recipients quintupled from 1993 through 2012. Although older people are still less likely than younger ones to become addicted or succumb to opioid overdoses, they are more likely to suffer side effects from extended opioid use, including memory and cognition problems and falls.

"Opioid use and pain management is something we deal with constantly," says Dr. Michael L. Barnett, assistant professor of health policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. According to a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, nearly one-third of Medicare beneficiaries received at least one prescription for opioids in 2015, and those who did got an average of five such prescriptions or refills. Dr. Barnett and a team of his colleagues decided to investigate how Medicare recipients get opioid prescriptions in the first place.

Do calcium supplements interfere with calcium-channel blockers?

Ask the doctors

Q. I've just been prescribed the calcium-channel blocker Norvasc [amlodipine] for high blood pressure. I also take a 600-milligram calcium supplement every day for my bones. Will they cancel each other out?

A. You don't need to worry about taking a daily calcium supplement with a calcium-channel blocker. In the body, calcium not only builds bones but also powers muscle contractions. Calcium-channel blockers lower blood pressure by reducing the amount of calcium available to contract blood vessels. However, they don't prevent calcium in the blood from being incorporated into bone.

Research we're watching

Although hormone therapy was once thought to help preserve cognitive function after menopause, there is mounting evidence to the contrary, including a recent report from the Kuopio Osteoporosis Risk Factor and Prevention Study.

Researchers in that project sent questionnaires to all women ages 47 to 56 who lived in the Finnish province of Kuopio in 1987. The women completed questionnaires every five years, providing information about their lifestyles, medication use, and illnesses. The researchers checked the information in the questionnaires against prescription registries and medical records up to 2009.

Ask the doctor

Q. My uncle was told he had fluid around his heart. What does that mean, and how is it treated?

A. The heart is surrounded by a thin, two-layer sac called the pericardium. It protects the heart, limits its motion, and prevents it from expanding too much when blood volume increases. Normally, there isn't any fluid between the pericardium and the heart muscle. But there are many reasons fluid can accumulate in this space, including an infection, a heart attack, surgery, cancer, kidney failure, and a host of other conditions.

In the journals

Low-dose aspirin therapy is standard treatment for people who have suffered a heart attack or stroke to protect them from a second one. But what about people who don't have cardiovascular disease, but do have specific risk factors, such as type 2 diabetes? A study published in the Feb. 14, 2017, Circulation found that low-dose aspirin therapy in fact did not lower this group's risk for heart attack or stroke.

The researchers recruited more than 2,500 people, ages 30 to 85, with type 2 diabetes and randomly assigned them to take either 81 mg or 100 mg of aspirin daily, or no aspirin, for three years. At the 10-year follow-up, they found that the aspirin therapy did not lower risk of either heart attack or stroke compared with taking no aspirin at all. The reason is not clear, but the researchers speculated that people with diabetes might not experience the expected anti-clotting action of aspirin.

Here's how to get a better deal on your medication.

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You're not alone if you've ever skipped filling a prescription because it was expensive. Cost is one barrier to keeping people on their medication regimens. "It's a real problem. Medications only work if people take them, and you can't take them if you can't afford them," says Dr. Joshua Gagne, a pharmacist and epidemiologist with Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital.

According to a National Center for Health Statistics survey, about 8% of adults in the United States don't take prescribed medications because they can't afford them.

Ask the doctor

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Q. I've been taking the blood thinner warfarin (Coumadin) for a few years. I know there are new kinds of blood thinners, but I've heard they have downsides. Should I stick with warfarin?

A. Here's what you need to know. Some medical conditions lead to blood clots. The most common one is the irregular heart rhythm called atrial fibrillation. About 20% of all strokes are caused by clots that result from atrial fibrillation — usually because of inadequate treatment with blood thinners.

Research we're watching

Dietary supplements made from red yeast rice contain substances called monacolins, which are similar to the active ingredient in cholesterol-lowering statin drugs. And like statins, red yeast rice products may cause rare but serious side effects, such as muscle injury and liver damage, as noted in a study published online January 19, 2017, by the British Journal of Pharmacology.

The study, based on a review of 13 years of patient data by Italian researchers, notes that people who can't tolerate statins often take red yeast rice supplements. But there are no studies testing the safety of red yeast rice compared with statins. In the United States, the FDA considers red yeast rice products that contain more than trace amounts of monacolins to be unapproved new drugs and therefore illegal to sell. Yet dozens of these unregulated products remain on the market.

Almost one-third of older adults take statins to help lower cholesterol levels, but new guidelines and research have restarted the conversation on the role statins play in your health.

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Since they were introduced two decades ago, statins have been touted as a driving force in helping many older men reduce their risk of heart attack and stroke.

New research even suggests these drugs might treat other conditions, like Alzheimer's disease, and lower your risk of death from cancer (see "Other statin uses?").