January 2nd, 2012 by Michael Kirsch, M.D. in News, Opinion
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A hundred bucks doesn’t buy much these days. A crisp Ben Franklin can be exchanged for
- 50 Big Macs
- A Broadway show ticket
- A night in a New York City hotel (just joking)
- A college textbook (paperback)
- Your life
Your life? Yes, 5 crumpled Andy Jacksons can save your life, as was reported earlier this year in a front page article in The Plain Dealer, Cleveland’s only daily newspaper. University Hospital is now offering a $99 spiral computed tomography (CT scans) of the chest in individuals who are at increased risk of developing lung cancer. The rationale is that if cancers can be detected early, then the cure rate for surgical removal is very high.
Gary Schwitzer, medical blogger and press watchdog, tries to bring some balance to the distorted media coverage of CT lung cancer reportage.
The test is Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at MD Whistleblower*
December 16th, 2011 by GruntDoc in Opinion, Research
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I read this headline and said, “Wow!, finally I won’t need to CT all those patients’ heads!”
FDA permits marketing of the first hand-held device to aid in the detection of bleeding in the skull
Helps to determine if immediate CT scan is needed
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today allowed marketing of the first hand-held device intended to aid in the detection of life-threatening bleeding in the skull called intracranial hematomas, using near-infrared spectroscopy.
via Press Announcements > FDA permits marketing of the first hand-held device to aid in the detection of bleeding in the skull.
But then, wait, said I, is it any good? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at GruntDoc*
December 4th, 2011 by Medgadget in Expert Interviews, Research
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Two months ago we reported on the first ovarian cancer surgeries performed with fluorescence guidance. As described in the Nature Medicine paper, the international team of researchers from The Netherlands, Germany, and Indiana used folate coupled to fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) to make ovarian cancer cells glow so they could be easily identified.
Now, in this week’s issue of Science Translational Medicine, another international team from Japan and Maryland reports their development of a spray-on probe that may provide even better sensitivity and fluorescent contrast than the folate-FITC counterpart. The editors of STM summarize this work well in the following note: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
September 20th, 2011 by RamonaBatesMD in Research
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Somewhere along the line I learned to encourage women with a family history of breast cancer to begin getting mammograms at an age 10 years prior to when their mother was diagnosed and to encourage their daughters to begin getting mammograms at an age 10 years prior to when they themselves were ever diagnosed.
I learned this prior to the discovery of BRCA genes. It was a trend that had been noted among women with strong family histories. The new study (see full reference below) in the journal Cancer verifies that genetic breast cancers show up earlier in the next generation – on average by 8 years.
The study from MD Anderson looked at 2 generations of families with the BRCA gene to assess the age at diagnosis. Using the pool of 132 BRCA-positive women with breast cancer who participated in the high-risk protocol at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (Gen 2), 106 women could be paired with a family member in the previous generation (Gen 1) who was diagnosed with a BRCA-related cancer (either breast cancer or ovarian cancer).
The median age of cancer diagnosis was Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*
May 4th, 2010 by Peggy Polaneczky, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Health Tips, Opinion, Research
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A new report on lung cancer in women has been published by the Women’s Health Policy and Advocacy Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Called “Out of the Shadows,” the report seeks to raise awareness about lung cancer, currently the leading cause of cancer death in women, and more importantly, to increase funding for research for its prevention, detection and treatment. (Thanks to Booster Shots, the LA Times‘ fabulous health blog, for highlighting the report.) I encourage you to read the report, which is well written and comprehensive. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Blog that Ate Manhattan*
A hundred bucks doesn’t buy much these days. A crisp Ben Franklin can be exchanged for
