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Wednesday, March 10 2010
A coronary CT angiography-only approach -- when factoring in a $20,000 threshold level for cost per correct diagnosis and $50,000 per quality-adjusted life-year -- is the most cost-effective diagnostic strategy for the evaluation of patients presenting with stable chest pain without known coronary artery disease (CAD) with intermediate CAD prevalence, according to a decision analysis study published in the March issue of Radiology.
Monday, March 08 2010
A study using PET imaging to compare nicotine accumulation in smokers found that nicotine washed out of the addicted smoker’s lungs and into their blood less efficiently and the study could help provide a treatment program for cigarette smokers who are trying to quit, according to a research scheduled to appear online in the early edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of March 8.
Thursday, March 04 2010
MRI screening for women considered to be at high or moderate risk for breast cancer is more effective in the detection of the disease in the early stages than either half-yearly digital ultrasound and/or annual mammography, according to a recent prospective study published online Feb. 22 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Wednesday, March 03 2010
PET/CT with 18F-FDG needs to be accurately interpreted since higher FDG uptake is seen in axillary lymph nodes after vaccination against pandemic swine-origin influenza A (H1N1), according to a study published online Feb. 26 in European Radiology.
Monday, March 01 2010
Compared with no screening, screening young athletes with a 12-lead ECG, coupled with cardiovascular-focused history and physical exams, can significantly reduce costs and add years of life, according to a study published in the March 2 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Monday, March 01 2010
Microbubbles conjugated to small peptide-targeting ligands can provide ultrasound imaging signals allowing researchers to visualize tumor activity at the molecular level and show its progression, according to research published in the March issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.
Wednesday, February 24 2010
A new technique called personalized analysis of rearranged ends provides an accurate and specific way to monitor tumors by identifying personalized biomarkers from tumor DNA, according to a study published in the Feb. 24 issue of Science Translational Medicine.
Tuesday, February 23 2010
Non-invasive MR Imaging is highly accurate in the preoperative characterization and local staging of testicular neoplasms and is a useful diagnostic tool for the evaluation of testicular disease, according to a study published in the March issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology.
Sunday, February 21 2010
Whole-body 18F-FDG PET combined with chest CT is cost-effective in pretreatment screening for distant metastases in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma patients with risk factors, according to a study published in the February issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.
Sunday, February 21 2010
Mammographic density measures that predict breast cancer are associated with at least two common genetic breast cancer susceptibility variants, according to a study published online in the February edition of the journal Cancer Research.
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Monday, March 08 2010
According to a recent study published in the March 8 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, prostate cancer patients who visit a urologist with or without a medical oncologist consultation are treated more frequently with hormone therapy, watchful waiting or a radical prostatectomy, while those who visit a radiation oncologist appear more likely to receive radiation therapy for the treatment of their disease.
Friday, March 05 2010
For patients with high-risk, potentially operable rectal cancer, therapy with preoperative chemotherapy prior to standard chemoradiation and surgical resection is a reasonable treatment with acceptable safety and promising long-term outcomes, based on a study published in the March issue of the Lancet Oncology.
Thursday, March 04 2010
Surgery with molecular fluorescence imaging using a dual fluorescent plus a magnetic marker decreases residual cancer, improves survival and MRI-guided clinical staging, according to two studies published in the March issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Tuesday, March 02 2010
An article published online March.1 in Lancet Neurology suggests 11C-PiB PET imaging is useful in assessing drugs for Alzheimer's disease and has shown that a new investigational drug, bapineuzumab (Elan Pharmaceuticals and Wyeth Research), reduces beta-amyloid deposits in the brain in patients who have mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease.
Monday, March 01 2010
Use of an abridged radiation therapy could reduce the amounts of chemotherapy and toxicity in patients with advanced head and neck cancers, according to a study presented by Phuc Felix Nguyen-Tan, MD, Feb. 26 at the Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancer symposium.
Friday, February 26 2010
Embedding clinical images into radiology reports can not only save time, but can increase physician confidence in selecting treatment plans for the patient and enhance radiologists’ communication with referring physicians, said a study published online today in the March issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology (JACR).
Wednesday, February 24 2010
Physicians are working fewer weekly hours and making less money than they did in recent decades, which is inconsistent with other professional careers. Any further negative economic factors could be the tipping point for unsustainable decreases in hours worked in a market already hurt by physician shortages, according to a study in the Feb. 24 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association.
Tuesday, February 23 2010
Iin an effort to treat Glioblastoma multiforme, researchers have used a combination of radiotherapy and the clinically approved drug AMD3100--a small molecule inhibitor-- to successfully block a secondary tumor-growth process in laboratory mice, according to an article published online Feb. 22 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Sunday, February 21 2010
Researchers using high-resolution imaging to track changes to individual dendritic spines--points of contact between nerve cells--found that behavioral learning results when instructive experience is able to rapidly stabilize and strengthen synapses on sensorimotor neurons, according to a study conducted by Richard Mooney, PhD, professor of neurobiology at Duke University Medical Center, in Durham, N.C., and colleagues.
Friday, February 19 2010
Contrast-enhanced MRI can bring forth statistically significant differences between rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis that might play an important role in differentiating and treating the two diseases, according to a recent study published online in the March issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology.
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The use of health IT to reduce rehospitalizations will be welcome but also disruptive, said Stephen Jencks, an independent consultant in healthcare safety during a Feb. 24 webinar on the potential use of health IT to mitigate rehospitalizations, sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
During the Health IT Standards Committee meeting on Feb. 24 in Washington, D.C., the Clinical Operations Workgroup sought to gather comments on proposed recommendations on implementation specifications for content exchange, vocabulary and code set standards for the Interim Final Rule of meaningful use.
In 2006, the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), a branch of the FDA, began examining the number of medical device reports they received. Over the past two years, the number of submitted reports has increased, sparking a demand for the CDRH to make a move to electronic reporting.
A new hospital breaking ground usually isn’t breaking news. But the vision of patient care at one new facility, tentatively named Palomar Medical Center West (PMC West), is currently illegal under California state law.