Katherine Hobson
Also: guidance on ordering scanning tests; C. diff can float, but handwashing is still the way to prevent infection.
Read more this great post here
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Katherine Hobson
Last month an editorial in the Archives of Internal Medicine lamented the dilemma faced by newly diagnosed prostate cancer patients theres a virtual bazaar of treatment options” but an embarrassing lack of comparative clinical trials to distinguish among them, it said.
A Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services advisory panel focusing solely […]
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JGrimes
A few items of interest involving the FDA:
Congress last year added the tobacco industry to the FDA’s regulatory mix and today a panel of health experts making up the agency’s new Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee is kicking off a two-day meeting. First on the agenda: how menthol flavoring in cigarettes affects smokers’ […]
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JGrimes
Fast-growing spending on imaging tests in Massachusetts gives a closeup view to the many-sided question of whether improved technology is really worth the extra cost.
The facts, as laid out by the Boston Globe this morning: Spending on MRIs, mammograms, and other imaging tests for privately insured Massachusetts residents jumped 20%, or $214 million, […]
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JGrimes
A nationwide push is underway to lower radiation exposure from CT scans, amid growing concern about the risks of cancer linked to the high-powered imaging technology, as I write in the Informed Patient column today.
While much of the focus is on adult CT scanning, between 5% and 10% of the approximately 70 million […]
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A global shortage of a medical isotope used in diagnostic tests for heart disease and cancer has vacillated from bad to worse over the last couple of years. Output has dwindled as the two nuclear reactors supplying the bulk of radioactive material — one in Chalk River, Ontario (pictured at right) […]
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noreply@blogger.com (RCoffield@fsblaw.com)
The magnet in “magnetic resistance imaging” is no joke: A patient on a metal gurney got sucked into an MRI with so much force her leg and foot were fractured.
We saw a brief mention of the incident in the L.A. Times, and it piqued our curiosity about this sort of thing. Hospitals […]
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High-tech medical equipment can improve outcomes for patients — but it can also create new complications and safety risks.
This morning’s New York Times makes that point by examining Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy — a high-tech system for treating cancer patients with radiation.
IMRT can allow for more highly targeted radiation treatments, sparing healthy tissue. […]
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JGrimes
We’ve been writing for a while now about the risk of cancer associated with CT scans, an issue doctors have begun to pay more attention to as the use of CT scans has soared.
A few papers published this afternoon in the Archives of Internal Medicine add a bit to the discussion; one estimated […]
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JGrimes
Doctors have recently started paying more attention to the risk of cancer associated with the radiation exposure from CT scans, particularly for patients who get many scans over the course of a lifetime. Now, on top of that, there’s a growing list of patients who got radiation overdoses because of improperly performed scans.
The […]
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