Before they excise a tumour, surgeons need to determine exactly where the cancerous cells lie. Now, research published by The Optical Society
A new mobile app developed by researchers at the Child & Family Research Institute (CFRI) at BC Children
In a study that included long-term follow-up of obese patients with type 2 diabetes, bariatric surgery was associated with more frequent diabetes remission and fewer complications than patients who received usual care.
Obesity and diabetes have reached epidemic proportions and constitute major health and economic burdens. Worldwide, 347 million adults are estimated to live with diabetes and half of them are undiagnosed.
Studies show that type 2 diabetes is preventable. The incidence of diabetes can be reduced by as much as 50 percent by lifestyle and pharmacological interventions, according to background information in the article.
Short-term studies show that bariatric surgery results in remission of diabetes. The long-term outcomes for bariatric surgery and diabetes remission and diabetes-related complications have not been known.
Lars Sjostrom, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and colleagues performed a follow-up of the Swedish Obese Subjects (SOS) study, conducted at 25 surgical departments and 480 primary health care centres in Sweden. Of patients recruited between September 1987 and January 2001, 260 of 2,037 control patients and 343 of 2,010 bariatric surgery patients had type 2 diabetes at baseline.
For the current analysis, the presence of diabetes was determined at SOS health examinations and information on diabetes complications was obtained from national health registers. For diabetes complications, the median follow-up time was 17.6 years in the control group, and 18.1 years in the surgery group.
The proportion of patients in remission (defined as blood glucose <110 mg/dL and no diabetes medication) after 2 years was 72.3 percent in the surgery group and 16.4 percent in the control group. At 15 years, the diabetes remission rates decreased to 30.4 percent for bariatric surgery patients and 6.5 percent for control patients. All types of bariatric surgery (adjustable or nonadjustable banding, vertical banded gastroplasty, or gastric bypass) were associated with higher remission rates compared with usual care. In addition, bariatric surgery was associated with a decreased incidence of microvascular and macrovascular complications.
A new technique can preserve organs for days before transplanting them, US researchers claim.
‘Supercooling’ combines chilling the organ and pumping nutrients and oxygen through its blood vessels. Tests on animals, showed supercooled livers remained viable for three days, compared with less than 24 hours using current technology.
If it works on human organs, it has the potential to transform organ donation.
As soon as an organ is removed from the body, the individual cells it is made from begin to die. Cooling helps slow the process as it reduces the metabolic rate of the cells.
Meanwhile, surgeons in the UK carried out the first ‘warm liver’ transplant in March 2013 which used an organ kept at body temperature in a machine.
The technique being reported first hooks the organ up to a machine which perfuses the organ with nutrients. It is then cooled to minus 6C.
In experiments on rat livers, the organs could be preserved for three days.
One of the researchers, Dr Korkut Uygun, from the Harvard Medical School, told the BBC the technique could lead to donated organs being shared around the world.
‘That would lead to better donor matching, which would reduce-long term organ rejection and complications, which is one of the major issues in organ transplant,’ he said.
He also argued that organs which are normally rejected, as they would not survive to the transplant table, might be suitable if they were preserved by supercooling.
‘That could basically eliminate waiting for a organ, but that is hugely optimistic,’ Dr Uygun said.
Further experiments are now needed to see if the technology can be scaled up from preserving a 10g (0.35oz) rat liver to a 1.5kg (3.3lb) human liver.
The researchers believe the technology could work on other organs as well. BBC
Many women struggling to become pregnant may suffer from some degree of tubal blockage. Traditionally, an x-ray hysterosalpingogram (HSG) that uses dye is the most common procedure to determine whether a blockage exists, but it can cause extreme discomfort to the patient. UC San Diego Health System
Today, doctors who really want to see if a wound is healing have to do a biopsy or some other invasive technique that, besides injuring an already injured patient, can really only offer information about a small area. But a technology called hyperspectral imaging offers doctors a non-invasive, painless way to discriminate between healthy and diseased tissue and reveal how well damaged tissue is healing over a wide area. The catch? A lack of calibration standards is impeding its use.
After a successful non-human trial, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have started gathering data on how human skin looks under various wavelengths of light in order to develop these badly needed standards.
Unlike consumer digital cameras and the human eye, which only see red, green and blue light, a relatively narrow portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, each pixel of a hyperspectral image captures information for hundreds of narrow spectral bands
A new study by radiation oncologists at Mayo Clinic comparing the world
Researchers at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center used two relatively simple tactics to significantly reduce the number of unnecessary blood tests to assess symptoms of heart attack and chest pain and to achieve a large decrease in patient charges.
The team provided information and education to physicians about proven testing guidelines and made changes to the computerized provider order entry system at the medical centre, part of the Johns Hopkins Health System. The guidelines call for more limited use of blood tests for so-called cardiac biomarkers. A year after implementation, the guidelines saved the medical centre an estimated $1.25 million in laboratory charges.
In this case, part of the focus was on tests to assess levels of troponin, a protein whose components increase in the blood when heart muscle is damaged. Frequently, troponin tests are repeated four or more times in a 24-hour period, which studies have suggested is excessive, and they are often done along with tests for other biomarkers that are redundant.
In a report the research team describes how these interventions reduced overuse of troponin and other biomarker testing without compromising patient care. If adopted widely, the team says, cost savings could be substantial.
The benefits of medical imaging far outweigh the risks when children receive The Right Exam, ordered The Right Way, with The Right Radiation Dose. However, overuse and misuse of imaging change the benefit-risk ratio and Mayo Clinic is leading a collaborative effort to ensure a national protocol is put into action. The commentary calls for the American College of Radiology, the Joint Commission, the Intersociety Accreditation Commission, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to require three safety practices for accreditation of all American hospitals and advanced diagnostic imaging facilities.
Cooling newborn babies that have suffered a lack of oxygen at birth significantly increases their chance of survival without brain damage through into later childhood.
Oxygen deprivation at birth is known to set off processes that can lead to the death of brain cells and permanent neurological damage. Cooling the babies interrupts these processes to reduce brain injury.
An Oxford University and Imperial College London study has found that 51.7% of oxygen-deprived babies treated with hypothermia survived to age 6
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