The liver transplant team at Mayo Clinic in Florida has found, based on 12 years of experience, that more than half of patients receiving a new liver can be

In new research, investigators concluded that overuse of cardiac stress testing using advanced imaging technology has led to increasing healthcare costs in the United States and unnecessary radiation exposure to patients.
Researchers from the New York University Langone Medical Center in what is believed to be the first comprehensive examination of trends in cardiac stress testing utilizing imaging, also revealed that there are no significant racial or ethnic health disparities in its use. They also made US estimates of the cost of unnecessary cardiac stress testing with imaging and the health burden of this testing, in relation to cancer risk due to radiation exposure.
Cardiac stress testing, especially with imaging, has been at the forefront of debate about rising healthcare costs, inappropriate use, and patient safety in the context of radiation exposure. Joseph Ladapo, MD, PhD, assistant professor in the departments of medicine and population health at NYU Langone, and the lead author of the study, and colleagues wanted to determine whether US trends in cardiac stress testing with imaging may be attributable to population shifts in demographics, risk factors, and provider characteristics, and to assess whether racial/ethnic discrepancies exist in physician decision making.
The investigators designed their study utilizing data from the US National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and US National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey from 1993 to 2010. Patients chosen for the study were adults without coronary heart disease who were referred for cardiac stress tests.
Between 1993

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have developed a new strategy that they say could detect bladder cancer with more accuracy and sensitivity than standard endoscopy methods.

The researchers identified a protein known as CD47 as a molecular imaging target to distinguish bladder cancer from benign tissues. In the future, this technique could improve bladder cancer detection, guide more precise cancer surgery and reduce unnecessary biopsies, therefore increasing cancer patients

Drugs developed to treat fragile X syndrome may also work for autism because both disorders feature defects at neuronal junctions, or synapses, suggests a paper.

Researchers showed that CTEP, a drug designed to target the defect in fragile X syndrome, alleviates cognitive problems in mice that model deletion of the autism-linked 16p11.2 chromosomal region.

Despite the growing popularity of using computer simulation to help teach college anatomy, students learn much better through the traditional use of human cadavers, according to new research that has implications for health care.

Cary Roseth, associate professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University, said the study suggests cadaver-based instruction should continue in undergraduate human anatomy, a gateway course to medical school, nursing and other health and medical fields.

In the United States, most anatomy courses still emphasize the use of cadavers, although in many cases digital technologies supplement the instruction. Yet there is a growing debate over whether cadavers are needed at all; some medical schools in Australia and the United Kingdom have stopped using cadavers to teach anatomy altogether.

The research, which appears in the September/October issue of Anatomical Sciences Education, is the only known scientific study to directly compare the effects of cadaver-based and computer-simulation instruction on students