Although sedatives are often administered before surgery, a randomized trial finds that among patients undergoing elective surgery under general anesthesia, receiving the sedative lorazepam before surgery, compared with placebo or no premedication, did not improve the self-reported patient experience the day after surgery, but was associated with longer time till removal off a breathing tube (extubation) and a lower rate of early cognitive recovery.
Patients scheduled for surgery may experience considerable stress and anxiety. Benzodiazepine (a class of sedatives) premedication is frequently used to reduce anxiety but also causes amnesia, drowsiness, and cognitive impairment. Treating anxiety is not necessarily associated with a better perioperative (before and after surgery) experience for the patient. More needs to be known about the efficacy of preoperative anxiety treatment to better counsel patients to make informed decisions, according to background information in the article.
Axel Maurice-Szamburski, M.D., of the H

Fibromyalgia is almost impossible to diagnose. The chronic pain syndrome strikes an estimated 1 in 70 Americans, most of them women. The disorder is often triggered by head trauma, a neurological infection, or severe emotional stress, and is characterized by symptoms such as musculoskeletal pain, fatigue, memory loss and mood swings. Fibromyalgia is often mistaken for other culprits and most patients suffer months, even years, of unrelenting pain before being properly diagnosed. And once diagnosed, patients enjoy little respite because few therapies have been found to be effective in assuaging its symptoms.

A new study by Tel Aviv University researchers may turn the tide. The research found that women with fibromyalgia were able to drastically reduce, or even eliminate, their use of pain medication following hyperbaric oxygen treatment. The study was led by the late Prof. Eshel Ben-Jacob of TAU’s School of Physics and Astronomy and Rice University’s Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, Dr. Shai Efrati of TAU’s Sagol School of Neuroscience and Assaf Harofeh Medical Center, and Prof. Dan Buskila from Soroka Medical Center, and was conducted by a team of scientists from TAU, Rice University, Assaf Harofeh Medical Center, Ben-Gurion University, and Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center.

The TAU researchers believe they have also identified the primary factor causing fibromyalgia: the disruption of the brain mechanism for processing pain. ‘As a physician, the most important finding for me is that 70 percent of the patients could recover from their fibromyalgia symptoms,’ said Dr. Efrati. ‘The most exciting finding for the world of research, however, is that we were able to map the malfunctioning brain regions responsible for the syndrome.’

Hyperbaric oxygen chambers expose patients to pure oxygen at higher-than-atmospheric pressures and are commonly used to treat patients with embolisms, burns, carbon monoxide poisoning, and decompression sickness.

The clinical trial, which exposed participants to two months of hyberbaric oxygen therapy, found significant changes in the brain activity and symptoms of 70 percent of participants. The trial involved 60 women who had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia at least two years earlier. Half of the 48 patients who completed the therapy received 40 hyperbaric oxygen treatments

IBM Watson Health has announced that it is collaborating with more than a dozen leading cancer institutes to accelerate the ability of clinicians to identify and personalize treatment options for their patients. The institutes will apply Watson’s advanced cognitive capabilities to reduce from weeks to minutes the ability to translate DNA insights, understand a person

An innovative fusion of MRI and ultrasound might be a better way to detect and assess prostate cancer, while helping men avoid unnecessary biopsies, researchers say.
The technology blends real-time imaging from both MRI and ultrasound devices, allowing doctors to more accurately direct the biopsy needle that draws cell samples from suspected tumours.

People with a common form of hearing loss not helped by hearing aids achieved significant and sometimes profound improvements in their hearing and understanding of speech with hybrid cochlear implant devices, according to a new multicenter study led by specialists at NYU Langone Medical Center.

In the study researchers at 10 medical centres and private clinics in the United States implanted hybrid cochlear implants into one ear of 50 men and women. All study volunteers had badly damaged high-frequency, inner-ear hair cells, which prevented them from understanding speech, especially in the presence of background noise. All still had sufficient low-frequency hearing, which allowed them to tell apart some sounds and forestalled any use of a regular cochlear implant.

A year after receiving the device, 45 study participants showed overall improvement in their hearing and speech recognition, and no one