Patients who received post-operative radiation therapy (PORT), radiation therapy after surgery, lived an average of four months longer when compared to the patients who had the same disease site, tumour histology and treatment criteria and who did not receive PORT, according to research. The Symposium is sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) and The University of Chicago Medicine.

This study reviewed the records of non-small cell lung cancer patients treated from 2004 to 2006 from the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB), a joint endeavour of the Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons and the American Cancer Society. The study authors acquired the data for patients who had surgically resected non-small lung cancer with pathologically involved N2 (pN2) lymph nodes (tumours had spread to the lymph nodes in the centre of the chest (the mediastinum)) and who received chemotherapy. The database was further queried to exclude patients with positive margins, incomplete survival data, those who did not receive adjuvant chemotherapy, histology other than NSCLC, and patients treated with Cobalt-60, non-beam radiotherapy or neoadjuvant radiotherapy. Two thousand one hundred and fifteen patients (2,115) met all of the study criteria. Forty-three percent of patients (918) received PORT; 56.6 percent of the patients (1,197) were not treated with PORT.

Factors associated with overall survival (OS) were assessed through a multivariable Cox proportional hazards model. Inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) using the propensity score was also implemented to reduce biased treatment selection. Using an adjusted Kaplan-Meier estimator and the weighted log-rank test based on the IPTW, patients treated with PORT had an improved overall survival (median survival time) of 42 months compared to 38 months for the patients not treated with PORT (p=0.048).

Multivariable analysis revealed that female gender, adenocarcinoma histology, higher income, urban/rural setting vs. metropolitan setting, lower T state, 1-2 involved lymph nodes vs. ≥3 examined and involved lymph nodes, and younger age correlated to better OS (p<0.05). No direct relation was found between the effects of PORT and the number of involved lymph nodes.

The cost of patients not taking their medications as prescribed can be substantial in terms of their health. Although a large amount of research evidence has tried to address this problem, there are no well-established approaches to help them, according to a new systematic review published in The Cochrane Library. The authors of the review examined data from 182 trials testing different approaches to increasing medication adherence and patient health. Even though the review included a significant number of the best studies to date, in most cases, trials had important problems in design, which made it hard to determine which approaches actually worked.

Only about half of all patients who are prescribed medication that they must administer themselves actually take their medication as prescribed. Many stop taking medication all together and others do not follow the instructions for taking it properly. This has been the case in many different diseases for at least the last half a century. In conditions where effective drug treatments are available, patients who take their medications as per their provider

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