A clinical trial by University of Colorado Cancer Center investigators and collaborators at Beaumont Health in Michigan and the University of Texas Medical Branch is evaluating a new method for pinpointing and sparing healthy lung tissue during lung cancer radiotherapy. The group is applying advanced image analysis techniques to 4D CT scans already performed as a standard step in targeting lung cancer radiotherapy, to map areas of lung function without additional testing.

Protective mastectomies that preserve the nipple and surrounding skin prevent breast cancer as effectively as more invasive surgeries for women with a genetic mutation called BRCA that raises their risk of developing breast cancer, a multi-institution study led by Mayo Clinic found. The research should reassure patients and surgeons that nipple-sparing mastectomies, which leave women with more natural-looking breasts than other mastectomies, are a safe way to reduce breast cancer risk in BRCA carriers, the authors say..

An interactive web system with the help of your mobile phone can be an effective tool for better blood pressure control. Test persons lowered their blood pressure, were better able to understand how their lifestyle affects their blood pressure and actively participated in follow-up discussions.

Well controlled blood pressure reduces the risk for cardio-vascular complications. In addition to taking daily medication, persons with high blood pressure need to understand the sometime complicated connection between the blood pressure values and daily life. Blood pressure medication combined with changes in lifestyle gives good results, but despite awareness of this, few people are able to reach a well controlled blood pressure.

In her thesis, researcher Ulrika Bengtsson developed and evaluated an interactive system for persons living with high blood pressure that, with the help of their own mobile phone, can be used to self-manage the high blood pressure on a daily basis.

A new breast cancer survivorship care guideline created by the American Cancer Society and the American Society of Clinical Oncology provides guidance to primary care and other clinicians in caring for the estimated 3.1 million female adult survivors of breast cancer in the United States. The guideline is the third in a continuing series of guidelines to provide guidance on identifying and managing potential physical and psychosocial long-term and late effects of cancer and its treatment, as well as other key elements of adult post-treatment survivorship care. Previous guidelines address the needs of survivors of prostate and colorectal cancers.
The guideline recommends that breast cancer patients should undergo regular surveillance for breast cancer recurrence, including evaluation with a detailed cancer-related history and physical examination, and should be screened for new primary breast cancer consistent with guidelines. At the same time, data do not support performing routine laboratory tests or imaging tests, except mammography when indicated, in asymptomatic patients to evaluate for breast cancer recurrence.
The guideline also recommends that primary care clinicians counsel patients about the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle, monitor for post-treatment symptoms that can adversely affect quality of life, and counsel patients to adhere to endocrine therapy. In addition to recommendations about screening tests and lifestyle factors, the guideline includes information on a broad range of other issues, from cognitive impairment and body image to fatigue and care coordination.

Scientists from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have set out to help build the world’s first total-body positron emission tomography (PET) scanner, a medical imaging device that could change the way cancers and other diseases are diagnosed and treated.
The project is a consortium led by a UC Davis research team and includes scientists from Berkeley Lab and the University of Pennsylvania. It’s supported by a recently announced five-year, $15.5 million ( Euro 13 million) Transformative Research Award from the National Institutes of Health.
The consortium’s goal is to build a PET scanner that images the entire human body simultaneously, a big jump from today’s PET scanners that only scan 20-cm segments at a time. In addition to being able to diagnose and track the trajectory of a disease in a way not possible today, a total-body PET scanner would reduce a patient’s radiation dose by a factor of 40, or decrease scanning time from 20 minutes to just 30 seconds.
Berkeley Lab’s contribution, led by William Moses of the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging Division, is to develop electronics that send data collected by the scanner’s detectors to a computer, which converts the data into a three-dimensional image of the patient. The new scanner will have half a million detectors, and the data from each detector must be electronically transmitted to a computer, so the task is incredibly complex.
‘We’re developing the electronic interface between the detectors and the computer algorithm-and the electronics for this scanner is an order of magnitude more complicated than what’s been done before,’ says Moses. ‘But Berkeley Lab has a long history developing instrumentation for nuclear medical imaging, including PET scanners, and this project is another milestone in our research.’
The total-body PET scanner is the latest project in Berkeley Lab’s PET-related research, coming at a time when technology has advanced to the point that it s possible to efficiently process the data generated from the scanner’s half a million detectors.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratoryhttp://tinyurl.com/zyqhukj