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

A new study conducted at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) has revealed some of the underlying mechanisms that may increase the risk of heart disease in people with sleep apnoea. The study also found that statins

At conhIT – Connecting Healthcare IT, Europe’s leading event for the Health IT industry which takes place from 19 to 21 April in Berlin – a competition will be presenting an award for the best health app once again.
This event, part of the internationally recognized AppCircus series, will be taking place for the second time, and is regarded as the world’s biggest competition for mHealth apps. Taking part gives companies and mHealth app developers an opportunity to present their products to an outstanding audience and to increase awareness of their companies in the Health IT sector. At conhIT 2016 more than 7,500 visitors and some 400 exhibitors are expected to attend.
The competition will be looking for an app that assists the daily work of medical professionals, nurses and patients and can be used in Europe in hospitals, rehab centres, care homes and general patient care.
The award ceremony will take place on 20 April 2016 in the mobile health zone at conhIT. This section of the exhibition focuses on innovations and trends in mobile health applications.   
The winner of the conhIT AppCircus competition will be nominated for the Mobile Premier Awards, the world’s biggest app exhibition at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
www.conhit.com

A new hybrid molecule developed in the lab at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering shows promise for treating breast cancer by serving as a