Patients given a clot-busting drug within six hours of a stroke are more likely to make a better recovery than those who do not receive the treatment.
The multi-centre, randomised study of more than 3000 patients is the world
Assessing the mental health of eight-year-olds is a way of identifying those children with the greatest potential need for psychiatric care in later life. This is one of the findings in David Gyllenberg
Carestream Health Portugal has been awarded the ATARP Best Company Award by the Portuguese Association of Technical Radiotherapy, Radiology and Nuclear Medicine (ATARP).
The award was presented at the 15th ATARP National Congress held in Marinha Grande, Leiria in Portugal. ATARP works to contribute to the improvement of healthcare in Portugal, and promotes professional development in an area of rapid scientific and technological developments.
Accepting the award Mario Garcia, Sales Manager for Carestream Health Portugal said: ‘the ATARP Best Company Award reflects the efforts made by Carestream not only in the research and development of innovative products and solutions for current and future market trends, but also by specifically meeting the needs of our customers during a difficult year. Despite demanding economic conditions and against strong competition, we were successful in a number of major projects in both the public and private healthcare sectors.’
‘In the public sector we won projects such as the Portuguese Institute of Oncology (IPO) in Lisbon, the Centro Hospitalar das Caldas da Rainha (CHON), the Hospital de Santar
A Henry Ford Hospital study found that simulation training improved the critical decision-making skills of medical residents performing actual resuscitations in the Emergency Department.
Researchers say the residents performed better in four key skill areas after receiving the simulation training: leadership, problem solving, situational awareness and communication. Their overall performance also sharpened.
While many studies have shown the benefits of simulation training for honing the skill level of medical professionals, Henry Ford
Emergency minimally invasive repair effectively treats potentially fatal ruptured aneurysms in the abdomen without major surgery, involves less recovery time and fewer discharges to in-patient care facilities
A burst aneurysm (a local area of bulge) in the abdominal aorta
In a new study, a program known as Spatially Invariant Vector Quantisation (SIVQ) was able to separate malignancy from background tissue in digital slides of micropapillary urothelial carcinoma, a type of bladder cancer whose features can vary widely from case to case and that presents diagnostic challenges even for experts.
‘Being able to pick out cancer from background tissue is a key test for this type of software tool,’ says U-M informatics fellow Jason Hipp, M.D., Ph.D., who shares lead authorship of the paper with resident Steven Christopher Smith, M.D., Ph.D. ‘This is the type of validation that has to happen before digital pathology tools can be widely used in a clinical setting.’
To test the software
Children and young adults scanned multiple times by computed tomography (CT) have a small increased risk of leukaemia and brain tumours in the decade following their first scan.
The findings from a study of more than 175,000 children and young adults was led by researchers at Newcastle University and at the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, USA.
The researchers emphasise that when a child suffers a major head injury or develops a life-threatening illness, the benefits of clinically appropriate CT scans should outweigh future cancer risks.
Lead author Dr Mark Pearce, Reader in Lifecourse Epidemiology at Newcastle University said: ‘CT scans are accurate and fast so they should be used when their immediate benefits outweigh the long-term risks. However, now we have shown that CT scans increase the risk of cancer, we must ensure that when they are used they are fully justified from a clinical perspective.’
The study represents the culmination of almost two decades of research in this area at Newcastle University, and is jointly funded by the UK Department of Health and NCI/NIH.
CT imaging is a vital and commonly used diagnostic technique and it is used more frequently in countries such as the USA and Japan. However, CT scans deliver a dose of ionising radiation to the body part being scanned and to nearby tissues. Even at relatively low doses, ionising radiation can break the chemical bonds in DNA, causing damage to genes that may increase a person
The use of a dedicated pediatric imaging department (with dedicated pediatric computed tomography (CT) technologists) for pediatric CT scans significantly reduces the radiation dose delivered to the patient, according to a study.
When performed and monitored properly, the benefits of CT scans outweigh the potential long-term risk of radiation. To minimise the potential adverse effects of radiation exposure to pediatric patients, it is necessary to reduce the dose of radiation delivered to these patients while preserving the diagnostic quality of the images produced.
‘There are many strategies for reducing radiation dose. The use of protocols with adjusted exposure parameters for pediatric patients on the basis of child size, organ system scanned and the size of the region scanned is most notable. However, compliance with these protocols can be challenging for technologists, particularly when scanning a combination of adult and pediatric patients,’ said Heather L. Borders, MD, lead author of the study.
A retrospective review of abdominal and pelvic CT console dose and exposure parameter data on 495 patients from a combined pediatric and adult radiology department and subsequently 244 patients from a dedicated pediatric radiology department was performed. Patients were divided into 1 of 8 weight categories for analysis.
A statistically significant decrease in the estimated effective dose for abdominal and pelvic CT studies was observed in all but one of the weight categories at the pediatric radiology department compared with the pediatric and adult radiology department.
‘Imaging pediatric patients in a dedicated pediatric imaging department with dedicated pediatric CT technologists may result in greater compliance with pediatric protocols and significantly reduced patient dose,’ said Borders.
‘Conversely, greater scrutiny of compliance with pediatric dose-adjusted CT protocols may be necessary for departments that scan both children and adults,’ she said.
EurekAlert
As scientists continue making breakthroughs in personalised cancer treatment, delivering those therapies in the most cost-effective manner has become increasingly important. Now researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine have identified new ways of doing just that, allowing more patients to benefit from this revolution in cancer care.
In a paper health economist Adam Atherly, PhD, of the Colorado School of Public Health (CSPH) and medical oncologist D. Ross Camidge, MD, PhD, of the University of Colorado Cancer Center, argue the cost of profiling patients
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides an indication of a breast tumour
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