In the News
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05.3.11
Researchers Question Mammogram Guidelines
The recent guidelines issued by a government task force that do not recommend routine annual mammograms in women 40-49 may be having a negative impact, according to new research. If screening mammograms are not done routinely in women in this age group, says researcher Lara Hardesty, MD, chief of breast imaging at the University of Colorado Hospital, Denver, “I am concerned the only way the breast cancer in these women will be detected will be when they are large enough to be felt by either the women or their health care provider.”
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04.27.11
Radiology: CTC May be More Suitable for Initial Colorectal Screening
A systematic review of nearly 50 studies revealed that CT colonography (CTC) yields comparable sensitivity to colonoscopy, leading the authors to suggest that CTC might be a more suitable initial exam for suspected colorectal cancer…
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04.26.11
Thyroid Fears Aside, That X-Ray’s Worth It
“We’ve said for years that the amount of radiation from dental X-rays is not enough to cause cancer,” Dr. Wartofsky said.
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04.19.11
New Guidelines For Spotting Alzheimer’s
The first update in nearly 30 years to U.S. guidelines for the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease expands the definition to include patients with earlier stage symptoms and recognizes the condition as being on a continuum rather than just end-stage dementia. People diagnosed with Alzheimer’s tend to be 65 and older, but evidence suggests that signs of the memory-robbing disease, like amyloid protein plaques and nerve cell death, may start in the brain five to 10 years before they can currently be detected. In the future, doctors hope to rely more on biomarkers, proteins and other molecules in patients’ blood and tissue that are indicators of the disease.
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04.15.11
Sharpened Focus: Improving the Numbers
The idea of probing the body’s interior with radiation stretches back to experiments with X rays in the 1800s, but more than a century later, images taken with radiological scans still are not considered reliable enough to, for example, serve as the sole indicator of the efficacy of a cancer treatment. Lisa Karam, a biochemist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and a few dozen of her colleagues across North America have set out to change that.
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04.11.11
MRI May Help with Early Detection of Alzheimer’s
MRI could help detect Alzheimer’s disease at an early stage — before irreversible damage has been done, according to the second recent study to examine MRI use for Alzheimer’s. For this study, published online and in the June edition of Radiology, researchers looked at elderly people with normal cognitive ability to see if automated brain volume measurements on MRI could predict future memory decline.
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04.8.11
Functional MRI Shows Impact of Parkinson’s Treatment
Researchers at the University of Michigan are taking a new approach to measuring brain activity in patients with Parkinson’s disease by using functional MRI (fMRI) to image patients at rest. The technique deviates from previous studies, which invasively explored brain activity in Parkinson’s patients while they were doing certain tasks, rather than resting. Those results helped researchers determine whether or not patients were able to activate task-related areas of their brains or if they were using other compensatory methods to accomplish a task.
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03.31.11
Study Finds CTC Screening’s Benefits Outweigh Radiation Risks
The benefits of colon cancer screening with virtual colonoscopy far outweigh the risk of radiation-induced cancers, even when the exam is repeated every five years between the ages of 50 and 80, concludes a new study in the April issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology.
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03.29.11
Benefits of Radiation Therapy Outweigh Risks of a Second Cancer: Study
The odds a second cancer will develop after radiation treatment for a first cancer are relatively low, U.S. National Cancer Institute researchers report. In a long-term study of more than 600,000 cancer survivors, an estimated 8 percent of second cancers were attributable to radiation treatment for the original cancer, according to the study.
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03.29.11
Virtual Colonoscopy Payments Climb Slowly
These days, virtual colonoscopy is more likely than ever to be reimbursed. But insurers are still more likely to pay for the procedure as a diagnostic tool after failed optical colonoscopy, or for examining frail and at-risk patients, than for screening asymptomatic adults, according to Dr. Abraham Dachman.
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