Breast Cancer the Socially Acceptable Cancer
A breast cancer diagnosis is no fun. Actually any cancer diagnosis is no fun. We all know that. But maybe because of all the ' awareness ' , it is now more socially acceptable than other forms of cancer. Isn ' t that just weird? I think so.Meanwhile, a woman in New Zealand was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer andshe wonders if breast cancer would be better because of the stigma surrounding smoking and lung cancer.I think lung cancer is the only cancer which is regarded as ' self inflicted ' . Face it, as normal human beings we associate lung cancer with smoking. But not all smokers get lung cancer and not all lung...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - December 12, 2017 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: breast cancer bonds cancer stigma lung cancer support Source Type: blogs
Hey Watson, Can I Sue You?
By JAYSON CHUNG & AMANDA ZINK
Currently, three South Korean medical institutions – Gachon University Gil Medical Center, Pusan National University Hospital and Konyang University Hospital – have implemented IBM’s Watson for Oncology artificial intelligence (AI) system. As IBM touts the Watson for Oncology AI’s to “[i]dentify, evaluate and compare treatment options” by understanding the longitudinal medical record and applying its training to each unique patient, questions regarding the status and liability of these AI machines have arisen.
Given its ability to interpret data and present treatment op...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 10, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Could Artificial Intelligence destroy radiology by litigation claims?
By, Hugh Harvey MBBS BSc (Hons) FRCR MD (res)
We’ve all heard the big philosophical arguments and debate between rockstar entrepreneurs and genius academics – but have we stopped to think exactly how the AI revolution will play out on our own turf?
At RSNA this year I posed the same question to everyone I spoke to: What if radiology AI gets into the wrong hands? Judging by the way the crowds voted with their feet by packing out every lecture on AI, radiologists would certainly seem to be very aware of the looming seismic shift in the profession – but I wanted to know if anyone was considering the potential side eff...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 3, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: at RogueRad Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
List of Open Access Medical Imaging Datasets
Open access medical imaging datasets are needed for research, product development, and more for academia and industry. We hope this guide will be helpful for machine learning and artificial intelligence startups, researchers, and anyone interested at all. This is a growing list and will be periodically updated - if you know of another open medical imaging dataset, please email data@radrounds.com.Radiology Open Repositories:NIH- 100,000 chest x-rays with diagnoses, labels, annotationTCIA - The Cancer Imaging Archive consisting of extensive number of datasets from Lung IMage Database Consortium (LIDC), Reference Image ...
Source: radRounds - December 2, 2017 Category: Radiology Authors: radRounds Radiology Network Source Type: blogs
Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 216
LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency medicine and critical care medical education blogJust when you thought your brain could unwind on a Friday, you realise that it would rather be challenged with some good old fashioned medical trivia FFFF…introducing Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 216. Question 1Where was this photo taken and what is the significance of this “Trauma Room 1”? By Jpotter1138 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27892379+ Reveal the Funtabulous Answerexpand(document.getElementB...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - December 1, 2017 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Neil Long Tags: Frivolous Friday Five aspirin Baxter burns Charles Frederic Gerhardt Charles Frederick morris saint Charles Rufus Baxter Jack Ruby JFK John Connally john f kennedy Lee Harvey Oswald Lewis Macken occam's razor parkland formula Source Type: blogs
ICER Expanding Probe
A nonprofit group, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), recently received a three-year $13.9 million grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation to expand its ongoing investigative scope on drug pricing to include all new medicines and price increases on existing treatments.
Up until now, ICER hasn’t had the resources to review all new medicines. The additional funding “puts us on a new trajectory,” according to Steven D. Pearson, president of ICER. “Now we’re going to be able to cover the landscape.”
ICER was essentially founded with a $5.3 million grant from the Arnold Foundation in 20...
Source: Policy and Medicine - November 21, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan - Policy & Medicine Writing Staff Source Type: blogs
Should Pathologists and Radiologists Become One Speciality?
A new study has found a growing connection between pathology and radiology. According to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the Scripps Research Institute, the two specialties should be combined into one role called the “information specialist.” Not only would this individual interpret diagnostic images, but they would oversee artificial intelligence disease-screening technology.Since the dawning of the specialty, radiologists have come to rely on computers to make accurate assessments. The study authors hypothesize that since interpreting these images is a form of pattern recognition, we should use auto...
Source: radRounds - October 26, 2017 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
The Science and Technology of Liquid Biopsies Improving Rapidly
I have blogged about liquid biopsies over the course of seven years (see, for example:Does the New Term"Liquid Biopsy" Make Any Sense?;Rapid Adoption of the Term"Liquid Biopsy" on the Web;"Liquid Biopsy" Used to Refer to Detection of Any Serum Cancer DNA). The procedure has the potential to revolutionize both the diagnosis and monitoring of malignant lessons. A recent article discussed the technology in detail (see:Going With the Flow: The Promise and Challenge of Liquid Biopsies). I offer below only a short excerpt from the article. Be sure to read the whole thing if you are interested....
Source: Lab Soft News - September 23, 2017 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Clinical Lab Testing Food and Drug Administration Lab Industry Trends Lab Processes and Procedures Medical Research Surgical Pathology Source Type: blogs
Not subject to debate
Here is a partial list of entities and people who accept that human activity is causing dangerous changes in the earth ' s climate.195 sovereign nations (participants in theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). That is every country on earth including the Democratic People ' s Republic of Korea. It also includes countries whose economies are heavily dependent on fossil fuel extraction, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The Saudis are planning to leave much of their oil in the ground. Exxon Mobil Corporation (although they lied about it for decades)Former Exxon CEO and current U.S. Secretary of State Rex TillersonV...
Source: Stayin' Alive - September 19, 2017 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Addiction doesn ’t just ruin the addict’s life
Despite what the textbooks say or how much research is devoted to substance use disorder, I still meet people who feel that addiction is a “choice,” and that these patients don’t need “treatment” (you made your bed, and now you can just lay in it).
To a certain degree, this is true. Like Little Debbie cakes and type 2 diabetes, cigarettes and lung cancer, lack of exercise and essential hypertension, addiction does start with a choice.
And instead of arguing about how this turns into a disease or trying to convince you to have a bit of compassion, I only wish to show others that: Addiction does...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - September 18, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/leah-stalnaker" rel="tag" > Leah Stalnaker < /a > Tags: Education Emergency Medicine Medical school Primary Care Source Type: blogs
A Safer Way To Legalize Marijuana
Eight US states, the District of Columbia, and the country of Uruguay have recently legalized the recreational use of marijuana, with Canada and more US states poised to do the same. The new laws include limits on youth access, operation of motor vehicles when using, and high-volume purchases or possession. However, none of the laws consider which kinds of marijuana products should and should not be legally sold.
While we take no position on the overall desirability of marijuana legalization, we propose here that policy makers in favor of it consider only permitting the sale of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) extracts intended ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - September 8, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Rebecca Haffajee, Alex C. Liber and Kenneth E. Warner Tags: Featured Public Health drug policy legalization of marijuana Source Type: blogs
Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 204
LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog
LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency medicine and critical care medical education blog
Just when you thought your brain could unwind on a Friday, you realise that it would rather be challenged with some good old fashioned medical trivia FFFF…introducing Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 204.
Question 1
Richard Doll published an epidemiology paper in 1950. What had he discovered?
+ Reveal the Funtabulous Answer
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The link between smoking and lung can...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - September 7, 2017 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Neil Long Tags: Frivolous Friday Five addison's disease bubo bubonic plague cancer endocarditis JF Kennedy Libman Sacks moritz roth richard doll roth spots SLE smoking Source Type: blogs
An Immune Response to Viral Infection can Promote Cancer
Here, researchers find an unrelated mechanism by which an immune response to invading viruses might as a side-effect damage DNA in cells, and thus raise the risk of certain types of cancer. Both bacterial and viral infections of various types have been linked to increased cancer risk. There is no doubt a diverse set of mechanisms yet to be discovered that might explain these correlations. You might recall a recent paper suggesting that some bacteria force a more rapid pace of replication in stem cells, boosting the occurrence of mutational damage as a result, for example. That is very different from the mechanism uncovered...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 25, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
To Combat ‘Information Blocking,’ Look To HIPAA
Back in 2009, when the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act became law, US taxpayers committed $300 million to seed nationwide health information exchange. Taxpayers also agreed to pay what turned out to be $35 billion in incentive payments for physicians and hospitals to adopt and “meaningfully use” electronic health records (EHRs). In implementing the meaningful-use program, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) required eligible providers and hospitals to attest to certain activities, including engaging in health information exchange and providing their patients ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - August 24, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Lucia C. Savage Tags: Health IT 21st Century Cures electronic health records HIPAA information blocking medical data privacy Source Type: blogs
Deep Sequencing of Loose DNA in Blood for Early Detection of Many Cancers
A collaborative project between scientists in the U.S., Denmark, and The Netherlands has developed a way of spotting bits of DNA in blood that derive from tumors deep in the body. The technology may allow for early detection of cancers before any symptoms arise and earlier than any other existing approach.
Though the fact that tumors shed chunks of DNA has been well known, it’s been difficult to know what mutations to look for in individual patients. False positives can be much too common if one doesn’t look specifically for tumor-related mutations, as benign mutations are way too frequent.
The team employed a...
Source: Medgadget - August 21, 2017 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Diagnostics Oncology Pathology Source Type: blogs
