The FDA approves a combination of drugs for breast cancer. Source: U.S. Food & Drug Administration. Breast cancer is the second leading cause of death among women.
Tort Reform -The Big Lie
Source: Public Citizen Report -Congress Watch Division (Public Citizen is a national non-profit consumer organization with more than 300,000 members and supporters). Medical malpractice payments were at their lowest level on record in 2011 In contrast to the hundreds of thousands of annual avoidable adverse events (and tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths) that [...]
Breast Cancer Mammography Controversy
Sources: Harvard School of Public Health; Annals of Internal Medicine online; BBC Health News; Case experience RESEARCHERS from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) have recently suggested that routine mammography screening, the current essential tool in detecting early breast cancers, may lead to a significant amount of overdiagnosis of disease that would otherwise have proved harmless. Analyzing [...]
Future Gene Therapy for Prostate Cancer?
Source: ScienceDaily; R. L. Vinall, J. Q. Chen, N. E. Hubbard, S. S. Sulaimon, M. M. Shen, R. W. DeVere White, A. D. Borowsky. Initiation of prostate cancer in mice by Tp53R270H, 2012 Researchers from University of California Davis, have found that a genetic mutation may play an important role in the development of prostate cancer. [...]
Men Over Age 50 are being Victimized by Overly Agressive Surgery!
Sources: Duke Medical School, International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics, Vol. 82, Issue 5, 1 April 2012, p. 781; NCCN Guidelines for Prostate Cancer; National Institute for Health & Clinical Excellence; James Buchanan Brady Institute at Johns Hopkins Memorial Hospital; Sloan Kettering Memorial Hospital Editorial After 30 years of Medical Malpractice Litigation, I have come to recognize that medicine has patterns [...]
Physican Group Advocates Less Testing for Patients.
Sources: Choosing Wisely.org (An Initiative of the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation) Press Release; NY Times Health Blog Under the "educational initiative" of Choosing Wisely, led by the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation and involving 8 other specialty boards are recommending less routine testing for their patients. The thought process is that unnecessary [...]
How Healthy is your County in New Jersey?
Sources: The US Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), the Dartmouth Health Atlas, the U.S. Census Bureau The 2012 County Health Rankings report, the third annual, is out today and measures each of the 3,005 counties in the U.S. The report, which draws on data from the CDC, the Dartmouth Health Atlas, the U.S. [...]
Breast Cancer Screening Questioned
Sources: Harvard School of Public Health, Annals of Internal Medicine online, BBC Health News Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) research suggests that routine mammography screening, the current essential tool in detecting early breast cancers, may lead to a significant amount of overdiagnosis of disease that would otherwise have proved harmless. The researchers analyzed data from [...]
Women with Breast Cancer Quit Meds, According to Recent Study.
Source: Chicago's Northwestern University News Center; www.northwestern.edu In what has been termed the "first study in which women are actually asked questions," a staggering 36% of postmenopausal women who are treated for estrogen-sensitive breast cancer quit using drugs that help prevent the disease from recurring. Universally the reason is because of side effects of the medication, [...]
Avastin No Longer Approved for Breast Cancer
Source: US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) The US FDA has revoked it's prior approval of Avastin for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer. Avastin came onto the market as being a meidication with great promise for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer. FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg stated plainly in her Decision of the Commissioner, that, "[T]there is [...]
Improving Mastectomy for Breast Cancer
Source: Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery: November 2011, Vol. 128 Issue 5, P. 1005-1014. Surgery for the treatment of breast cancer continues to evolve with modified versions of radical mastectomy (whole breast removal), to skin-sparing mastectomy (allowing for easier implant placement) to newer areola-sparing and nipple-sparing mastectomies. The legitimate fear of disfigurement is a very real factor [...]