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A new study confirms that men with high-risk prostate cancer can be treated with five versus eight weeks of radiation therapy. The phase III clinical trial is the first to confirm the safety and efficacy of a moderately shortened course of radiation exclusively for patients with high-risk disease. "We asked, can we deliver radiation safely and effectively in less time so that our high-risk patients can finish their treatment faster?" said Dr. Niazi. "Hypofractionated treatment for prostate cancer decreases financial toxicity to patients, and it is completed in 25 days instead of the usual 38 to 40 days. That's three...

Decades after battling childhood cancer, survivors often face a new challenge: cardiometabolic disease. A spectrum of conditions that includes coronary heart disease and diabetes, cardiometabolic disease typically impacts people who are obese, elderly, or insulin resistant. Radiation therapy may be to blame. The findings suggest that it may be necessary to find strategies that reduce the radiation dose delivered to fat. "When physicians are planning radiation therapy, they are very conscious of toxicity to major organs. But fat is often not considered," says Rockefeller's Paul Cohen. Children with cancer are more likely to survive into adulthood than ever before. More...

CHICAGO — “Some folks might think that I’m just a paranoid old guy who feels that the world is coming to an end and we had a great ride…but there are major disruptive changes in health care on the horizon, and unless we understand them and respond, I think, personally, the future of our profession is in jeopardy,” Paul Berger, MD, chairman, Partners in the Imaging Enterprise, and past founder and former chairman of NightHawk Radiology, said at RSNA 2014. The disruption Berger was referring to specifically is the trend of population health. Population health is an idea with varying...

Patients with chronic fatigue syndrome are accustomed to disappointment. The cause of the disorder remains unknown; it can be difficult to diagnose, and treatment options are few. Many patients are still told to seek psychiatric help. But two recent studies — one from investigators at Stanford a few weeks ago and another from a Japanese research team published earlier this year — have found that the brains of people with chronic fatigue syndrome differ from those of healthy people, strengthening the argument that serious physiological dysfunctions are at the root of the condition. Both studies were small, however, and their...

Radiation therapy can be dangerous to patients — and sometimes, to students. Brandon Jenkins found that out the hard way when he applied to a radiation therapy program at the Community College of Baltimore County. Despite solid grades, the director of the department took issue with Brandon’s faith, suggesting that it was a disqualifying factor in his application. holy bible in hotel “I understand that religion is a major part of your life,” Adrienne Dougherty emailed, “and that was evident in your recommendation letters, however, this field is not the place for religion. We have so many patients who come...

Behold, an X-ray of Hitler’s head You're looking at one of five known X-rays of Hitler's head. The radiograph is just one of 17-million rare, intriguing, and often-bizarre items housed in the the U.S. National Library of Medicine, the largest medical library on Earth. We've got a gallery. This particular image is part of a larger medical dossier on Hitler that was assembled by U.S. military intelligence following World War II, and one of the 450 images featured in Hidden Treasure — a book published yesterday in observance of the National Library of Medicine's 175th anniversary. Hitler as Seen by...

When Alain Reyes’s hair suddenly fell out in a freakish band circling his head, he was not the only one worried about his health. His co-workers at a shipping company avoided him, and his boss sent him home, fearing he had a contagious disease. Only later would Mr. Reyes learn what had caused him so much physical and emotional grief: he had received a radiation overdose during a test for a stroke at a hospital in Glendale, Calif. Other patients getting the procedure, called a CT brain perfusion scan, were being overdosed, too — 37 of them just up the...

WASHINGTON — Just as the worldwide shortage of a radioactive isotope used in millions of medical procedures is about to get worse, officials say a new source for the substance has emerged: a nuclear reactor in Poland. The isotope, technetium 99, is used to measure blood flow in the heart and to help diagnose bone and breast cancers. Almost two-thirds of the world’s supply comes from two reactors; one, in Ontario, has been shut for repairs for nine months and is not expected to reopen before April, and the other, in the Netherlands, will close for six months starting Friday....

I have two easy questions for you. For some background, I had a brainstem tumor removed 6 years ago. In those first scans they also saw two "lesions", one in each frontal lobe. Those lesions never changed all these years until now.

The pictures and stories are the stuff of slapstick: wheelchairs, gurneys and even floor polishers jammed deep inside M.R.I. scanners whose powerful magnets grabbed them from the hands of careless hospital workers. The police officer whose pistol flew out of his holster and shot a wall as it hit the magnet. The sprinkler repairman whose acetylene tank was yanked inside, breaking its valve and starting a fire that razed the building. But the bigger picture is anything but funny, medical safety experts say. As the number of magnetic resonance imaging scanners in the country has soared from a handful in...

<p>For a brief moment, Dr. Thomas Giannulli, a Seattle internist, thought he was getting in at the start of an exciting new area of medicine. He was opening a company to offer CT scans to the public - no doctor's referral necessary. The scans, he said, could find diseases like cancer or heart disease early, long before there were symptoms. And, for the scan centers, there was money to be made.</p>

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Obese Americans are overwhelming medical imaging machines that now have a hard time peering inside their bodies, doctors reported on Wednesday. "Hospital radiology departments are increasingly unable to adequately image and assess obese patients because of the limitations in current radiology equipment," said Raul Uppot, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The main problem is that ultrasound waves have to penetrate body tissue to produce a quality image, and that can be hindered in even slightly overweight patients, the report said. Equipment makers "need to think about design changes and technological advancements to obtain quality...