Cuts to a California state program to provide free mammograms for low-income women will continue indefinitely because the state Legislature has not reached a budget deal.

The Associated Press reports that no new enrollments have been allowed since January, and the qualification age for annual services will stay at 50 instead of returning to 40. The state Public Health Department had … read more »

Radiation exposure isn’t the only safety issue that ought to concern radiologists.

Two radiology technicians have sued Bozeman Deaconess Hospital in Bozeman, Montana. They claim that, while working in a darkroom at the hospital, they were exposed to unsafe levels of X-ray film developing chemicals.

Court documents say one of the women began working at the hospital in 2000 and the other … read more »

What’s the most effective way to encourage women to get mammograms regularly? A) Reminders. B) Education/motivation. C) Counseling. D) All of the above. E) None of the above.

The correct answer, according to the results of a study published online this week in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, is: F) We don’t know; we need to do more studies.

Sigh.

Sally … read more »

Someone shows up at the emergency room with chest pain. An initial consultation categorizes the patient as “non-low risk.” Next step: hospital admission for tests and further evaluation, right?

Not so fast, say researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Instead, their new study suggests placing such patients in an observation unit, monitoring them carefully, and stress testing them with … read more »

An article in the Los Angeles Times last week discusses “the greatest cancer risk you’ve never heard of”—breast density. It suggests that health-care professionals should routinely tell women how dense their breasts are.

The article, by Karen Ravn (who writes frequently on health topics), says: “Evidence shows that for women with extremely dense breasts, the cancer risk can be four to … read more »

An Olympus digital camera works just fine as a cancer screening device, according to an article published this week in the open-access online journal PLoS ONE.

Rice University biomedical engineers and researchers from the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center teamed to create a low-tech imaging system that nonetheless allowed doctors to easily distinguish cancerous cells from healthy ones … read more »

A new drug protects mice from radiation damage to bone marrow, even if taken up to 20 hours after radiation exposure, according to the research team that developed it.

While some current drugs offer some protection from radiation toxicity if ingested in advance, this would be the first “radiomitigant,” able to mitigate bone-marrow damage even when taken after radiation exposure.

Norman Sharpless, … read more »

Clinicians can often make good guesses as to whether stroke patients are suffering from ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke, but no combination of clinical factors is good enough for a definitive diagnosis in all patients. For that, you need imaging.

So conclude two researchers who undertook a systematic review of 19 prospective studies involving 6,438 patients. Shauna Runchey, MD, and Steven McGee, … read more »

Do patients deserve to know the whole truth about a brain MRI? What if the patient is a child? What should parents be told?

A team led by researchers at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore explored those questions. Unfortunately, the researchers didn’t come up with easy answers. They did say that doctors had better decide on a plan in advance, … read more »

Who should get whole-body MRI (WB-MRI)?  Patients with diabetes, rheumatic diseases, primary benign bone tumors, bone-marrow diseases, malignant melanoma, and breast or colorectal cancer. Who shouldn’t? Patients who just want a general health screening.

So concludes a group of German researchers who undertook “a selective literature review on recent technical innovations in the field of WB-MRI and the clinical uses of … read more »