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Additional "Unsuspected" Breast Cancers Not Seen On Mammography Or Ultrasound Detected By Breast MRI
A total of 199 patients with newly diagnosed breast cancer underwent breast MRI. "We found additional, unsuspected cancers in the ipsilateral breast (the one that had already been diagnosed with cancer) in 16% of patients; we found cancers in the contralateral breast (the one that had not been diagnosed with cancer) in 4% of patients," said Petra J. Lewis, MD, lead author of the study. "These patients had already had bilateral mammography and these tumors had not been apparent on mammography," said Dr. Lewis.
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New Snapshots Show States Vary Widely In Providing Quality Health Care, USA
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality"s annual release of state-by-state quality data continues to give states mixed reviews for the quality of care they provide. As in previous years, AHRQ"s 2008 State Snapshots show that no state does well or poorly on all quality measures.
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Lawmakers Seek Price Tag They Can Agree On
"Lawmakers working to overhaul the U.S. health-care system face a pressure-filled July after leaving town this week without resolving the biggest questions dividing Democrats and Republicans," Bloomberg reports. Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee - which observers deem most likely to come up with a passable, bipartisan bill - have been working to reduce the cost of the overhaul to gain Republican support, but had not yet released a proposal. Bloomberg adds: "While the Congressional Budget Office said options under consideration by the committee can keep the cost within Baucus"s goal of $1 trillion over 10 years, how to pay for the plan remains unsettled. So is structuring some kind of government-run competition for insurers. ... "Nothing has been set," Montana Democrat [Max] Baucus told reporters in the Capitol on June 25. The recess offers a chance for "taking stock," he said" (Jensen and Livkin, 6/29).
Sexual Health

Non Invasive Assessment Of Treatment For Common Type Of Breast Cancer

Non-invasive imaging can measure how well patients with the most common form of breast cancer - estrogen receptor positive type - respond to standard aromatase inhibitor therapy after only two weeks and shows similar findings that more invasive needle sampling identifies, according to a poster presentation to be presented at the ASCO annual meeting May 29 - June 2, 2009, Orland, Fl. Using Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanning and a glucose analogue called FDG, a research team led by Hannah Linden, M.D. and David Mankoff M.D., of the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and the University of Washington, scanned 21 patients before and after two weeks of aromatase inhibitor therapy. Many of the patients also underwent a needle biopsy as a control measure to compare the two techniques. The results - 16 of the 21 patients had a greater than 20 percent decline in FDG values - "paralleled perfectly" earlier work done by UK-based researchers who used needle biopsies to measure whether the proliferation of cancer cells was slowed by therapy, according to Linden, who is a breast cancer oncologist. "Our findings are exciting because they suggest that we can measure a patient"s response to therapy noninvasively, and PET scanning provides us simultaneous quantitative metabolic measurements at multiple tumor sites," Linden said. "PET has the potential to be a powerful tool to help doctors make important treatment decisions in as little as two weeks instead of two or more months." It"s common for patients with estrogen receptor positive cancer to a bone-dominant type yet they have remained largely unstudied in clinical trials because they are very difficult to image, according to Linden. "Our work allowed us to study a common problem in a way that"s not been done before and to help more people," she said. "More work needs to be done but in my mind this was a homerun," Linden said. The study was funded by a "Progress for Patients" grant from the National Cancer Institute and the Avon Foundation. Joining Linden were researchers from the University of Washington, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Arizona Cancer Center. http://www.asco.org/ASCOv2/Meetings/ASCO+Annual+Meeting Dean Forbes Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center


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