Researchers are reporting a new method that could put an end to painful prostate biopsies that miss the tumor. They’ve combined magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, with ultrasound in a way that can guide a doctor right to a prostate tumor.

NBC News, 12/10/2012

Medical errors kill over 250,000 people in the United States yearly. Fortunately, though, there are strategies you can use to help doctors and nurses avoid mistakes.

CNN, 11/5/2012

The best medical innovations for next year include an almond-size device that's implanted in the mouth to relieve severe headaches and a hand-held scanner resembling a blow dryer that detects skin cancer, the Cleveland Clinic said on Wednesday. Doctors and researchers at the Clinic voted for what they thought were the biggest, most significant innovations from the 250 ideas submitted from their colleagues. One of the main criteria for getting on this annual list of the best medical innovations is the number of people that the product or procedure can potentially help. For that reason, a device that helps relieve headaches, the second-most common ailment after the cold, was second on the clinic's list.

Reuters, 10/31/2012

An outbreak of fungal meningitis has focused attention on the reformulation of drugs.

The New York Times, 10/16/2012

A study by leading European cancer agencies- published Thursday in the journal BMJ- suggests that mammograms aimed at finding breast cancer might actually raise the chances of developing it in young women whose genes put them at higher risk for the disease. The radiation from mammograms might be especially harmful to them, so an MRI is probably a safer method of screening women under 30 who are at high risk because of gene mutations, the researchers concluded. The study can't prove a link between the radiation and breast cancer, but is one of the biggest studies ever to look at the issue.

Yahoo! News/ Associated Press, 9/7/2012

The trick to using medical radiation appropriately, experts say, is to balance the potential risks against known benefits... but this is not done nearly enough. There's been an astronomical rise in recent years in the use of radiation for medical imaging, especially for CT scans, leading to unnecessary medical costs and an increased risk of cancer in patients. Dr. Rebecca Smith-Bindman, a specialist in radiology and biomedical imaging at the University of California, San Francisco, says, “More than 10 percent of patients each year are receiving very high radiation exposures... Patients should ask, ‘What is this test for? Do I need it? Why? Do I need it now?’" Some of the newest forms of radiological imaging being used now have not even been tested in scientifically designed clinical trials yet, and thus their true benefits are at best a guess. There is already a California law requiring that the dose used for CT scans be recorded in every patient’s medical record and that inadvertent overdoses be reported to the state immediately... If such recording were to become a national mandate, electronic medical records could help doctors and patients keep track of radiation exposures and avoid unnecessary imaging. As it is now, even though the cancer-causing effects of radiation are cumulative, no one keeps track of how much radiation patients have already been exposed to when a new imaging exam is ordered.

The New York Times, 8/21/2012

                     

Many major diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancer, and stroke have been linked to a condition known as chronic inflammation. Scientists are studying how diet affects chronic inflammation.

At a conference of more than 30,000 cancer specialists, scientists are reporting new tactics to spur the immune system to attack a broad range of cancers, new drugs that attack the disease while sparing healthy cells, and new ways to tell which patients will benefit from which drugs.

ABC News, 6/4/2012

A widely followed federal advisory panel recommended on Monday that healthy men should not get screened for prostate cancer (with a common blood test). The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force reviewed studies showing that the test, widely used for almost 20 years, could lead to unnecessary cancer treatments.

ABC News, 5/22/2012

The FDA is warning that taking bone drugs for osteoporosis for longer than five years may put women at an increased risk of femur fractures and other problems. Many women take these drugs, called bisphosphonates, specifically Fosamax, Actonel and Reclast, to help prevent bone loss and fractures. But the concern now is that after three to five years on these drugs, the risk of spontaneous fractures actually increases.

ABC News, 5/12/2012