chemotherapy

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Doctors Name Treatments That Bring Little or No Benefit

Staff Writer | BBC | October 24, 2016

Women over 45 do not need a blood test to diagnose the menopause and X-rays are no real help to those with lower back pain, doctors have said. The advice, drawn up by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, features on a list of 40 treatments that bring little or no benefit to patients. The list is part of a campaign to reduce the number of unnecessary medical treatments. Patients are also encouraged to ask more questions about procedures. Medical experts from 11 different specialties were asked to identify five treatments or procedures commonly used in their field that were not always necessary or valuable...

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Halamka Says We Can and Must Improve Healthcare Management

As a physician and CIO, I’m quick to spot inefficiencies in healthcare workflow.  More importantly, as the care navigator for my family, I have extensive firsthand experience with patient facing processes. My wife’s cancer treatment, my father’s end of life care, and my own recent primary hypertension diagnosis taught me how we can do better. Last week, when my wife received a rejection in coverage letter from Harvard Pilgrim/Caremark, it highlighted the imperative we have to improve care management workflow in the US. Since completing her estrogen positive, progesterone positive, HER2 negative breast cancer treatment in 2012 (chemotherapy, surgery, radiation), she’s been maintained on depot lupron and tamoxifen to suppress estrogen...

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IBM Pitched Its Watson Supercomputer as a Revolution in Cancer Care. It’s Nowhere Close

Casey Ross | STAT | September 5, 2017

It was an audacious undertaking, even for one of the most storied American companies: With a single machine, IBM would tackle humanity’s most vexing diseases and revolutionize medicine. Breathlessly promoting its signature brand — Watson — IBM sought to capture the world’s imagination, and it quickly zeroed in on a high-profile target: cancer. But three years after IBM began selling Watson to recommend the best cancer treatments to doctors around the world, a STAT investigation has found that the supercomputer isn’t living up to the lofty expectations IBM created for it. It is still struggling with the basic step of learning about different forms of cancer...

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Is "Modern Medicine" Indistinguishable From Magic?

Evidently, most of health care's technologies are not yet sufficiently advanced. For example, just think about chemotherapy.  We've spent lots of money developing ever more powerful, always more expensive, hopefully more precise drugs to combat cancers.  In many cases they've helped improve cancer patients' lifespans -- adding months or even years of life.  But few who take them would say the drugs are without noticeable side effects -- e.g., patients often suffer nausea, vomiting, hair loss, fatigue, appetite loss, sexual issues, or a mental fog that is literally called "chemo brain."...

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Study Shows How Traditional Chinese Medicines Kill Cancer Cells

Press Release | University of Adelaide | September 8, 2016

Researchers at the University of Adelaide have shown how a complex mix of plant compounds derived from ancient clinical practice in China - a Traditional Chinese Medicine - works to kill cancer cells. Compound kushen injection (CKI) is approved for use in China to treat various cancer tumours, usually as an adjunct to western chemotherapy - but how it works has not been known. This study, published in the journal Oncotarget, is one of the first to characterise the molecular action of a Traditional Chinese Medicine rather than breaking it down to its constituent parts...

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