With more than 50,000 newly diagnosed cases each year, lung cancer is one of the most common types of cancer in Germany. As yet, however, very few statistics are available on the care situation of lung cancer sufferers and the associated costs. Scientists at the Helmholtz Zentrum München have now analyzed comprehensive health insurance data in order to discover the cost of the disease and which…
In an interview in advance of the European Health Forum in Gastein, Dr. Stanimir Hasurdjiev, a board member of the European Patients’ Forum, talked about the challenge of multimorbidity and how to make it work for the patient. Report: Michael Krassnitzer
Scientists at the University of Sheffield have discovered that a common drug given to arthritis sufferers could also help to treat patients with blood cancers.
What you see is what you get - unfortunately, this doesn’t always apply in cancer imaging. Why is it that something which looks conspicuous on an image later turns out not to be a tumour? Why, on the other hand, are things overlooked that later turn out to be cancer? Pathological findings are extremely important to help improve diagnostic precision in radiology. Both disciplines therefore…
Pathology is the gold standard of prostate diagnostics. Whilst the radiologist makes interpretations based on shadows and grey scale values visible on an image, the pathologist has the ‘fait accompli’ under the microscope. Professor Glen Kristiansen, Director at the Institute for Pathology at the University Hospital Bonn, explains why image-guided biopsies also make sense from the…
‘Health insurers should keep a tighter rein on the quality of endoscopic interventions because, mostly, they represent a gentler alternative to surgery,’ asserts international expert Horst Neuhaus, during an EH interview. Report: Daniela Zimmermann/Juliane Dannert
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center have discovered a molecular mechanism that connects breast tissue stiffness to tumor metastasis and poor prognosis. The study may inspire new approaches to predicting patient outcomes and halting tumor metastasis.
The tremendous progress of ultrahigh field magnetic resonance (UHF-MR) is a powerful motivator to transfer the lessons learned from basic research into the clinic. These efforts are fueled by the quest for advancing the capabilities of biomedical and diagnostic MRI, today. With this in mind momentum is gathering for broader clinical studies and applications. Realizing these opportunities, MAGMA -…
Scientists from the Hubrecht Institute and the University Medical Center Utrecht (UMC Utrecht) have developed a cell culture model of human colon cancer progression. This model mimics the situation in patients more closely than any other colon cancer model so far. It enables researchers to study processes involved in colon cancer development and find new cancer drugs.
Imaging tests like mammograms or CT scans can detect tumors, but figuring out whether a growth is or isn’t cancer usually requires a biopsy to study cells directly. Now results of a Johns Hopkins study suggest that MRI could one day make biopsies more effective or even replace them altogether by noninvasively detecting telltale sugar molecules shed by the outer membranes of cancerous cells.
No alcohol, but exercise and a healthy diet – that’s what women can do to help prevent breast cancer recommends Prof. Thomas Helbich (Director of Molecular and Gender Imaging at the Medical University of Vienna) who hosted the European Institute for Biomedical Imaging Research (EIBIR) session ‘The complexity of personalized breast care’ at ECR 2015. Report: Chrissanthi Nikolakudi
Injecting toxic chemicals into the body to kill cancer cells is a physically and mentally brutal experience for patients. The treatment cost is equally brutal for healthcare systems. Yet, often after six months of difficult treatment, patients may hear that the chemotherapy did not stop or kill the cancer. There is now a way to find out, in just 30 days and at a cost of just €183, whether the…
Molecular profiling is transforming brain cancer management and radiologists must get to grips with the upcoming paradigm that will affect the way they report findings. Renowned neuroradiologist Professor Anne G. Osborn from the University of Utah, School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, unveiled the latest advances in brain pathology during the Nikola Tesla Honorary Lecture last week at ECR…
The ‘MRI of the Adnexa, Essentials and Beyond’ session from at the MR 2015 symposium held in Garmisch, Austria, presented tips and tricks in clinical routine before moving to research that combines imaging and genomic data to better evaluate ovarian cancer. Report: John Brosky
MRI is increasingly relevant to cancer management, especially to detect breast carcinoma. Professor Christiane K Kuhl from the department of diagnostic and interventional radiology at the University of Aachen, Germany, strongly advocated in favour of MRI in breast cancer screening during a dedicated Satellite Symposium organised by Bracco at ECR 2015. Report: Mélisande Rouger
In breast cancer care each patient receives personalised, highly effective diagnosis and treatment procedures. In breast diagnostics this mainly revolves around new MRI scanning procedures that allow the quantification of biological and physiological processes on a cellular and molecular level.
Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the Medical Faculty in Mannheim at Heidelberg University are searching for new approaches to prevent liver fibrosis. They have identified a surface molecule on special liver cells called stellate cells as a potential target for interfering with this process. When the researchers turned off the receptor, this led to reduced liver…
Researchers at University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht are developing an innovative cancer treatment with the help of a grant from Alpe d’HuZes/Dutch Cancer Society (KWF) of nearly 300,000 euros. The treatment involves the injection of radioactive beads into tumors, thereby enabling a very precise localized radiotherapy.
Physicians often blame patient demands for contributing to high medical costs, however, a new study involving more than 5,000 patient-clinician visits indicates that cancer patients rarely push for unnecessary tests and treatments from their health care providers.
Carestream will show enhancements to its digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) module including a slabbing tool, improved workflow capabilities and the display of DICOM-compliant 2D synthetic views (which are generated from the 3D dataset) at the 2015 European Conference of Radiology. The latest DBT module is currently available.
Researchers at the Hubrecht Institute and the University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht successfully developed a culturing system for human liver stem cells as well as stem cells from pancreatic cancer. They describe the development of these culturing systems in two articles in this week’s edition of Cell magazine.
Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg and from the Medical Faculty Mannheim of Heidelberg University treated mice with a combination of a low-dose metronomic chemotherapy and an antibody against Ang-2, a regulatory protein of the blood vessel lining cells. The treated animals had significantly less metastases.
Radiotherapy always encounters particular challenges when a tumour is ‘mobile’. This is when radiotherapy must be carried out over several weeks. Within that period the tumour position, shape and expansion typically will keep changing. Thus radiotherapy needs continuous adaptation to maintain continuously precise radiation. Report: Chrissanthi Nikolakudi
The treatment of cerebral aneurysms is often very complex and initially it is not always obvious which type of treatment is best suited for an individual case. In October, during the Annual Congress of the German Society for Neuroradiology e.V., a working group from Hamburg introduced a procedure that enables the production of exact copies of individual aneurysms with a 3D printer.
The number of cancer patients in Germany continues to rise steadily. An increase in the number of newly diagnosed cases of 14% is expected by 2020 compared to 2008. Therefore early detection is increasingly the focus of attention.