Article • MEDICA 2013
EndoMagnetics brings nanomedicine to breast cancer
It looks like a drug, it is injected in patients like a drug, but its acts like a medical device. Welcome to the new world of nanomedicine.
Cancer
Faster scanners, more parameters, better markers…
With MRI and CT scanners widely available in clinical routine, radiologists cull increasingly precise and relevant functional tumour information for diagnostics and monitoring purposes. Both modalities offer technological and methodological approaches, initiated by the discipline itself, that have become indispensable for certain frequent tumours.
European nanomedicine research
Cancer diagnostics - Nanotechnology is currently being used in oncology to improve early tumour detection, imaging procedures and targeting of cancer therapies. Cancer biomarkers, indicators that are being produced by the body in spreading tumour cells, play an important role in cancer detection, Dr. Jörg Raach reports
DIEP flap reconstruction
In France, every year 15,000 women undergo complete or partial mastectomy due to breast cancer. Only about a third of them, i.e. around 5,000 patients, use the possibilities reconstructive surgery offers and 70 percent of those women opt for an implant although it is associated with a risk of infection because the body might react negatively to the foreign object.
Despite population decrease, in 2020 cancer case will increase
In the country’s first scientific study to correlate the demographic changes and frequency of tumorous diseases, demographic changes have led scientists to forecast a significant increase in the number of cancerous diseases in coming years.
Mandatory tumour boards
The government of France takes cancer very seriously. With 150,000 deaths each year, this is the leading cause of mortality in the country. The national health system pays for 100% of the care.
Tumour boards cause staff problems
About 20 years ago the first tumour boards were set up in Germany. Initiated and led by surgeons, they not only invited oncologists, radiotherapists and radiologists to conferences but also, increasingly often, pathologists.
Article • Great Britain
£250 million for innovative cancer treatment
A major new cutting edge radiotherapy treatment will be available in the UK thanks to £250 million of government funding to build two new facilities in Manchester and London, Public Health Minister Anna Soubry confirmed on August, 1.
Re-evaluating the multidisciplinary approach to cancer care
A 2012 study analysing the care of cancer patients in the USA in 138 Veterans’ Administration hospitals (pub: Journal of the National Cancer Institute) questions the effectiveness of tumour board review. The study measured effectiveness by comparing the presence of tumour review boards with stage-specific quality of care and patient outcomes.
EuroMedLab 2013
Milan, Italy – The 20th European Congress of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine certainly lived up to its claim as the EU’s largest event of its kind – 2,407 visitors and 4,786 delegates from 101 countries plus 82 exhibitors fanned out or arranged themselves over the event’s 3,500 square metres, Hanna Politis reports
Treating bladder cancer
Bladder cancer is highly challenging in terms of patient management and medical costs. As the fourth most frequent cancer in men and ninth in women in developed countries, although BC is a common disease it is still under-represented in public awareness and in cancer research .
CAD evaluation of MR-mammography
With the help of a commercially available CAD (computer-assisted diagnosis) programme, MRI can provide prognostic data on the development of distant metastases in the further course of breast cancer.
Breast surgeons have endorsed ultrasound for decades
Ultrasound may be used during breast conservation surgery, to locate tumour lesions or to place localising wires; it can also guide a lumpectomy and perform a specimen exam to ensure a lesion has been excised and to evaluate surgical margins
Breast cancer
The charity Cancer Research UK reports that the number of breast cancer diagnoses in under 50-year-old women each year in the UK has exceeded 10,000 for the first time.
A clever(t) fusion for prostate diagnosis
Statistically speaking every fourth older German man suffers from prostate cancer with the mortality rate being 60,000 patients annually
New cooperation in research on ovarian cancer
Sanofi and the Curie Institute, through its Curie-Cancer partnership under the Institut Carnot label, today announce the establishment of a three-year research collaboration to identify new therapeutic targets for the development of treatments for ovarian cancer.
Cancer has a smell and breathprint
Israel - Researchers are using breath-test technology to detect volatile organic compounds to tell whether a patient has stomach cancer.
Bladder cancer update
In developed countries, bladder cancer is the fourth most frequent cancer in men and the ninth in women, and it greatly challenges patient management and cost containment. However, it is under-represented in public awareness and in cancer research.
'Status quo bias' affecting take up rate for bowel cancer screening
The NHS has to overcome people’s ‘status-quo bias’ if it is to increase the number of screenings for bowel cancer.
Perfusion imaging: The future of CT?
CT scanners now nicely cover morphology. The challenge is moving to CT functional imaging without frying patients
Colorectal cancer screening
Colon cancer remains the second most common cause of cancer-related death in the Western world with 450,000 citizens in Europe newly diagnosed and 230,000 deaths annually (Source: Globalscan 2008).
The curious tale of abandoned plans and dismantled hopes
A prototype for proton and ion therapy has been used clinically in Heidelberg since 2009. Built jointly by Siemens and GSI (Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research) in Darmstadt.
First patient-centered proton treatment room
IBA Group, a leader in advanced cancer diagnosis and therapy technologies, and Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) today announced their first-ever installation of a state-of-the-art, patient-centered proton therapy treatment room in the United States.
Diagnostic tests followed by personalized medicine
A new genre of medical tests - which determine whether a medicine is right for a patient's genes - are paving the way for increased use of personalized medicine, according to the cover story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News. C&EN is the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.
The 129th Congress of the German Society of Surgery
Meeting with EH editor Brigitte Dinkloh, Congress Secretary Professor Alexis Ulrich MD (left), Assistant Medical Director at the Clinic for General, Visceral and Transplant Surgery at the University of Heidelberg, outlined the scientific programme, discussed some impressive advances in surgical procedures, and explained why the gathering bears the slogan Surgery in Partnership.
