Breast Reconstruction for Cancer Patients

Almost 200,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year, with over 40,000 dying from the disease annually. Many of the survivors undergo mastectomies—the removal of one or both breasts—a procedure which can be devastating to a woman’s self-image and self-esteem.

one procedure which helps to minimize the psychosocial aspect of such a surgery is breast reconstruction, sometimes performed at the time of the mastectomy. A study to evaluate the psychosocial outcomes and body image of mastectomy reconstruction patients has shown ongoing benefits to women in self-esteem, body image and general well-being two years after undergoing the procedure. However, not everyone is made aware of the option for reconstruction.
A study by Dr. Caprice Greenberg from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston found that many women who have had a mastectomy failed to receive information about breast reconstruction. He found that younger women, more educated women, and women who were Caucasian were most likely to receive discussion about breast reconstruction. Doctors apparently unconsciously discriminated against older women, less educated patients, and women of minority races.
According to a recent report published by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, a staggering 7 out of 10 women facing breast cancer are never told of their options. An additional study released at the 2010 American Society of Breast Surgeons (ASPS) Annual Meeting reported that 4 of 5 women do not receive breast reconstruction after mastectomy despite legislation passed more than 10 years ago requiring insurance companies to cover the cost. The results of these studies indicate how important it is for women to get as much information as possible prior to treatment.
Some of the more common breast reconstruction options being used today are:
Nipple-Sparing Mastectomy: In this instance, all visible breast tissue is removed beneath the nipple, which is spared. This type of surgery is normally available if the cancer is located at least 2-4 cm away from the nipple, which decreases the likelihood that the nipple is involved.  This means there are strict criteria to qualify for the procedure, but it is being performed with more regularity.
DIEP Flap: This employs both skin and the fatty tissue from the patient’s abdomen, resulting in a bit of a tummy tuck along with the breast reconstruction. Without interfering with the abdominal muscles, the patient’s own tissue and skin is removed and used to reconstruct a more natural-feeling, soft  breast.
SIEA Flap: Similar to the DIEP Flap, but utilizes a different blood flow to reconstruct the breast.
SGAP Flap: This procedure employs both skin and the fatty tissue from the patient’s gluteal area. When a patient does not have excess abdominal fat to do a DIEP Flap, they can perform the same type of surgery utilizing tissue from the buttocks/upper hip area.
IGAP Flap: Same as the SGAP but utilizing skin and tissue from the lower hip and buttocks.
TUG Flap: The tissue and skin for reconstruction comes from the inner portion of the thigh, near the groin crease. Helps to avoid abdominal scars, but can only be used for small to medium-sized breasts due to the amount of flesh available in the area.
There are additional reconstruction options, utilizing other methods, available. You should discuss all options with your oncologist and surgeon before making any final decisions.
“Health is increasingly a shared responsibility between the physician and the patient,” says Dr. Cary Presant, HealthNews columnist. He recommends that as a patient you must ask important questions and take control of your future health. Asking not only the physician or surgeon, but also the nurse, nurse practitioner or physician's assistant who is helping the doctor, is extremely important. In addition, it is important to research the treatment or surgical procedure which has been suggested. Good sources are websites which can be reviewed to provide advice and further questions for your physician and the medical staff, and non-profits such as the American Cancer Society and Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Neurology:Tiny electrical shocks to the brain enhance memory

 

SUMMARY: Preliminary research shows that deep brain stimulation at key areas of the brain can stimulate memory. It could offer a solid direction for future Alzheimer's studies.

 

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Lightly shocking a person's brain just before they learned a new task appeared to strengthen memory in a handful of patients with epilepsy, a tantalizing result that could have implications for Alzheimer's disease, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.
Pacemaker devices known as deep brain stimulators made by Medtronic and St. Jude Medical are already used to calm muscle tremors in patients with Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders, and are being tested for a host of other conditions such as treatment-resistant depression.
The devices are implanted under the skin in the chest with wires leading up the neck connected to tiny electrodes implanted deep in the brain, which produce electrical impulses.
The current study was done at the University of California at Los Angeles in seven epileptic patients awaiting surgery who had electrodes implanted deep in their brains to help pinpoint the source of their seizures. The team used this opportunity to see how stimulating the brain affects memory.
They focused on an area of the brain called the entorhinal cortex, which helps form and store memories.
"The entorhinal cortex is the golden gate to the brain's memory mainframe," Dr. Itzhak Fried, professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview. The research was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Fried said sensory experiences that eventually become memories pass through this hub before they are stored in the hippocampus, the brain's chief memory center.
For the study, patients played a video game in which they had to shuttle people around in taxis to different shops in a virtual city. The team tested whether stimulating the entorhinal cortex or the hippocampus while they were learning their way around the city improved their recall.
"When we stimulated the hippocampus itself, there was not an effect. It was really stimulation in the gateway to the hippocampus - the entorhinal cortex - where we got the beneficial effect in terms of memory," Fried said.
Compared to testing before stimulation, zapping this part of the brain helped people recognize landmarks and navigate the virtual city more quickly. Fried said the findings suggest stimulating the brain just as memories are forming is key.
IMPACT ON ALZHEIMER'S
In Alzheimer's disease, this area of the brain is affected early on, when signs of dementia begin to appear.
Fried said the study might have implications for treatments for patients with early Alzheimer's disease, but he cautioned that the results are very preliminary.
"The question would be whether this can help memory in patients with memory impairments," he said. Scientists are increasingly focused on ways to treat the memory-robbing disease, which affects more than 5 million Americans.
Despite costly efforts, no drug has been found that can keep Alzheimer's from progressing, and policymakers are growing increasingly worried about the swelling ranks of dementia patients as the population ages.
Suzanne Haber, a neuroscientist at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York who was not involved in the study, said she was "very excited about the finding," but she cautioned that the treatment is very invasive, very expensive and unproven in Alzheimer's patients.
The Obama administration said on Wednesday it plans to spend an additional $156 million over the next two years to help find an effective treatment for Alzheimer's.
One team has already tried deep brain stimulation in Alzheimer's patients. In a study published in the Annals of Neurology in 2010 researchers tested deep brain stimulation in six patients over the course of a year and found the treatment to be relatively safe. They also saw signs the treatment might have an effect on memory.
Dr. Sandra Black, a brain researcher at the University of Toronto who wrote an editorial on the current study, said the findings could have implications for early stage Alzheimer's disease if tests were developed to identify this process early through imaging or genomics.
"Although the current evidence is preliminary, is based on small samples and requires replication, the potential application of deep-brain stimulation in amnestic disorders is enticing," Black wrote.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/yaLp0h New England Journal of Medicine, online February 8, 2012.

 

Lose weight with vinegar dressing salads when in diets

Recent Swedish studies show that consumed vinegar is responsible for a high sensation of satiety helping you better control the amount of food consumed daily when in a diet. Vinegar may delay food transition from stomach to intestines hence it will maintain the satiety sensation for a longer period of time. At this time in the top of specialist recommendations are balsamic vinegars which are great for salad dressings accompanied with olive oil.
 During the study held at Lund University, subjects were split in two groups, one fed  with white bread and one with white bread soaked in vinegar (two tea spoons). For the next two hours the second group reported no variation of their initial satiety sensation. In addition Insulin levels reported for vinegar treated group were 25 % lower than once reported for the first subjects group. The decreased level of insulin was correlated with a decreased rate of  body fat storage. Responsible of this effect might be the acetic acid contained by all type of vinegar.
Stay Healthy!

source:healthy feeds

Super-sized Cisplatin molecule effective against cancer while being less toxic

Using chemistry and nanotechnology, researchers at Harvard and Brigham and Women’s Hospital designed a super-sized Cisplatin molecule able to deliver toxic platinum atoms to tumors while proving nontoxic to kidneys.  The research was conducted on laboratory animals.
Cisplatin is a powerful anti-cancer drug used in first-line chemotherapy but with limited use because of its toxicity. The team designed a polymer what would bind to Cisplatin, making it wrap itself into a 100 nanometers ball, too large to enter the kidneys, lungs, liver and spleen.  Once the molecule reached the tumor it falls apart dumping its toxic load on the cancerous tissue.
The new compound has been found to be effective against lung and breast cancers and outperformed Cisplatin in a transgenic ovarian cancer model that mimics the disease in humans


source: http://www.healthyfeeds.com

Minocycline could be a cheap and safe treatment for stroke

Minocycline, an old anti-inflammatory drug, could be a safe and cheap treatment for stroke, with no adverse effects if the dose is between 200 and 700 milligrams. According to researchers from the Medical College of Georgia and the University of Georgia the drug is easy to administer and can be given with tPA.
Minocycline “is an old drug that has been studied extensively in healthy young people,” said Dr. Susan C. Fagan, professor of pharmacy at UGA, assistant dean for the MCG program of the UGA College of Pharmacy and the study’s first author. “Now that we know it’s also safe in a predominantly older stroke population, we can look more closely to identify the dose necessary to give us the pharmacologic effect we need.”
The early-stage clinical trial funded by the National Institutes of Health, opens the door to a much larger clinical trial assessing the antibiotic’s efficacy. The researchers are pursuing federal funding for a 2,000-patient international trial.

source: http://www.healthyfeeds.com