Having prominent front teeth is a potentially harmful problem. If it occurs at a young age (7 to 11 years old) then the orthodontist has to decide whether to treat immediately and then again when the child is older (12 to 16 years old), or wait until the child is a teenager and perform the treatment in one phase.
Lung cancer patients may not need to wait till their radiation treatment is over to know if it worked. A PET scan several weeks after starting radiation treatment for lung cancer can indicate whether the tumor will respond to the treatment, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Some people are unwilling or unable to stop smoking, but are prepared to try and reduce the numbers of cigarettes they smoke each day. After studying healthcare literature, a team of Cochrane Researchers could find only a few reports that assessed methods aimed at helping people reduce use.
Combining pre-operative chemotherapy and surgery increases the average chance of survival at five years by approximately 6 percent compared with surgery alone.
Taking part in group psychotherapy can help men who have erectile dysfunction to over come their problem, and adding sildenafil to group therapy was more effective that sildenafil alone.
For many people, going in to hospital provides an opportunity to stop smoking. A Cochrane Systematic Review has found that the chance of successfully quitting can be enhanced if patients receive smoking cessation counselling during their stay, and then have at least one month of supportive contact after going home.
A review of published literature about benefits and harms of oral drugs for type 2 diabetes mellitus found that older agents, such as second-generation sulfonylureas and metformin, have similar or superior effects on glycemic control, lipids and other intermediate endpoints compared to newer, more expensive drugs, such as thiazolidinediones, alpha-glucosidase inhibitors and meglitinides.
When human hearts are injured, as during a heart attack, healthy tissue normally can?t regrow. Researchers now demonstrate in rats that a sponge-like patch, soaked in a compound called periostin and placed over the injury, can not only get heart cells to begin dividing and making copies of themselves again, but also improves heart function.
There is currently no evidence available of a superiority of rapid-acting insulin analogues over human insulin in the treatment of adult patients with diabetes mellitus type 1.
A commentary in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) urges researchers to explore an intriguing approach to reduce the dose, and therefore the cost, of oral targeted cancer therapies.