Can hospital data detect poor performing doctors?
...sultants were also identified as outliers, but the researchers strongly caution against over-interpreting these consultants as having "poor" performance because valid reasons may exist that could credibly explain their results. For example, cancer specialists may have high values for several indicators (such as...A Dutch led international team of researchers has unravelled how nature releases the torque built up in DNA at the molecular level. The researchers from Delft University of Technology, the Ecole Normale Suprieure in Paris and the Sloan-Kettering in...Researcher sheds light on ghostwriting in medical journals
...nd that a public database detailing physicians and researchers conflicts of interest is needed. The full commentary, as it appears in the Journal of General Internal Medicine , is available here. Dr. Fugh-Berman, a general practitioner who is the author of a reference text, The 5-Minute Herb and Dietary Supplem...Golfers' yips may be movement disorder
...iami Beach, Fla., April 9 16, 2005. For the study, researchers examined 20 male golfers, 10 with the yips and 10 without. All study participants were evaluated in the laboratory using surface electromyography (EMG) testing to determine muscle activity. Participants were tested while sitting at rest, arms outstre...Women not given same tests for stroke
...n MRI and EKG. The differences still existed after researchers adjusted for other factors, such as a history of diabetes, previous strokes, heart disease, or high blood pressure. Sixty-two percent of all deaths from stroke in the United States occur in women....Obesity linked to risk of severe headaches
...ght. Out of 143,433 participants reached by phone, researchers identified 30,850 people who had at least one severe headache attack in the previous year and took weight and height assessments. Participants were categorized into four body mass index types: underweight, normal weight, overweight, and obese. A fift...College students likely drink much more alcohol than they think they do
...bably inaccurate. How could they be [accurate] if researchers and students have different definitions of how big...n a Big Gulp filled with alcohol." For this study, researchers recruited 133 (78 males, 55 females) undergraduate students to complete an alcohol survey as well as...Alcohol magnifies the rewarding effects of smoking, even for light smokers
...ng to smoke for hours after drinking alcohol." The researchers also found that smoking urges were greater for positive mood and stimulation (for example, "a cigarette would taste good now") than for relief from negative mood and/or withdrawal (for example, "smoking would make me feel less depressed"). "This fi...New treatment 'roadmap' improves odds for unusual brain aneurysm
...h team studied 68 patients with the disorder. The researchers developed a classification system of six different...trap the aneurysm between temporary clips...," the researchers write in the journal article. The next steps are to open the aneurysm wall, remove the blood clot f...Research urgently needed to treat blood clots in children
...dults have unknown origins, to their surprise, the researchers discovered in the review that only four per cent of the clots in children presented without any risk factors, Dr. Massicotte noted. "The other 96 per cent had at least two or more known risk factors. The expert care centres (pediatric hospitals) know...Easing the anxiety of pregnancy after miscarriage
...ty at Buffalo School of Nursing, is one of the few researchers to study the field of pregnancy after perinatal lo...nd a sense of skepticism." Studies by other researchers have shown that experiences such as this can influence the obstetrical outcome and can have a negati...Shape-altering genes linked to ovarian cancer
...ny forms, with each form behaving differently. Now researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer... depending on which of the genes is turned on. The researchers reported their finding in the April 10, 2005 on-line issue of the journal Nature Medicine. "Our find...Researchers find that chocolate compound stops cancer cell cycle in lab experiments
... a number of studies. Given this, the Georgetown researchers looked at what happened when they used a purified ...h often happens in cancer cells." He adds that the researchers don't know why pentamer deactivates these proteins simultaneously, stopping the cell cycle. "We don...Northwestern's cancer genetics program finds gene variants that greatly increase breast cancer risk
...ast cancer risk, according to a study published by researchers at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Northwestern...ay contribute to cancer development." Northwestern researchers collaborated with researchers from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Columbia University and N...American Thoracic Society Journal news tips for April 2005 (second issue)
...l infections that cause no increase in IP-10. The researchers believe that levels of the protein could make a difference in both diagnosis and the development of an effective treatment for the disease. The investigators screened 14 cytokines/chemokines (immunoregulatory proteins) in the blood of 23 patients wit...MR spectroscopy may be superior for determining prostate cancer prognosis
...ion on the chemical composition of tissue samples, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have sho... clinical decision-making in prostate cancer. The researchers used MR spectroscopy to analyze tissue samples from 82 patients in whom prostate cancer had been con...Rice, NC State win NAS/Keck Futures funding
...es are a direct extension of work conducted by the researchers defining the interaction of multi walled carbon na...sis on new nano-biohybrid materials by Barron. The researchers are interested in a range of different fullerene-amino acid sequences that could allow uptake into k...Measuring enzymes at end of cancer pathway predicts outcome of Tarceva, Taxol
...nvolved in cancer development and progression, the researchers say.Before these studies, no one has been able to ...epends on CDK2 In the first study, M. D. Anderson researchers found that loss of the CDK2 enzyme strongly correlated with a cancer's sensitivity to Tarceva. That ......teers, was developed for human clinical studies by researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' (NIAID) Vaccine Research Center (VRC), and Vical Inc., San Diego, based on an animal vaccine tested at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Vical also manufactures the exp...