Frontline: Post-Heart Attack Procedures; Radiation After Mastectomy; Heavy Drinking & the Brain
Post-Heart Attack Procedures Improve Survival Rates
Following an NSTEMI heart attack, patients who have a procedure to increase blood flow in coronary arteries, such as angioplasty and/or stenting, have higher survival rates after six months than patients treated with medications alone, according to a study in the Sept. 13, 2016 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The participants in the study suffered non-ST-elevation myocardial infarctions (NSTEMIs), a mild type of heart attack that usually doesn’t require immediate intervention such as angioplasty or stenting. The researchers noted that treating heart attack patients with medications that can improve their cardiovascular health by lowering blood pressure, preventing blood clots, and reducing cholesterol is important, but many patients also benefit from some type of intervention to restore healthy blood flow to the heart. Common procedures that open narrowed or blocked arteries include balloon angioplasty, in which a tiny balloon is inflated in the blocked area of the artery, and stenting, in which a hollow mesh tube is placed inside the artery to improve blood flow.
New Guidelines for Radiation Therapy Following Mastectomy
New guidelines help clarify which breast cancer patients should consider radiation therapy after a mastectomy. Radiation therapy is almost always advised for patients with large tumors (more than five centimeters) and three or more lymph nodes that contain cancer cells, but the issue of radiation therapy for women with smaller tumors and fewer affected lymph nodes has been controversial. The guidelines say evidence indicates that radiation treatment after a mastectomy decreases the risk of breast cancer recurrence, and that women with smaller tumors and three or fewer lymph nodes involved can benefit from the therapy. There is no “one-size-fats-all” formula for which patients would benefit from radiation therapy; doctors need to consider several factors, including the patient’s age, overall health status, type of cancer, number of lymph nodes involved, and tumor size when deciding whether radiation therapy is warranted. The guidelines were published in the September 2016 issues of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Practical Radiation Oncology, and the Annals of Surgical Oncology.
Heavy Drinking Has Toxic Effects on Brain Function
A study that compared cognitive function among heavy drinkers, moderate drinkers, and non-drinkers found that heavy drinkers scored lower on tests that measured a range of cognitive abilities, including learning, memory, and global cognitive function. Participants who scored lowest on tests had a lifetime history of heavy drinking. Heavy drinking was defined as drinking five or more alcoholic drinks on the same occasion on five or more days in the past 30 days, while moderate drinking was defined as up to one drink per day for women and up to two drinks per day for men. The study was published Sept. 22, 2016 in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
The post Frontline: Post-Heart Attack Procedures; Radiation After Mastectomy; Heavy Drinking & the Brain appeared first on University Health News.
Powered by WPeMatico
