Don Rauf

October 06, 2008

MRI’s changing status as an instrument for breast cancer diagnosis and evaluation was apparent last month at the 2008 American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting. One study suggested that MR’s growing popularity for treatment planning may had led to more mastectomies, and another trial added to growing evidence about its ability to identify metastatic lymph nodes.

August 07, 2008

Multislice CT angiography should be the preferred choice over MR angiography or duplex ultrasound for initial evaluation of patients with suspected peripheral arterial disease.

July 31, 2008

No clear winner has emerged in a head-to-head comparison of whole-body FDG-PET/CT and whole-body 3T MRI for non-small cell lung cancer staging. Unenhanced PET/CT proved better for detecting metastatic lymph nodes and soft-tissue involvement, while MR was more sensitive to the presence of brain and liver metastases.

June 05, 2008

A physiological reason may explain why the shrinking violet in your family is so shy. Using brain SPECT, Dutch researchers have detected irregularities in dopamine and serotonin neurotransmitter systems in the brains of such individuals that appear to be linked to social anxiety disorder, a condition that affects an estimated 15 million adults in the U.S. and frequently leads to alcoholism and depression.

May 02, 2008

Therapeutic treatment in the very early stages of multiple sclerosis can help patients reduce brain tissue loss and maintain function. Brain atrophy is a common symptom in the relapsing-remitting form of the disease.

April 22, 2008

Though whole-body PET/CT is expensive, it may prove its worth by periodically screening Li-Fraumeni syndrome patients for the emergence of various cancers that are characteristic of the rare and dangerous genetic disorder.

March 28, 2008

Treating the hot flashes, mood swings, and other symptoms of menopause with hormone therapy combining estrogen and progesterone compromises the diagnostic performance of mammography, according to a report from the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Women receiving both hormones had a higher chance of abnormal mammograms and breast biopsies.

February 21, 2008

Long considered a sentinel factor for Alzheimer’s disease, beta-amyloid proteins can accumulate in the brain in aggregations called senile plaques with amazing speed, affecting neurodegeneration just as readily, according to researchers at Harvard Medical School.

February 06, 2008

U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq with mild traumatic brain injuries may benefit from preliminary research suggesting that diffusion tensor imaging can identify patients most likely to face long-term cognitive and behavior problems.

December 19, 2007

They may not get slammed like professional wrestlers, but radiologists commonly experience injuries related to repetitive strain. A study from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston found repetitive stress symptoms to be highly prevalent among radiologists.