Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
New Tests May Help Doctors Pinpoint Cancer Faster With Higher Accuracy
Cancer cells remain elusive and tough to locate, but a new crop of nuclear-imaging tests promises to lead to more accurate prognosis and treatment. 聽The tests use imaging agents that combine radioactive isotopes with targeted molecules that can spot cancer at the cellular level. The ability to accurately locate the cancers helps physicians make better and earlier diagnoses鈥攁nd may eventually make possible targeted nuclear-medicine therapies that identify and kill cancer cells, but not the surrounding healthy cells. (Or, 9/25)
With two decades of cancer research under his belt, Tom Marsilje is no stranger to project deadlines. But he鈥檚 never faced one quite like this before. He鈥檚 racing against the clock in an improbable quest to cure his own incurable colon cancer before it takes him away from his wife and their two little girls. (Robbins, 9/26)
There鈥檚 been a lot of excitement about immunotherapy as a tool to treat cancer. But as leading experts gathered here on Sunday, several struck an unexpected note of caution. (Begley, 9/25)
[Martina] Herrera, from San Pablo, is in remission from uterine cancer, a cancer that has been removed and one for which she underwent chemotherapy for eight months. Four months into her treatment, her legs froze. Herrera is also a client of the Charlotte Maxwell Clinic, a facility that offers alternative therapies like reiki (a form of touch therapy), massage, guided meditation, herbal treatments, acupuncture and other homeopathic treatments to patients who are also receiving traditional聽cancer therapies. Because Herrera has a low income, she receives her treatments for free. (9/23)
The use of the PSA test to check average-risk men with no symptoms of cancer has always been somewhat controversial. But in 2012, an influential federal advisory panel, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, declared that routine PSA testing should be abandoned, even for high-risk men. (Rush, 9/25)
Free, walk-in PSA screening-fests, often at manly events such as car shows, became a big thing, especially during September, which is prostate cancer awareness month. Advocacy groups, urologists, and hospitals embraced the strategy, presuming that catching cancer early would save lives. But that strategy - like that presumption - is now seen as dangerously simplistic. (McCullough, 9/25)