Dr. Len's Cancer Blog

An article published today in the journal Cancer claims that Medicare “incentivized” urologists to do more surgery in their office, and the net result was a significant increase in medical costs for doing the procedures, compared to doing them in hospital facilities.

 

But, just as in all research, it’s important to get the data and the facts correct.  And when you do that for this article, you may just not come to the same conclusions.  In fact, the conclusions may be so different that one might ask whether the authors need to go back to the drawing board and update their report.

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It’s Groundhog Day, so maybe this is a good time to offer a quick recap of my progress on what I call my “Groundhog Day Diet.” 

 

The “Groundhog Day Diet” is my name for the program I started four weeks ago to lose the same weight I lose and regain every year, hoping that maybe—just maybe—this year will be different.  (The diet is fondly named after the movie Groundhog Day which starred Bill Murray, where he repeated the same day, day after day after day.)

 

The only reason I am bothering you with this is the knowledge that I am not alone.  Many of you out there go through the same ritual every year.  And, if you are like me, four weeks into the process is about when you think it’s time for a splurge or have some other event(s) come up in your life that leads you astray, like this Sunday’s Super Bowl.

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Bow-wow or squeak-squeak? When it comes to “sniffing” out cancer, it looks like you may have a choice.

 

Medical research suggests that dogs and mice may just give us the clue to finding cancer early.

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Now that the tanning industry has had its nosed bloodied by the Federal Trade Commission, maybe it’s time for the Food and Drug Administration to step up to the plate.

 

That’s the question that is looming large for many interested in the issue of tanning bed risk, and the upcoming FDA meeting on March 25 where further restrictions on tanning beds are going to be considered.

 

From my point of view, and based on my personal/family experience, action can't come soon enough.

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Ah, yes…Happy New Year (even if we are already half way into this new month.  My, how time flies)!!!

 

And with the New Year come new or repurposed resolutions, many of which are years old.  Among those resolutions—you guessed it—are losing weight, getting (more) exercise, and trying to once again try to stay healthy.

 

This New Year brings with it a new twist on the old resolution gambit, and that is how health care reform may—read that “may”—impact your focus on losing those long neglected pounds by penalizing you if you don't succeed.

 

But maybe we should put aside the politics, and concentrate on innovative ways to “get into the game,” as is now happening in my hometown of Thomasville in southwest Georgia.

 

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Two articles and an editorial in this week’s issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine should give all of us pause about the potential risk of increased cancer cases and deaths caused by the overuse and inappropriate use of CT scans.

 

According to this research, it is possible that 1-2% of cancer deaths every year in the future may be due to a cancer caused by a CT scan performed years previously.  In addition, the researchers found that the amount of radiation per CT scan differed substantially for the same type of scan performed on different machines in the same or other institutions.

 

For me, this is not some abstract discussion.  Two years ago I had to decide between getting several CT scans recommended by a radiologist or avoid the scans and take the chance I had a serious disease that might progress undetected.  I decided against the scans for these very reasons.

 

Looking back, it was clearly the right decision.

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I don’t like to keep kicking the proverbial can down the road, but a column in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal about the statistics in the recent mammogram guideline recommendations from the U S Preventive Services Task Force is worthy of comment.

 

Aside from “getting it right” in my opinion, Carl Bialik’s (“The Numbers Guy”) discussion highlights the imperfection of the statistics that the Task Force relied on in making a recommendation to the public that we should abandon a long standing  recommendation that women at average risk of breast cancer get a screening mammogram every year beginning at age 40.

 

The reality is that the fall out from the Task Force recommendations is just beginning, with one state government cutting mammograms for women in their 40's and insurers concerned that their contracts with companies to provide health insurance benefits for employees will require them to do the same.

 

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If you hear good news often enough, does it become “no news?” 

 

That’s my concern with today’s release of the 2009 version of the Annual Report to the Nation on the status of cancer incidence and deaths in the United States from 1975 to 2006.  The “news” is still good—with some caveats—but will people still pay attention to the message? I certainly hope so. 

 

If someone had told me years ago about the successes we could achieve in reducing cancer incidence and deaths I would have had serious reservations about our ability to accomplish that task.  Here we are 35 years later, and we have done just that.

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A comment in today’s Wall Street Journal (accompanied by a large picture of a very angry Congresswoman) should not go unnoticed and cannot be left unchallenged, especially given the confusion caused by the mammography guidelines released earlier this week.

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I hosted a chat Thursday, November 19th about the new mammography guidelines issued this week by the USPSTF. You can see an archived version of the chat here...
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