Prostate Brachytherapy Causes Fewer Side Effects than Surgery
Men with prostate cancer have a slightly better long-term side effects profile with radiation seed implants than they do with surgery, according to a study released today in the International Journal for Radiation Oncology * Biology * Physics, the official journal of ASTRO.
Doctors in France conducted the first-ever multi-institutional, comparative study of men with early stage prostate cancer to evaluate a man’s quality of life, treatment-related side effects and cost of the treatment based on the type of treatment the patient received: surgery or seed implants, both widely-accepted modes of treatment for early-stage prostate cancer. With prostate surgery, called a radical prostatectomy, a surgeon removes the prostate. During prostate brachytherapy, a radiation oncologist places radioactive seeds, similar to the size of a grain of rice, into the prostate to kill the cancer.
Heart attacks can give couples a new lease of life, says study
A third of people who suffer heart attacks discover new meaning to their lives and reconnect with their partner, but others see it as a threat to their well-ordered existence, according to research published in the latest Journal of Advanced Nursing.
Researchers from Switzerland and the USA teamed up to explore the in-depth experiences of 24 couples to see whether the experience had changed their lives and their relationships.
Stress-Related Adult Disease May Originate In Fetal Development
According to a review in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, evidence is mounting that lifelong stress-related conditions such as depression and chronic pain may be linked to fetal growth and timing of delivery.
“During the past decade, a considerable body of evidence has emerged showing that circumstances during the fetal period may have lifelong programming effects on different body functions with a considerable impact on disease susceptibility,” says review author Eero Kajantie.
Glaucoma patients at significantly higher risk for falls, motor vehicle accidents
Persons affected by glaucoma are over three times more likely to have been involved in falls and motor vehicle accidents than persons of the same age without the condition, say researchers from Dalhousie University in Canada. Their findings are published in the March 2007 issue of Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science.
The study involved 48 patients 50 years of age or older with glaucoma and 47 age-matched persons without the eye disease. Glaucoma patients were almost three times as likely to have experienced one or more falls in the previous year and over six times as likely to have been involved in one or more motor vehicle accidents in the previous five years. They were also more likely to have been at-fault for motor vehicle accidents in which they were involved. The strongest risk factor for these motor vehicle accidents was impaired useful field of view.
