SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine–Induced Immune Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia
Lung Transplant Recipients at Heightened Risk of Colorectal Polyps
Lung transplant patients are at increased risk of developing colorectal adenomas in the first few years after transplantation, possibly warranting enhanced surveillance for colorectal cancer (CRC), a new study suggests.
“When we looked at our data, we saw that these patients are developing polyps faster,” lead author Dr. David Row of St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix told Reuters Health by phone. “Even in patients who had a negative pre-transplant colonoscopy, a significant portion of them still had polyps at the one-year follow-up.”
Solid-organ-transplant recipients are known to be at elevated cancer risk, a link that could be mediated by their use of immunosuppressive medications, Dr. Row and colleagues explain in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. Yet most CRC-screening recommendations for these patients do not differ from guidelines for the general population, they add.
Lung recipients in particular often require high levels of immunosuppression and so “may be at exceptional risk for developing colon and rectal malignancies,” the researchers write.
Developmental Trajectory of The Healthy Human Gut Microbiota During The First 5 years of Life
The Antigenic Anatomy of SARS-CoV-2 Receptor Binding Domain
Breast Cancer Surgeries Deemed ‘Low Value’ Continue, Increase
Of four surgical procedures for breast cancer that have been determined to be of low value because they yield no meaningful clinical benefit, two continue to be utilized; in fact, the use of two of these procedures has increased in the United States, new research shows.
“This is the first study to [evaluate] all four of the low-value breast cancer procedures at the same time and try to draw some conclusions on practice patterns across facilities,” said senior author Lesly A. Dossett, MD, MPH, Center for Health Outcomes and Policy, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The two low-value procedures that have increased in use are contralateral prophylactic mastectomy for average-risk women with unilateral cancer and sentinel lymph node biopsy for clinically node-negative women aged 70 years and older with hormone receptor–positive (HR+) cancer.
“This suggests that formal efforts to reduce low-value care through dissemination of guidelines, education of patients or providers, or alignment of incentives will be necessary to achieve full deimplementation,” she told Medscape Medical News.