Body

The use of a robot to assist with the most commonly performed weight-loss surgery appears to significantly lower a patient's risk of developing a rare but serious complication, according to a study published in the most recent edition of the Journal of Robotic Surgery.

Participants in the role-playing game EverQuest II defy the stereotype of the overweight male teenager, researchers reported this month in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.

The average age of the 7,000 players surveyed was 31, said first author Dmitri Williams, assistant professor in the USC Annenberg School for Communication.

"We found that older players were more typical," Williams said. There were more players in their 30s than in their 20s, and playing time tended to increase with age.

BOSTON -- Young women with DCIS, a common form of early breast cancer that arises in and is confined to the mammary ducts, are presumed more likely to have recurrences than older women with the same diagnosis. But a new study from Fox Chase Cancer Center rebuffs this conventional thinking.

BOSTON - Early-stage breast cancer patients who exhibit limited lymph node involvement may not require post-surgery radiation therapy (RT) when they receive neoadjuvant chemotherapy before a mastectomy, according to researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

The findings were reported today at the 50th Annual meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology.

Emory University researchers are participating in a nationwide study to explore an investigational treatment for advanced widespread emphysema. The EASE (Exhale Airway Stents for Emphysema) Trial focuses on airway bypass, a minimally invasive procedure designed to reduce excessive lung inflation and shortness of breath – typical complications of emphysema - by making new pathways for trapped air to exit the lungs.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) professor David Jackson, Ph.D., and a team of plant geneticists have identified a gene essential in controlling development of the maize plant, commonly known in the United States as corn. The new research extends the growing biological understanding of how the different parts of maize arise--important information for a plant that is the most widely planted crop in the U.S. and a mainstay of the global food supply.

College Park, Md. - The economic impact of climate change will cost a number of U.S. states billions of dollars, and delaying action will raise the price tag, concludes the latest series of reports produced by the University of Maryland's Center for Integrative Environmental Research (CIER).

The new reports project specific long-term direct and ripple economic effects on North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. In most cases, the price tag could run into billions of dollars.

A new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder reveals that air quality regulations may not effectively target a large source of fine, organic particle pollutants that contribute to hazy skies and poor air quality over the Los Angeles region.

The incidence and mortality of tumor keep ascending all over the world. Gecko had definite effect on malignant tumor in clinical practices reports. However, there was no study on the pharmacological studies of Gecko and its mechanisms of anti-tumor action remained unclear.

A research team led by Prof. Wang from Henan University of China addressed this question, and their findings were published on 7 July 2008, in the World Journal of Gastroenterology.

A research article to be published on 28 June 2008, in the World Journal of Gastroenterology addressed this question. The research team led by Prof. Serhat Aymaz from Cologne City Hospital presented a new type of stent design for transcardial application, which is intended to prevent bleeding due to mechanical mucosal lesions caused by the distal end of the stent extending into the stomach.

IOUS is an important tool in the fields of surgery for liver tumors, but it also has some drawbacks such as lacking of specificity to differentiate cirrhotic nodules from small malignant nodules. Contrast-enhanced ultrasound was shown with improved nodule characterization by recent studies.

The report about sphincter of oddi hypomotility and sphincter of oddi dilation was relatively rare. Whether sphincter of oddi hypomotility and duodenal-biliary reflux existed in these patients and if these patients had abnormal secretion of gastrointestinal hormones need further research.

It is estimated that the risk of neoplasia in Barrett esophagus, through the intermediate step of dysplastic transformation of the columnar epithelium, is 125-fold higher than in general population. But scarce data are available on genetic alterations occurring in metaplasia-dysplasia-adenocarcinoma sequence of Barrett esophagus. A research group in China investigated the microsatellite alterations on D2S123, D3S1616, D3S1300, D5S346, D17S787, D18S58 and BATRII loci, using the technique of dilution polymerase chain reaction (PCR).

Puli et al did a search to evaluate the accuracy of EUS in staging gastric cancers, and their results were published on 7 July 2008, in the World Journal of Gastroenterology.

Since the successful introduction of laparoscopic colectomy by Jacobs et al, laparoscopic surgery, especially laparoscopic rectal surgery has been developed considerably. Compared with open operation, the laparoscopic operation has many advantages such as less pain, little blood loss, small incision, good exposure of the pelvic cavity, an earlier return to daily activities and so on while preserving the oncologic radicality of the procedure, but the laparoscopic operation is more difficult than the open operation.