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Showing posts from June, 2013

Radiation Therapy for Breast cancer

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Intraoperative Radiation Therapy Intraoperative radiation therapy is a form of partial breast radiation where the radiation is delivered in the operating room after surgeon has removed the tumor.  All the radiation therapy is delivered in one dose, so that there are no visits required afterwards to get radiation therapy.  So the benefits of intraoperative radiation therapy primarily I think is convenience to the patient.  Instead of having to come back for repeated visits to receive the radiation therapy, you get to have it all done at the time of surgery. So who is eligible for intraoperative radiation therapy.  There is really a whole list of criteria that we use to determine if someone falls in to that highly selective group who would benefit from intraoperative radiation therapy.  So, when a lumpectomy is done, what we usually do is we make an incision on the breasts where the tumor is located then we remove the tumor with some surrounding normal breast tissue.  So

Parkinson’s Disease Early diagnosis and treatment

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Parkinson's Disease Diagnosis and Treatment Parkinson’s is a very much associated with a progressive loss of dopamine neuron.  These are striatonigral neurons and those neurons release dopamine through allow us to move normally.  It turns out that person who lose about 50% to 60% of these neuron and dopamine and the striatum would be reduced to about 50% to 60% before the onset of motor signs of Parkinson’s disease occur.  We still don’t have to-date a biological marker of Parkinson’s disease.  There are imaging technologies that are available in research sites and some of these may be available on a more widespread basis soon, but one can use either beta-CIT or other ligand and SPECT imaging where these ligand binds to dopamine transporters and the dopamine nerve terminals and it gives you an index of remaining dopamine neurons, so this is a sort of representation from the early Parkinson’s disease.  So Parkinson’s Disease then still remains a clinical diagnosis base