Put Fatty Fish on the Menu - eating salmon or other fatty fish just once a week can help

11.18.2009 editor
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Eating salmon or other fatty fish just once a week helped reduce men’s risk of heart failure, says a new study reported in the European Heart Journal. This study adds to growing evidence that omega-3 fatty acids are beneficial to heart health – and its findings represent one of the largest studies to investigate the association.

The researchers followed 39,367 Swedish men between the ages of 45 and 79 from 1998 to 2004. They recorded details of the men’s diet and tracked the men’s outcomes through Swedish inpatient hospital registers and cause-of-death registers. During this period, 597 men in the study (with no previous history of heart disease or diabetes) developed heart failure. Thirty-four men died.

Analysis of their numbers showed that the men who ate fatty fish – such as herring, mackerel, salmon, whitefish and char – once per week were 12 percent less likely to develop heart failure compared with men who ate no fatty fish. The researchers found the strongest link with the intake of marine omega-3 fatty acids, which are found in cod liver and other fish oils.

Incorporating fatty fish into your diet
The American Heart Association recommends eating fatty fish not once but twice per week. And while many sit-down restaurants offer fatty-fish entrees, you may be uncertain how best to prepare these dishes at home.

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Time Widens for Giving Clot-Busting Drug for Stroke

11.18.2009 editor
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Earlier this year, an advisory committee of the American Stroke Association/American Heart Association issued a recommendation that the window of time for tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) therapy be extended.

The new analysis shows that the medication, which is given intravenously, can safely be used to treat strokes 4.5 hours after symptoms begin. Until this year, tPA had to be given within three hours of symptom onset.

As Jefferson Vascular Neurologist Carissa Pineda, MD, explains, tPA is the only FDA-approved drug for treating the 80 percent of strokes caused by ischemic clots. (The other major type – hemorrhagic stroke – is caused by ruptured blood vessels in the brain. Hemorrhagic stroke cannot be treated with tPA and has a much higher mortality rate than ischemic stroke.)

“tPA can be thought of as a ‘clot buster,’” Dr. Pineda notes. “Once it reaches the clot, it bursts it – limiting the areas of the brain that would have been affected.”

But as Dr. Pineda notes, the original guidelines required the clot-busting drug to be administered within three hours of the onset of symptoms. Even in top-performing hospitals, less than 5 percent of stroke patients are treated in that timeframe.

The new guideline – based on analysis of clinical studies – enables emergency-room physicians and stroke specialists to give tPA up to 4.5 hours after the onset of symptoms.

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TJUH Investigators Find PET Imaging Before Radiation Therapy Not Ideal for Determining Higher Radiation Doses

11.17.2009 editor
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Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging is a radiology procedure that is used to identify certain conditions and evaluate the effectiveness of a cancer treatment. Recently, a team of researchers at Jefferson found that PET imaging of non-small cell lung cancer prior to receiving radiation therapy should not be the basis for determining areas that may benefit from higher doses of radiation to control the cancer.

"Investigators are looking to PET imaging to find ways to predict if any part of the tumor would benefit from a higher radiation dose,” said Nitin Ohri, MD, a resident in Radiation Oncology at Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals. "I wanted to see if residual activity on a scan after treatment correlates with the activity pattern on a scan done before treatment."

Some studies suggest that areas that have the highest amount of hypermetabolic activity on PET scan before treatment are the areas most likely to have increased activity after treatment, according to  Dr. Ohri.

Dr. Ohri looked at the PET scans of 43 patients, of which 15 had significant activity on the scans both before and after treatment. He set up a coordinate system that divided tumors into nine regions or 17 regions for larger tumors. He then correlated the activity in the regions both before and after treatment.

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Jefferson the First Healthcare Facility in the Region to Offer Innovative CT Scanning Technology

11.16.2009 editor
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What does that mean for patients? First, the test is quicker -- the entire heart is imaged in less than five seconds. It also exposes the patient to much less radiation, compared to other cardiac imaging studies like a nuclear stress test or cardiac catheterization.

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Jefferson Researchers Find Specialized Radiation Therapy Reduces Vision Loss in Patients with Optic Nerve Sheath Meningiomas

11.12.2009 editor
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Optic nerve sheath meningiomas are rare tumors that are traditionally treated with surgery, which is typically a blinding procedure. However, researchers from Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals have found that a specialized type of radiation therapy offers the same local control, with fewer adverse effects on vision. The investigators presented their data at the 51st ASTRO Annual Meeting (Abstract #2676B-261).

Fractionated stereotactic radiotherapy is a more precise, targeted type of radiation therapy that allows an effective dose of radiation to the tumor, but helps spare other structures around it. In the case of optic nerve sheath meningiomas, the eye lens and brain cells are spared, according to Robert Den, MD, a resident in Radiation Oncology at Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals.

“Fractionated stereotactic radiotherapy is beneficial because it is a non-invasive means to achieve disease control, while allowing patients to continue with their daily lives without being hindered by a major surgical procedure,” Dr. Den said.

Dr. Den and colleagues conducted a retrospective analysis of 58 patients with optic nerve sheath meningiomas who were treated with fractionated stereotactic radiotherapy between 1996 and 2006. They reviewed patient charts for technical radiotherapy information and for treatment outcomes, which included local control, visual acuity and acute and late toxicity related to treatment. The median follow-up was 70 months.

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