Using two successive pairs of specialized CT scans has produced real-time images of liver tumours dying from direct injection of anticancer drugs into tumours and their surrounding blood vessels. Within a minute, the images showed whether the targeted chemotherapy did or did not choke off the tumours' blood supply and saved patients a month of worry about whether the treatment, known as chemoembolization (A technique for delivering a quantity of an anticancer drug directly into a cancer via its feeding blood vessels) was working or not, and whether repeat or more powerful treatments were needed. This new scanning method gives almost instant feedback of the value of injecting anti-tumour drugs directly into liver tumours and their surrounding blood vessels to quickly kill them, and prevent the cancer from spreading. If further testing proves equally successful, the paired use of cone-beam CT scans, which are already approved for single-scan use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, could supplant the current practice of MRI scanning a month after chemoembolization to check its effects Patients would not have to endure the uncertainty of waiting weeks or more to find out if their chemoembolization was successful in fighting their cancer.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/254516.php
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/254516.php
Chronic pain campaigner makes emotional plea to MSPs
A woman who is campaigning for better services for people with chronic pain has made an emotional plea to MSPs. She wants Scotland to have a residential unit for chronic pain sufferers so patients do not have to seek specialist care in England. About 770,800 people in Scotland are estimated to suffer from chronic pain and Ms Archibald has lived with pain for 13 years. In an emotiona address to the committee, she said: "There are so many people across the country who suffer from chronic pain and it is something you cannot see.” “Nobody understands what it is - it is the most debilitating thing that could ever happen to you." She said more than £1m had been spent by NHS Scotland during the past few years sending people with chronic pain to a specialist centre in Bath for treatment.
Her petition called for the transfer of more of the management of chronic pain into primary care to allow a better understanding among GPs, and greater consideration of the social and emotional factors of how it was caused and what effects it has on the person. She urged the government to put an end to Scotland's few chronic pain treatment centres being understaffed and confined mainly to cities, and let people in pain have more than current postcode access and patchy and inadequate services.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-20946437
Her petition called for the transfer of more of the management of chronic pain into primary care to allow a better understanding among GPs, and greater consideration of the social and emotional factors of how it was caused and what effects it has on the person. She urged the government to put an end to Scotland's few chronic pain treatment centres being understaffed and confined mainly to cities, and let people in pain have more than current postcode access and patchy and inadequate services.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-20946437
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